Institut Celestí Bellera
Our school is in Granollers, a city of about 70000 inhabitants, located at 30 km from Barcelona. There are approximately 600 students aged 12-18 and about 60 teachers. The students are heterogeneous because we are in a marginal neighborhood of the city and some students come from a difficult environment with few resources, many of them migrants. However, thanks to our commitment to artistic and international projects, we receive many students from the most prosperous neighborhoods of the city with a more favorable sociocultural environment. The school has an artistic and drama A level (bachillerato) that enjoys great prestige in the city and in the region. In recent years, the two most important objectives of the school have been its internationalization and the improvement of new educational methodology in order to improve the achievement of key competences of our students (introduction of ICT, peer learning ...). For almost 10 years, the school has bet on the project work with the younger students (12-15) and a routine of 4 hours working per week has been established using this methodology. The school has participated in 3 different Erasmus Projects: one about bullying and self-esteem, another about literature and the last one about healthy food. We've also been involved in different eTwinning projects to improve English and French skills among our students. In addition, a characteristic of our school is the good relationship held with the local state holders and the participation in the cultural life of the city. So, we believe that our school could contribute its experience in PBL, international projects and drama studies throughout this project. Moreover, we believe that working on an international project within the Erasmus Action can help us, thanks to the exchange of good practices among the schools participating in the project, to improve our educational methodology (ICT, peer learning...) and of course the English competence of our students, teachers, and families. As mentioned before, one of the aims of our school is its internationalization, so 7 years ago the figure of the International Project Coordinator was created, and she works together with the management team of the school. This person will be responsible for the coordination of this Erasmus + project together with the teachers' team selected to carry out the project; although the project will have an impact on the faculty of the center and everyone will participate in it in one way or another. Therefore, in case the coordinator left the center, there wouldn't be any problem because another person would be in charge of it, and it would surely be among the people who would have already been working on the project. In other words, the good development of the project is ensured in spite of the replacement of personnel. Needless to say, it will not be a project from a small group of teachers, but it will be a school project and therefore everyone can join the leading team.
Escola Secúndaria Manuel Cargaleiro
Escola Secundária Manuel Cargaleiro is a typical Portuguese high school. It is located in Amora, in the south Bank of river Tagus, near the Capital city of the country. It has 1100 students and 100 teachers. There are 15 classes of basic school and 39 of secondary school. Besides, there are also vocational and professional courses of electronics, computers, multimedia, photography and commerce. There are also drama classes as an optional subject and a European Club (which includes projects such as Erasmus+ and eTwinning). Our School is a representative school of youth Parliament in our country. It is a public school therefore, students come from all sorts of social backgrounds, some students have a very comfortable and high standard background and some get social support from school and social national system. There is quite a representative group of students which came from African-Portuguese speaking countries and some Brazilian students as well.
Motivation for the project: Firstly, it is kind of a final step of an etwinning Project we had together with the school from Catalonia. What started as an exchange of materials and activities online on etwinning platform went to an Exchange (Mobility)Project, where students had the chance to participate and meet their partners and develop the activities they had planned for a year. It was a wonderful experience for both students and teachers, and it was such an amazing work, so useful, that we thought it would be very positive to develop the topic with more participants and resources. We think that the topic has more potential to develop and four different points of view from different countries can only bring positive learnings to everybody involved. Being Escola Secundária Manuel Cargaleiro Etwinning Certified School, we think we can create a bridge between all the schools of the project. The platform offers a wide range of possibilities that can and will be explored through all the activities planned for the projects. Everything will be disseminated through this media, some students will be Etwinning ambassadors and will develop activities to share all the information along the project Development, through Etwinning, in order to get more involved and aware of all the topics regarding the four elements and Planet we live in and learn from each other how to use and preserve Land, Water, Air and Fire. Key people will be
Taavetin Koulum
Taavetti is situated in South East Finland, area called South Carelia. Because of our location, we have easy access to the capital area, Helsinki. The landscape of South Carelia contains a great deal of water (4th biggest lake in Europe). Additional geographical elements are forests and fields. We have around 300 students &40 teachers in our school (primary and lower secondary levels combined). Pupils are following the new national curriculum for basic education focused on school culture and the integrative approach (understand the relationship and interdependencies between different learning contents). The aims in school culture are:-Combining knowledge and skills provided by different subjects to form meaningful wholes-Taking care of the safety and wellbeing of each member of the community-Promoting versatile working approaches as well as cooperation and interaction-Becoming aware of different languages and seeing culture as a richness-Promoting participation and democracy-Taking responsibility for the environment and focusing on a sustainable future An overview of the foreign languages in Taavetti comprehensive school:A1 language is EnglishA2-language can be German, French, Russian, SpanishB1-language in grade 6 ( Swedish)B2-language in grades 7–9 (See A2-languages)School's motivation to join this project is to deepen our pupils’ cultural competence, offer possibilities for interaction and widen their scope of expression. By participating in it, we would also enable our pupils to become fully aware of the different languages and cultures as a richness in their lives. Furthermore, considering the wide selection of languages taught at Taavetti School, Erasmus+ would offer real learning-to-learn situations to our pupils. Due to our geographical location in Finland, having partners from South Europe would be a great benefit. On the other hand, Swedish is our 2nd national language, but language contacts to Sweden from Eastern Finland are less common. What a great opportunity to use also Swedish for communication in this project!Multiliteracies, ICT competence, working life competence, entrepreneurship and the teaching of Visual Arts are special targeted aims in our syllabus. Nevertheless, participation, involvement and building a sustainable future is extremely important in the modern school and the topic of the project supports this aim. The specific experience and expertise Taavetti School and its staff can contribute to the Erasmus project is the international experience and work the teachers have done earlier (worked abroad in EU-schools, arranged own school trips to Russia, Italy and the UK. To sum up, we would very much like to use our knowledge for the benefit of both our pupils and our new European colleagues in this multicultural project.
Olaus Petriskolan
Olaus Petriskolan is located in Örebro, a city with 150 000 inhabitants. Our school is a secondary school in the city center. We have 500 students aged 13-16, as well as 60 staff members. No unpaid staff. Our school has students from various economical as well as cultural backgrounds. We have an international class to introduce students from different countries (mainly refugees). These students don’t speak Swedish, so they go there to learn the language and learn how our school system works. Gradually they will start to join our regular classes when their language skills improve. The students in our school can choose a targeted program, which allows them to focus a part of their education where they have a particular interest. As of today, we have targeted programs in health and sports, music, art, drama, English and technology. All students borrow a computer to use both during lessons and at home. The school uses a digital learning platform for work and communication with the students and their parents. In Sweden issues on environment and sustainability are important. We involve parts of these important issues in our school subjects whenever possible, especially in science and social science but also in subjects like home economics and technology. We recycle the waste at school and the school lunch (free for all our students) is made by at least 75% ecologically produced food. A project like this one will help our students learn even more as well as give them more international input on how things are in other countries and what we can do to work together towards a more sustainable world.Our school is always aiming to improve our teaching skills. We have recently begun working with a main theme for 4-5 weeks each term, with the goal of working on it interdisciplinary between the subjects. Using an interdisciplinary way to work in this project let us exchange ideas with other countries to continue to develop. This project would also let us continue to developer skills in PBL (peer/project based learning), since we know that our partner schools are experienced in this method. The ICT skills, as well as English skills of our student and teachers are also important for us and in our previous Erasmus projects we've seen that our students grow and find more motivation in the exchange with young people from other countries in Europe, which strengthen the European community. The key people in this project will be the coordinator at our school. A number of other teachers will be involved and many of them have experience from other projects so in case one person moves on, there will always be another teacher to step in and continue this project since we all work as a team. Our school has had two previous Erasmus+ projects, as well as 2 Comenius projects, which have given us great new experiences, helped us strengthen the European partnership between the partner schools and made us very excited to continue this journey with old and new friends.