Tasting the European Art and Science

“Tasting the European Art and Science” is a collaborative project of five primary schools from Poland, Portugal, Greece, Italy and Romania who met on the eTwinning platform. The schools notice a need for greater participation of the students in culture, their low motivation for learning languages, and difficulties of immigrants’ children with social inclusion. The three main objectives led to the chosen priorities. The main objective of the project is increasing students’ knowledge on the chosen areas of cultural heritage of their own and partners’ countries and allow them to meet art in person, to experiment and raise their creativity. They will experience a cradle of theatre in Greece, classical music in a conservatory in Portugal, science in Romania, in Italy they will learned about dance, and in Poland - painting. Each mobility will be focused on one area of culture. It will start with integrative activities: collaborative painting in Poland, a music performance in Portugal, a drama task in Greece, a modern dance class in Italy, and a Science task in Romania. They will take part in Science lessons about a specific issue related to the theme of a meeting: optics in Poland, acoustics in Portugal, physics of light in Greece, physics of dance movement in Italy and the future of physics in Romania. Taking part in joint history lessons, participants of the mobilities will learn about the small motherlands of the leading schools through experiencing history of painting, music, theatre, dance and science, including folk art, dance and costumes, and other distinctive national features. Participants will present information using PowerPoint presentations, and performances prepared earlier. After each mobility, they will create a dictionary in English and all five national languages with the vocabulary used in the given field .Students will participate in discussions connected with the theme of the meeting: in Poland “Graffiti – an art or vandalism?”, in Portugal “Listening to loud music”, in Greece “Is every play worth staging?”, in Italy they will talk about dance, and in Romania about Science. Students will experience art and science through workshops on new visual arts techniques, playing instruments, stage performance, modern dances, physical experiments. It will be a new and unique opportunity for the students. There are schools in our partnerships having problems with students from immigrant families for whom it will be a chance for integration. For all the participants it will be a lesson of tolerance preventing an attitude of prejudice and excluding. They will learn how to change differences into complementary features and create paths towards transnational citizenship. All students learn English as a second language so the common language of the project is English. Participation in the project will boost their motivation for learning foreign languages. We will use Europass Mobility after each transnational meeting to confirm the period of study. Overcoming the fear of speaking a foreign language will be noticeable both in students and teachers. Students will practice the skill of team work, taking advantage of team’s diversity, sharing skills and experiences. A significant part of activities requires co-operation of students from different countries working as a team to produce a result. It will be executed during international meetings, and also via eTwinning platform before and after meetings, where the students got to know each other working in an ongoing project. The ICT competences will increase significantly in all participants.The project will impact the teacher staff of every partner school. It will strengthen their professional competences and motivation for ongoing learning, especially foreign languages and culture. They will transfer new methods, materials created during the project to their schools, they will be capable of implementing innovations, writing new programmes on art and science education which they and other teachers could use for teaching art and science, and working with talented students. They will add to the unique value of their respective partner schools.Students will get to know the diversity of Europe, strengthen their national and European identity, develop their key competences and skills, be more sensitive to art and take chance to express themselves with the use of various means. Understanding of own culture is the basis for respect and openness towards others. The reason for implementing the project trans-nationally is the fact that the project objectives would not be achieved with only local activities. Sharing experiences would not be complete without direct contact and the motivation it causes. The project will influence the awareness of European citizenship of local communities of the participants, teachers, students and their families. It will impact social cohesion through collaboration on the common European heritage.