This project was designed to produce changes in our methodology to meet the demands in our national curriculum, such as “learning by doing”, problem solving or cross-curricular projects to develop students’ and teachers competences. The teachers working in this Erasmus+ KA-219 project were researching and then putting into practice the required competences to successfully approach that kind of process, we had to integrate new tools and new methods in our classes.
The project was based on the idea of improving motivation among students through “learning by doing”; to achieve this aim, rich and different methodology like problem solving, Project Based Learning or collaborative work guided us as essential tool. The role of the teacher played an important part and all through it, our teaching strategies, formation and competences were highly ameliorated. The exchange of work, good practices and experiences among all school partners’ contributed to improve quality in teaching-learning process. We gathered these methods using common Padlet wall, and then we shared those using the Book Creator.
The importance of the students was reinforced with the project; they were actively taken part into planning, discussion and evaluation to develop activities before, during and after meetings. Students’ basic skills were forced to be implemented to achieve objectives, that’s because learning by doing, problem solving, international collaborative work, critical thinking, social relationships, use of ICT or communicative competence were rooted before and during the meetings and also into the planning of the different cross-curricular projects we designed. Our students showed a better attitude towards learning during and after this process, they felt motivated and their self-esteem improved. The development of language and communicative skills were enriched.

We covered many activities, some stated from beginning others created in process; the fulfillment of them marked steps to follow, assessment moments and evaluation process. The results can be valued by the amount and quality of the produced outcomes. During these two years one of our main objective was also to develop practical tools for evaluate students work during projects. All the partner schools had a local project where were several school subjects involved. Teachers and students documented all the ways of evaluation that they used and we put together all the best parts of evaluation and made the common evaluation tools. We used different levels of evaluation for both students and teachers (individual, peer and group assessment). We piloted these tools having a common project which title was “Sustainability” and finalized those during our last meeting. We put those tools in the Book Creator, so it will be easier to share.
During the Erasmus+-project we used many ways to analyse evaluate our work and products; – filling forms, questionnaires, rubrics, posters with ideas, etc. All our meetings had moments to assess, clarify or tune in our common work, to discuss on presentation, quality and dissemination of outcomes.
All countries agreed on specific ways to disseminate activities and results by including other associations at some stages (teacher training teams, local authorities, educational authorities, etc.) breaking the boundaries of the school communities. Our project work called the attention of different educational authorities, two coordinators were required to present their experiences, a Czech student won the first prize in a national competition on Erasmus+ experiences, Lithuanian coordinator wrote a report for its NA website, Finnish NA suggested it to take part in Canal Art documentary, etc. This helped us to disseminate the work as so did many other activities created in our schools with the same objective.

Thanks to this Erasmus+ project our schools were opened and enhanced with different teaching practices and approaches. The job shadowing experiences for teachers facilitated all us to discover in depth how our partners organize, plan or work within their classes and education. It helped us all to comment, learn more and compare our systems, it was a chance to reflect on our work and spread it to other colleagues.Teachers improved and developed teaching with common and innovative tools, educational materials and made international team work. They shared and learnt many modern ways to use of different ICT platforms.

Our schools’ image improved thanks to this Erasmus+, as the added value of the European dimension is now deeper rooted in them. We are planning for the future; students’ exchanges, a Lithuanian teacher association to visit and develop a lecturer in Finland, individual students’ meetings, etc. This reflects the impact of this project and the importance of increasing cultural awareness and understanding among our schools.

More information and all the outcomes are available in our web site: https://urly.fi/HCL