comeniusfive

Idea of the project

The influence of international studies of educational achievement such as PISA, TIMMS and the yearly OECD-report has made the schools aware of differences between the pupils’ achievements both inside and between the countries in Europe. These studies clarify among other things the link between the used teaching methods and the pupils’ learning results. Methodological competence is an important basis for successful learning. It is the schools’ responsibility to develop the pupils’ methodological skills.

The goal of the project is to develop and exchange models of teaching that concentrate on promoting the acquisition of methodological skills.

Therefore the partners of the project develop together and exchange teaching methods to increase the pupils’ learning strategies. For successful learning it is important to have the competence to choose between various learning methods and use them.

The project focuses primarily on educational, methodical and school organizational issues that must be discussed by teachers and school leaders, processed and implemented in the partner schools with students in practice.

Participating primary schools learn from the exchange of best-practice examples from each other and develop specialized and interdisciplinary teaching models with the objective of acquiring and promoting method competence for students mainly aged 6 to 12 years.

The project will therefore give the pupils, teachers and headmasters valuable intercultural knowledge. These issues will be addressed through the mobilities and the local activities.
Between the project meetings local activities to similar topics will take place in each partner region. The link between the thematic project meetings and the local activities will support and guarantee the systematical progress of the project.

We will create a website (wordpress) that will be used to produce newsletters and twitter. This is the way to document the process.
We will produce a conclusion book to implement new teaching models.
We will offer information about our activities to the local newspapers in order for them to publish articles.
We will write summaries to reflect what we have done at each mobility.
The project will be evaluated (survey) through the qualitative and quantitative indicators.
Cooperations with universities are planned.

The first meeting with all the participants in our Multilateral Comenius project 2013-2015 “development of teaching models to support methodological skills took place in Baiersdorf, Germany from the 3^rd to the 6^th of February 2013. Four of the five involved countries met. We had two long days of meetings to prepare the final application to be sent to our local offices for Educational and Culture Lifelong learning program Comenius. We learned a lot about our different – and equal – schools, and discussed both methods of teaching as well as ways of organizing the schools.

We spent time visiting classrooms at Grundschule Baiersdorf. We started with a warm Welcome ceremony at the Gymnastic hall, were the pupils had prepared songs for us, among other things. They sure knew how to talk English! We also visited classrooms to experience “best practice examples”. The teacher had prepared activities in German/Orthography with methods called carousel, STEX, placemat and gallery.

Presentation of the 5 schools

During our stay, we also had a thorough presentation of the different schools that are participating in this project. We had to write a description in our application – in addition to a presentation for each other.

The German school

Grundschule Baiersdorf is a primary school with about 260 pupils in the age from 6 to 10. The school has 40 employees where 25 are teachers. The teachers are organized in team. Grundschule Baiersdorf is the only primary school in the rural area of the small city of Baiersdorf. It is situated next to the big cities of Erlangen (100.000 inh.) and Nürnberg (500.000 inh.). The school has some experience in national and international projects and wants to give the pupils and teachers opportunities to broaden their views in a greater European context.

A lot of the parents just live at Baiersdorf but work elsewhere. You can find a diverse social structure in the city: some workers, many university graduates, traditional families as well as single parents. The percentage of foreign families is below 10%. About 60% of the pupils attend “Gymnasium” after 4th grade (average in Bavaria: below 40%).

Grundschule Baiersdorf will be the coordinator of the project and has the overall responsibility for the project. This includes coordinating the project meetings, activities and communication in the project.

The Austrian school

Primary school Stainz is located in a suburban area in the south-west of Styria. There are a lot of small schools in our area. The capital of Styria (Graz, 260 000 inhabitants) is 30 km away. We benefit from our regional structures. We have good connections to parents and to the local institutions. We closely work together with the school authority; therefore this project is of great importance for us.

In our school there are 145 pupils at the age from 6 to 10. 12 teachers are working in our school. A part of our pupils use the childcare in the afternoon, which takes place in the schoolhouse. At the time there are no pupils with special needs and with social problems in the school.

Together with our project partners we want to reach the defined aimes and endorse them in every step. By this project we want to get to know the pedagological situations of our partners, we want to share our experiences and we want to improve our own methodological skills.

The Danish school

Eggeslevmagle School is a public school situated in West Zealand, Denmark. We are a Danish school with about 750 students and in this year we are in our second Comenius project and have some experience with international project in EU. The students are aged from 6 to 16 years.

Eggeslevmagle/Skaelskoer is a fairly disadvantaged area and a socially deprived area. The town Skaelskoer has about 6.000 habitants. The pupils come from the town and the outskirts as well as the countryside areas. We receive pupils from primary schools from 7th form as our community has several primary schools scattered in our countryside and our neighboring islands. We feel the school has a huge responsibility to develop the young people into tolerant and open-minded persons. We do have a lot of students who have never been abroad and therefore are very much attached to their local areas.

The school has developed an international class which has become quite popular in the region – there are only 4 public schools in Denmark with international classes – and having a future partnership with other European countries will give a lot of opportunities to develop our students as well as our school. We do believe that a Comenius project offers ideal opportunities and teach our youngsters to become European Citizen and we think that we can offer a lot to this future project.

The Spanish school

Colegio Rural Agrupado in Murcia is a primary school divided into three branches. They are located in three small villages along the coast of southeastern Spain (In the Murcia Region). We are located in an agricultural and disadvantaged area with low socioeconomic status.

We have about 180 students and 23 teachers. 48.5% of students in our school are immigrants from Latin America, North Africa and Eastern Europe, and generally come from poor families; hence why we have different projects for their integration. We have some students with learning difficulties. Therefore, we adapt our methodology and didactic strategies to cater for all levels and needs. We are involved in a Spanish-English bilingual program, using CLIL methodology (Content and Language Integrated Learning) to teach in English for 30% of our curriculum. On the other hand, we teach French to students aged 10 – 12.

At the headquarters of the school (Jimenado) there are 8 classes, 7 of them have same aged students within the class, and there is a mixed-age class with students of 4th and 5th grades. In the branches of “Meroños” and “Los Olmos” there are mixed-age classes, i.e. groups including students of different ages and academic levels in the same classroom. We are hard-working people who apply new information and communication technologies, are interested in learning, in seeing our school progress, and in forming collaborative projects and activities where pupils can be involved in order to apply what they learnt.

We believe that this multilateral project would help our students to broaden their horizons, know about European schools, to express themselves in English and to improve their oral

skills by talking to our partners about our country, and our teachers will have the opportunity to exchange innovative methodological skills to improve academic results of the children.

The Norwegian school

Wilds Minne Primary School is situated in the southern part of Norway. It has approx. 330 pupils in the age 6-12. The school has about 40 employees, where 25 are teachers. The teachers work 2 or 3 together in teams, but they are also organized in teams with teachers from step 1.-4th and teams with teachers from step 5.- 7th. The school has over the last three years focused specifically on pupils learning and social skills. We ensure education for all through “MILL”, that is Many Intelligences, Learning styles and Learning strategies – with main focus on Learning strategies. We have also worked with ICT (using smart boards in all classrooms) and focused on the management of groups in learning – classroom management. Our school has pupils of various social backgrounds. We hope to broaden our perspective when it comes to teaching Learning strategies when working with teachers methodological skills. These are connected themes, only different perspective (pupil-teacher perspective, and teacher-pupil perspective).

Additional program during our visit

We also had time for informal meetings with the teachers, both at school and at dinner at the headmasters home, and we had an excursion to Fränkische Schweiz.