STORKS IN SCIENCE ZONE Erasmus Project

Project Title

STORKS IN SCIENCE ZONE

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Natural sciences; Research and innovation

Project Summary

STORKS IN SCIENCE ZONE The partners of this project are five schools: a primary School in Aydin, Turkey, a primary School in Cardiff, Wales (UK), group of schools in Parchowo, Poland, a primary School in Granada, Spain and a primary and secondary School in Foggia, Italy. We had 4 short-term exchanges of groups of pupils, 1 short-term joint staff training event and 3 transnational meetings; these were throughout the duration of this project. The mobilities consisted of 60 students including 5 with special needs and 40 teachers. Approximately 16000 persons benefitted indirectly from the activities organized by the project. The project focused on three main priorities, HORIZONTAL: An open and innovative education, training and youth work, embedded in the digital era.
SCHOOL EDUCATION: Supporting schools to tackle early school leaving (ESL) and disadvantage as well as to address all students from the lowest to the highest end of the academic spectrum and addressing underachievement in the basic skills of maths, science and literacy through more effective, innovative teaching methods.
The common point of the project is the STORK. By observing storks we connected our topics through our science zones. We created a connection among all the fields of science we were interested in. In this way our students gained in-depth knowledge about storks and different science fields that were in connection with our main topics. Experiencing these scientific areas in person our students were able to see the coherence between zoology, astronomy, brain, archaeology and renewable energy. The teachers involved in the project observed that the students needed to be supported due to their lack of opportunities for international interaction; they also needed to learn how to conduct experiments and carry out research in the different fields of science. Through this project we were able to give pupils and students the opportunity to develop their awareness of the European dimension, by working collaboratively in science zones. We placed emphasis on learning and practicing the different aspects needed to reach each objective. The main goals were to communicate with kids from other countries, to work and share contents of zoology, archaeology, alternative sources of energy, astronomy and cerebration. The project encouraged staff and students to develop their own ICT skills, which were necessary to share information with partner schools and support team building and cooperation skills of the involved people. There was also an improvement in the use of English language, the communication language of the project. The contents of the project developed transversal skills related to various areas of the curriculum and reinforced various key competences: communication in mother and foreign languages, science, digital, learning to learn, social and civic entrepreneurship and sense of initiative. We worked within the different topics during the three years of the project, the stork being the main focus. We took part in different types of activities adapted to our main topics. The methodology behind this was to find out what they know, explain their exercises and share the research results with their project partners while implementing positive measures to their topics. For sharing the appropriate datas, experiments and research results, each school elaborated with the pupils creating the Erasmus+ corner. Pupil exchanges were very important in this project to put in practice inclusion aims, it was necessary to work together to understand and to know how to conduct in the different situations that occurred. The results of the project was shown in many ways such as charts from the five schools for each aspect, evaluation documents, surveys, questionnaires, texts, summaries from each of the participants about their stork within their own topic, power-point presentations of the activities developed in the exchanges. We received summaries from each group of students about their experiences in the interaction with the other pupils involved in the project, evaluations completed by the students and teachers about the project, permanent exhibitions in each school of the materials received or made during the project. The impact on teachers and on schools were that skills were developed using ideas from inclusive practices; competences of cooperation between different types of schools and strengthen European cooperation. For pupils the impact was to lessen discrimination of pupils with less knowledge in science, improvements of abilities of cooperative learning and increase their awareness of European citizenship – this was successful in achieving this. Following this, the schools cooperated via the e-Twinning platform. All the materials were shared on the school websites.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 126680 Eur

Project Coordinator

CEIP Fuentenueva & Country: ES

Project Partners

• AYDIN INCIRLIOVA NAZMI TOPCUOGLU ILKOKULU
• Nant Y Parc Primary
• DIREZIONE DIDATTICA SAN PIO X
• Zespol Szkol w Parchowie