Building a Better World

Our project 'Building a Better World' will focus on making enormous differences in the way we all view and live our lives. Our young people are concerned about the future. We want to empower them to be able to make positive change. Our 6 schools are in different countries and different situations: small, large, rural, and urban. All include a mixture of pupils from different social, ethnic and migrant communities, and pupils with special educational needs. In total about 2050 primary aged children and 150 members of staff in our school will be involved in the project, with older children and some members of staff having the opportunity to travel on exchange visits to each others schools. The project will also include collaboration with our wider whole school communities, local educational networks, organisations and small businesses. We will focus on enhancing the emotional, mental and physical health and well being of our school communities through our creative cross-curricular activities. There will be a focus on outdoor environmental learning and play, providing rich opportunities that develop independence resilience and collaborative enquiry led learning. Our school communities will develop critical thinking, and problem solving skills in a real life context. These methods will enable in depth learning and understanding. This will impact highly on attainment and progress across subjects as well as improving self-esteem and self-confidence and ability to work collaboratively with others. By prioritising these issues we will see improved outcomes in Mathematics, Literacy, Science, Technology MFL and PSHE. We are committed to promoting positive engagement with local and global communities with a focus on inclusiveness, respect and equality of opportunity. We want to empower our young people to be able to make positive change now and in the future as lifelong learners and citizens of Europe and the wider world. Our young people are growing up in turbulent and challenging times, in a world with many complex conflicts and environmental issues. We will collaborate in a socially inclusive project to investigate and study such issues, disseminating results as widely as possible. Through this project we can all make changes, integrating new practices that impact positively on schools and local communities and make our world a better place for future generations. The project will enrich cultural capital for all participants. Pupils and staff travel to partner schools and collaborate intensively on shared projects whilst experiencing first-hand life, language, culture and attitudes in places other than their own. Our project gives participants a very real context for the learning of languages. Many of our participants would otherwise not have the opportunity to travel and to fully understand the diversity of the multi-cultural, multi-faceted modern World in which we all exist. Funding provides equality of opportunity across all partners regardless of previous economic background.It also impacts highly on staff CPD strengthening the profile of the teaching profession.Our objectives are to achieve lifelong changes in attitudes. Throughout the project, partners, pupils and staff will share ideas and research, working collaboratively online and documenting their work using our project Twinspace. All partners have achieved the etwinning Label and Shoscombe has additionally the etwinning Quality Label . We will also investigate and collaborate using the latest ICT, using of apps such as padlet.com, zoom meetings, nearpod, answergarden, lino, Kahoot.it / kahoot.com, tricider, duolingo, Class Dojo and Smoovie. We will use online resources such as British Council's Zero Waste. Our work will be showcased throughout the duration of the project in our local press, through Erasmus+ publicity and Project Results Platform publicity, in final i-books, a project Twinpsace with public pages , school websites, Class Dojo and digital newsletters. We will have a strong focus on the UN convention of human rights, e-safety, and sustainability. We want the project to produce long term concrete changes in terms of all school communities, fostering the development of active citizenship and an entrepreneurial spirit. This will build on our previous projects encouraging communities to reuse and recycle as much as possible, including composting food waste and re using it in growing projects and creating items to sell, creating links with charitable organisations. We will continue to develop green teams and eco school teams, following the lead of the Irish partner school to become Green Flag schools and together join an International Eco-Schools Twinning programme.