Creative talents crossing borders

"The partnership consists of 3 unexperienced (PL, ES, GER) and 3 experienced (I/P/GR) partners and was formed due to personal contact and the usuage of eTwinning. During a self-financed prep visit on Crete we could even more realize that we share a wide common need for the project: All schools struggle with the achievements of the students, a lack of motivation concerning learning and hardly any identification with school. A large number of our students has an underpriviliged family background. They have never been abroad. Therefore the mobilities of students are a major target. A lot of students have only little knowledge about the EU. By participating in the project and the mobilities they have the oppurtunity of developping a new understanding about Europe. Each school has realized the importance of integrating the topic Europe at each school programme. All the participating persons will acquire and develop basic skills. We would like the students to foster and develop their self-esteem, teamwork, ICT, creativity, tolerance and respect, English as a foreign language, motivation for learning, identification and to break down prejudices against other cultures. All participants will work on a portfolio during the 2 years in order to evaluate if the objectives concerning soft skills have been reached.We strongly believe that every student has got talents and strengths which we want to discover and foster. Therefore we have chosen the title ""Creative talents crossing borders"". We will have a total of 6 meetings. The first meeting in Poland will be used as a planning and training (ETwinning) one. Since not all partners are familiar with eTwinning it is useful to have a training session as to how we can integrate eTwinning in our project (communication, uploading of products etc.). The project is mainly focused on students but it will also contribute to the improvement of the teachers' profession and it will have a positive sustainable impact on the development of each school. Each mobiliy has got a certain topic: Spain (sports), Portugal (cooking), Greece (music), Italy (politics, art) and Germany (drama). The distribution of the various topics/workshops relies on the expertise of each school and teachers. Our intention is that if students work for example successfully on the topic sports, the students motivation for general learning will improve. The students should get positive feelings towards school and thus increase their identification with school. We strongly favour interdisciplinary project work with students of different ages (14-16). The sudents will work in mixed groups during the workshop in order to support the oppurtunity of exchanging ideas and experiences. We want to learn from each other in the European context. Moreover mixed groups foster competences like English as a foreign language, teamwork and the personal development of students and teachers. We expect continous work of each Erasmus+ team in-between the mobilities. The dissemination of the results and products is intended by creating a project homepage which is linked to each school homepage. Members of each Erasmus+ team will frequently inform various committes of teachers, parents and students. An Erasmus+ corner will be introduced in the lobbies of each school, project days will be conducted, guests will be informed during events like open-door day or parents' day. The project is supposed to be carried out in the wider school community by having reports in the local press. We also intend to invite representatives of neighbouring schools in order to inspire them for an Erasmus+ project. We want the project to be sustainable and use the outcomes and results in the future. Firstly, we are hoping of making friendships between people and schools so that there will be exchanges even after the project. The results and products such as a dvd of traditional sports, a booklet of traditional recipes, the song of Europe, varoius interviews, portfolios, videos, survival dictionary, the video of the Grease performance, the final booklet and new methodical and didactical ideas can be used in different subjects in the future. Hopefully new ideas, results and outcomes can be integrated into the schools curriculums."