Who are we? Learning from one another Erasmus Project

Project Title

Who are we? Learning from one another

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: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

It is to be noted that this project was taken over by Mrs Siobhan Barnes after sudden illness and subsequent retirement of Mr James Pearson. IES Fernando de Rojas is a mixed co-educational comprehensive school which serves, together with other schools, the eastern part of the city of Salamanca and its metropolitan area. Salamanca is a university city and popular Spanish language learning destination. There are approximately 1000 pupils on roll and 84 teaching staff. The School offers ESO and Bachillerato Studies which lead to degrees, similar to GCSE and A level qualifications. ESO and Bachillerato Studies pupils are aged between 11 and 18 years. Moreover, the school offers degree and professional apprenticeships to older students. In IES Fernando de Rojas 75% of the students follow the CLIL programme. They study several school subjects in English and a third part of their school curriculum is in this language.
Helston Community College is a mixed co-educational comprehensive school which serves the town of Helston and its rural surrounding villages and hamlets. It is part of a co-operative trust, The Southerly Point Co-operative Multi-Academy Trust, whose work is underpinned by the co-operative values of self-help, self-responsibility, equity, equality, democracy and solidarity. There are approximately 1400 pupils on roll aged between 11 and 18 years and 91 teaching staff. The College offers a variety of GCSE, A’ level and BTEC qualifications. Cornwall is a popular destination, the area around Helston being deprived with many pupils having little or no opportunity to travel abroad and experience other cultures. This deprivation is not always reflected in the number of pupils on free school meals but is very real nevertheless due to the prevalent low wage economy. We are keen to continue to develop our international links and especially to promote an exchange of pupils between the two colleges. We feel this is particularly important in order to help promote languages, raise pupils’ aspirations and develop co-operation and skills by working together.
A collaboration between the partner school in Salamanca and Cornwall gives our students an opportunity to put in practice their skills by participating in workshops and acting as mini assistants with the younger students of the College. Accompanying staff will have the chance to get first-hand knowledge of each other’s educational systems and observe the use of the Kagan methodology and cooperative learning. The HCC teachers when in Salamanca are able to see lessons taught in English in other subjects than foreign languages thus being able to understand the principles of CLIL as well as appreciate the different pedagogy between the countries. We were keen to impact on all our students even those that did not directly participate in the mobilities as they had the opportunity to collaborate with their British/Spanish peers through e-Twinning, the blog and face-book activity created for this purpose. The students have taken part in more traditional pen-pal exchanges which is always popular with the younger students. The older students taking part have kept on-going relationships with their peers using more modern platforms. Students and visitors together participated in on-site workshops and lessons during the respective visits. We were able to ascertain the linguistic needs of the students by collecting data and by letters drafted by the students to the English teacher of the mastery in English lessons. The data was provided by the different faculties( English/Spanish Language, Foreign Languages, other faculties participating in CLIL teaching). Pupils, teachers, families and other stakeholders were able to be kept informed of the project through the schools’ web-pages, e-Twinning, blogs, private communication using ‘Whatsapp’. Feedback at parent’s meetings and emails from parents and students provide details of their experiences, The involved heads of the faculties had face to face meetings and also emails regarding managing the project, including what activities to take part in on the mobilities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 64272 Eur

Project Coordinator

Helston Community College & Country: UK

Project Partners

• I.E.S. Fernando de Rojas