Sharing is caring

"Project ""Sharing is caring"" was a three years project. Six countries were involved in the project: Finland, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Portugal. The project had 4 topics. 1. How do I learn? 2. Where do I learn best? 3. How can I help you? and 4. Can you help me to do it? All the schools in this project felt the need to offer wide variety of learning methods, so all the students could find their own personal way to learn. We wanted to make this project together because we thought that we all have methods to share and at the same time we are able to learn from the others. We wanted to have pedagogical discussion and grow as teachers and empower our teacher professions.The students in this project were 7-12 years old. We thought they would benefit this kind of a project most.The main target was to help students to find out what kind of learners they were. How and where did they learn best?Teachers needed to find different methods and ways of teaching. They also needed to take into account children's individual needs. The students had an active role too. They had to start thinking their ways to learn. They did self-assessment in their Learning/Success diaries.In the very beginning we noticed that differentiation in the classes is important in every lesson. We used the modern technology as a tool. We recommended good applications to each others and the children made the tutorials to learn to use them. That was a motivating way to learn.By doing this project the teachers learned from the other teachers as well. New methods, didactic ways and new programs became familiar for them. Spreading new information had a key role in this project. ""You have to share, because you care.""Students and teachers got ""Sharing"" and ""Caring"" tasks. They all wrote ""Learning and success diaries"", made Photostories and wrote blogs. In that way learning became more visible. Students made the learning environments better by tuning them. They had the ""Tuning week(s)"" where they found out how the environments could be better and then worked for it. They took the pictures to show the change to others too. Students/the classes got to know each others via Google hangout/Skype sessions. It was very motivating way to use the English language in the real situation. Not only the students and teachers worked with this project but also the headmasters had their own tasks. The headmasters shared their experiences and good practices with each others. That was a great success!There are both long-term impacts and short-term impacts in the project. However we see that this projects impacts are more long-term impacts than short-term impacts, because the idea of the project was life-long learning. Both students and teachers learned skills that they can use later in their lives. However the methods and activities we chose were easily brought into the classrooms and easily shared with other European schools, so they can be used instantly. In addition many activities were non-verbal so it did not matter if the students were beginners in their English skills. These were project’s short-term impacts which are growing for long-term impacts. Besides the school life and the meetings we introduced ourselves in the country's cultural surroundings. Therefore the cultural aspect was fulfilled in many ways in this project. For example international dinners, international markets, national dances and cultural day trips. Besides the school life we thought that it was important that we introduced ourselves in social occasions. We think that all the schools got new power for their work in their own school by meeting international colleagues. We all share the European citizenship and we need to care of it!"