MUSIC TO FIRE SKILLS FOR BETTER MOTIVATION INTO EDUCATION

"Our project MUSIC TO FIRE SKILLS FOR BETTER MOTIVATION INTO EDUCATION was a school project which connected schools from Germany, Turkey, Lithuania, Poland and Italy to use especially music to motivate students putting more effort into their school work. All of us had realized a lack of motivation for school at a high percentage of students and we had got in contact beforehand to agree on a topic and general outline. Our objectives were to collect best practice activities which can be especially included in the main fields of the project which were apart from music also foreign languages and technology. Concerning music it was especially the German school who was able to help a lot as it has a strong and well-equipped music department. The Polish and Lithuanian school provided the other schools with its high experience of having held Comenius and Erasmus+ projects. The Turkish school has a lot of skills in various fields such as IT (films and presentations), languages (sketches) and music (talented singers and instrumentalists). Finally, the Italian group shows a lot of energy and willingness to learn as it is a school which starts opening up for secondary students. They also agreed on working hard for the digital magazine and are well connected for implementing the project into media. Especially in the second year of the project the Italian school opened up and invested a lot into the project. We started with a coordinating meeting in Germany (November 2016) to get to know each other and to set dates and certain tasks for the upcoming meetings. We teachers thought that it would be great to include a European Market which presents typical national specialities to the welcoming event at school on thefirst day. Furthermore everyone presented the country, city and school to get a deeper insight into the other schools. As the following meeting in Poland (February 2017) dealt with technology every school named a task it would like to prepare for the meeting (e.g. Germany presented its ""Sound and Light"" club, Italy ""How to prepare a blog"" or Lithuania ""Working with PowerPoint). The logo contest was won by the Italian school as the logo shows a hand holding the five different countries together. A ceiling is formed with the notes to the ""Ode to Joy!“. Besides the teachers confirmed their plans for the meeting in Italy which was about ""Language"". Poland, for example, showed a sketch by Monty Python, Germany how to prepare a Poetry Slam or Turkey a traditional fairy tale. Also a song contest was held which a Turkish student won. The next meeting focused on singing and took place in Lithuania (September 2017). Each school prepared a traditional song and its own verse of the ""Ode to Joy"". These songs were presented at various opportunities and also recorded to have data. Furthermore the group visited a music school and a conservatory to deepen its insight into singing. The final meeting with students was planned to take place in Istanbul but because of different reasons (e.g. good instrumental equipment, sound studio etc.) the group agreed on holding the meeting in Germany (March 2018). There the group had an instrumental workshop, held a flash mob and gave a final concert. The meeting in Istanbul for teachers only was to finalize the digitalmagazine, the website, the e-twinning platform and work on the report. Here we also wanted to emphasize the results and impact attained which are:1. A European friendship in all fields (teachers, students and parents) - an example for this are the already fixed plans of teachers and also of students ofvisiting each other in the summer and autumn holidays after the last project meeting.2. Our European Song - we recorded our European Song to the ""Ode to Joy"" with our own verses.3. Our European concert - one of our highlights as we were able to show the results of our hard work as a group.4. Our digital magazine and website - we created the blog and website to present our project to everyone online. Here you can see videos, photos, feedbacksheets to each meeting and more to get an idea about our work.5. Feedback by students and parents - the feedback sheets as well as talking to the students and their parents gave us the idea that we reached our goals verywell. They are still full of excitement about their experiences and don't stop talking about it.6. New equipment - here we can especially talk about the German group which was also able to provide the school with a new ""Erasmus"" notebook, an""Erasmus"" GoPro and a new sound system for events such as concerts or theatre plays thanks to the project."