Walls, Bridges and Notes Erasmus Project

Project Title

Walls, Bridges and Notes

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Creativity and culture; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage

Project Summary

The project promotes the acquisition of key competencies, especially communication in English as a vehicular language and digital competences.
We believe that promoting these competences is a priority because, although English is studied everywhere, students not always learn to use it fluently enough.
Partner schools are interested in improving the use of English as a vehicular language to enable their students to effectively communicate with people of similar age from other EU countries. Especially, but not only, in Italy, schools seem not to be able to shift from teaching focused on grammar to teaching a practical use of the language as tool for communication.
The other key competence that the project aims at developing in participants is the digital one. It will enable teachers and students to communicate with different kinds of ICT tools and help document the research activities included in the project. Through ICT close contact with students from other partner schools will be kept, documents exchanged, issues solved, results disseminated.
The project will steer communication towards the theme of European Cultural Heritage. One of the problems of conversation in foreign language is finding a suitable conversation theme. The project overcome this problem proposing research activities on the countries involved and on other European countries suggesting the following topics:
– locating walls and bridges, research their meaning in the context, research of the symbolic value (wall: border, limit, obstacle; bridge: connection, union, relationship);
– researching the psychological meaning of concepts represented by walls and bridges;
– finding contemporary musical compositions, close to students’ interests, that express those sentiments and feelings.
Objectives are defined at three different levels: educational process, learning, functioning. Each objective entails an evaluation from a different point of view: students, teachers, groups of students. The analysis of the objectives will help achieve them.
The project involves 96 students, 24 per school, and 12 teachers, 3 per school.
Participant students know English at base level (B1), but they don’t posses a level of knowledge that allows them to understand each other in order to solve a problem or research, which requires the ability to know, understand, analyze, summarize and evaluate in a foreign language (B2/C1). Selection of participants aims at including also 1/3 of students with a better knowledge of English, in order to help enhance quality and complexity of the communicative process.
The project includes two kinds of activities:
In-presence with 5 workshops:
– 1 initial workshop for teachers to share the philosophy of the project and work out methodologies, commitment, responsibilities:
– 4 workshops for students (one per country) to develop research and produce materials: written productions, photographs, video, tunes….
Activity on a distance:
Intervals between the four workshops are the links, or bridges, between the meetings. Students will complete online the work started in the workshops.
Methodology entails using workshop teaching methodologies:
– cooperative learning with individual activities, in couples or groups (jigsaw strategy, positive interdependence)
-commitment to research with rigorous methodologies but open to results;
– using narration and documentation ad teaching devices (understanding, grasping ideas an concepts, active participation)
Results
– for English knowledge, growth from B1 level to B2 level
– a blog that will contain all the materials produced:: written narrations, photographs, videos, glossaries, musical compilations.
The blog will made the school visible and make created materials usable inside. At the same time its creation will be an important exercise for strengthening linguistic and technological competences, and shared and collaborative responsibilities.
Long term results concern students (competence in English) but especially teachers: we believe that it is very important that the project promotes teachers skies and competences The project creates training opportunities for them, with the initial JSTE and during all project life span using specific teaching methodologies

Project Website

https://erasmuswbn.blogspot.com/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 103400 Eur

Project Coordinator

Istituto di Istruzione Superiore Peano & Country: IT

Project Partners

• IES PADRE ISLA
• Kalevan Lukio
• Liceul Tehnologic Ion Nistor Vicovu de Sus