"<< Objectives >>The overall goal of the project is to create a school environment suitable for promoting inclusive education through art for children at risk of exclusion, with SEN and/or disabilities.Specific objectives include establishing a framework of tools for student inclusion, providing educators and teachers with knowledge, skills and competencies to facilitate inclusive education, testing the ""Thinking hands"" methodology in 3 different countries.<< Implementation >>The planned activities are:A1. Kick-off meetingA2. Elaboration of the ""Thinking hands"" bookletA3. Training of trainersA4. Pilot action (experimentation of the methodology)A5. Project eventsA6. Project management and communication<< Results >>The main results that are intended to be achieved through the project are:1) ""Thinking Hands"" booklet: dedicated to educators and teachers and will contain the principles, objectives, learning outcomes and possible activities to be implemented in the classroom to promote student inclusion through art.2) Training for teachers and educatorsReport of the pilot action containing the results of the experimentation of the methodology3) 3 events to promote the project in the 3 partner countries"

"Sociologists, educologists, psychologists, and other scientists of the world in recent years have focused on analyzing people of different generations - how do they behave, what values they have, how do they communicate, how do they learn. The research of these scientists also influences the education system. Parental surveys, child observation shows, that old learning methods are not attractive, do not encourage children's learning motivation, good achievements. Educating children of different generations poses new challenges for teachers and kindergartens. They have to change quickly and adapt to changing children's needs and parents' expectations. But often these necessary changes go too slowly and damage the quality of education. Teachers face difficulties in finding new effective learning methods. Kindergarten communities are experiencing difficulties in updating their curriculum. Children do not achieve optimal progress. So, it is necessary to organize international cooperation between kindergartens for solving the problems of searching and implementing active, modern methods. This will help to improve the quality of pre-school education, improve the professional skills of teachers, and promote the dissemination of good practice.THE AIM OF THE PROJECT: To discover and apply active learning methods into the education process of pre-school children for the higher quality of early education.OBJECTIVES:1.To discover, practically test and share active learning methods for developing pre-school children's competences (socio-emotional, cognitive, health, language and communication, artistic).2.To develop a methodology, that will gather experience and effective active learning methods from all participants of the project.3.To encourage collaboration and development of teachers at institutional, national and international levels.4.To increase the attractiveness, quality and relevance of the educational process to children's needs and parents' expectations.TARGET GROUPS:1. Pre-school age (2-7 year) children attending kindergarten (about 1000).2. Teachers and children support specialists of institutions (about 100).3. Leaders of kindergartens (about 20).For several kindergarten in different regions is enought difficult to change quickly and maintain a high quality of learning. It is also difficult individually find new, active teaching methods for all the competences of pre-school children. It requires a lot of human and time resources. Therefore, international kindergarten cooperation would help faster and more effectively find active learning methods, test them in practice and develop a methodology with long-term practical benefits. The project will ensure the mobility of teachers for educational purposes, it will promote the quality of work and lifelong learning. The project ""Active Start in Kindergarten"" will help to find the most effective and best solutions for kindergartens looking for a new, active learning methods for pre-school children.The kindergartens participating in the project hope to improve the quality of education and to supplement the curriculum with new active methods. This will improve children's (about 1000) performance, will increase their learning motivation, learning will become attractive and quality. Main project activities (9) should help discover and practice active learning methods for all competences (socio-emotional, cognitive, health, language and communication, artistic). It is likely, that around 250-300 active learning methods will be shared during the project between partners. The project ""Active Start in Kindergarten"" will promote the creativity, development and cooperation skills of teachers (about 100), leaders (about 20) at institutional, national and international levels. During the project there will be organized 7 international partner meetings. Experiences of the project will allow develop a methodology (1) with long-term practical benefits. Dissemination of project results will ensure the added value of the project - the results will be available to other kindergartens."

Our public secondary school in La Unión is near a marginal zone. A high percentage of our students are in risk of social exclusion. The economical crisis has hit harder in all the countries in the project, so there is a high percentage of youth unemployment. All the schools in the project have many students with fewer opportunities. Our objectives are: to reduce disparities between students from different backgrounds by making education more appealing and interesting; for schools: improve the transition between primary and secondary schools, updating schools, good practices exchange, reducing discrimination, widespread the Erasmus projects among other schools, etc. Objectives for students and teachers:development of social, intercultural and language, skills, European Awareness community;motivation(through the use of ITC), awareness of the importance of social inclusion and equality.This project has been planned to involve students who are 11 to 12 years old.We wanted schools with previous experience in Erasmus and also schools with little or no experience at all.Spain, IES María Cegarra Saucedo, coordinator. Secondary, Upper secondary, Vocational Studies. Bilingual and Digital learning program.Wide experience in E-twinning, Comenius, Erasmus + KA 2(as coordinators), Erasmus + KA 1, exchanges. Spain, CEIP Herrerías: primary school. They have never worked in Erasmus or E-twinning.Bilingual programme. 508 students. 19% are migrants and 19% are Special Educational Needs. 35 teachers.Italy: I.C. Perugia 3 has 1,225 pupils and 104 teachers. Kindergarten, primary school and secondary school. Different social backgrounds, including immigrant families, gypsy students,special need students (including blind and deaf students). They have some experience in Erasmus and E-twining.Greece: 1st Gymnasio Volou (Volos). 382 students, 15% are immigrants, 12% are Special Education Needs and a 10% more are in risk of social exclusion. 50 teachers. Some experience with E-twinning, Erasmus and exchanges.Portugal. Group of Schools of Gavião: Kindergarten, 1st 2nd and 3rd cycles, of CEF (Education and training course).276 students(30 are of Special Education Needs) and 45 teachers. They have participated in some e-Twinning projects, and two Erasmus + KA 1. The activities are a means to achieve the objectives of the project. There will be a meeting in each of the participating schools. For each meeting the activities will deal with a different type of inclusion or discrimination and ways to promote or avoid them. -Spain, IES Maria Cegarra Salcedo: Role models. People who have achieved their objectives in life in spite of the difficulties that they may have found. -Greece: Integration of refugees-migrants. Respect towards other people´s cultures.-Spain, CEIP Herrerias: Inclusion of people with special needs.Italy: Gender equality: Great women who made a difference-Portugal: Preventing discrimination, violence and cyberbullying.Every school will develop activities before and after the mobilities apart from the ones planned during the meetings.Before meetings there will also be activities on research of the topic, designing presentations, editing videos, creating material to be used in the meetings, exhibitions, e-guide, dissemination, etc.The students will work with e-groups and etwinning.During the meetings, there will be presentations on the subtopic in each country,workshops,formative activities and cultural visits.Our methodology promotes cooperation and active inclusion of students who are consistently absent from school, students with cultural difference, disadvantaged for socio-economic reasons: we will give them the opportunity to work in an international team ant to feel part of a motivating project.Students will work in mixed nationality groups formed with students with fewer opportunities and less advantaged ones, primary and secondary students.Some results will be tangible, direct products: adapted games for blind people, website, an international e-guide for inclusion,reports,articles,interviews,videos,leaflets.Some others will be intangible: Europass as recognition and certification, exchange of ideas and good practice, knowledge, dialogue about inclusion, increase of motivation, improvement of communication, social skills, team work, foreign language skills and digital and cultural competences.Regarding the potential longer term benefits: the students will develop digital competences, the use of English as a foreign language and team work, problem solving skills, research skills, social, civic and intercultural skills,which will prepare them to be successful candidates in the European labour market. Moreover, participation in this project may lead the students to learn other European languages. This project will help also to involve parents and local associations, strengthening collaboration.Another long term effect will be to improve the transition between different stages of education.

"SOS Sciences is the logical follow up of two previous Comenius Regio projects between Regio Umbria (IT) and the City of Dinant (BE).Among the partnership, the regional or local public authorities, 7 schools and many pertinent associations worked together to enhance teenagers motivation to take the way of a scientific training.The project aimed to improve sciences basic skills of pupils aged 10 to 14 (pedagogical continuum) by offering them the chance to share with their local and transnational partners a rather unusual range of experiences. Five themes were studied and developed on modern support, eBooks or similar material, focussing also on langage learning and digital competences improvement among pupils and teachers:1. ""LesSciencesCiel"" links Sciences and Astronomy2. ""Eau-de-Vie"" addresses the protection of the environment issue and more specifically on water3. ""NRJ verde"" brings the pupils from Sustainable Development to Climat4. ""ArcheoScienze"" deals with less known aspects linking archeology, chemistry and physics5. ""Santé la Salute!"" answers to various questions that teenagers ask to themselves.These pedagogical tools are accessible to the entire European Education Community (OER).To engage them, to give them the taste and to get them interested, we allowed pupils to touch, manipulate and experiment. Then they were able to issue challenges, propose hypothesis, prepare a workplan, experience and validate the outcomes.Finally, when the ""contents"" were learned, they were able to transfer these experiences to peers, in Belgium and Italy, in the frame of mobilities during which multiplier events were real ""Sciences festivals"", being broadcast live from one country to the other.Videos, theatre plays, workshops, exhibitions and other dynamic activities report of a sciences innovative and creative approach. Some pedagogical cards produced by the teachers encourage expanded dissemination of the outcomes.The impact of the project could be measured by stating that:- more pupils choose to complete their high education in studying sciences and committing a scientifical career is then a natural path to follow- early school leaving is going down among disadvantaged pupils, on social, cultural and intellectual ability issues- young teachers find in this innovative pedagogical approach good reasons to settle long-term in teaching career- transversal courses, adoption of the pedagogical continuum and development of digital skills encourage the school failures decrease and quality teaching improvement"

This project starts after detecting some necessities and weaknesses we need to cover in our school, being the most important ones the necessity of improving students’ and teachers’ competence in English, the necessity of reinforcing the students’ feelings as full European citizens and the necessity of increasing in them the awareness of the value of our common cultural heritage, particularly among those students with Special Educational Needs or in danger of exclusion. This is why we decided the title “Let’s connect Europe to each other”Different commissions were in charge of the multiple aspects of the project. The “Commission to look for partners” contacted through eTwinning and School Education Gateway with several schools interested in collaborating, deciding our final partners because of the added value everyone represents. We are the coordinators but all of us have worked cooperatively and under the basis of mutual enrichment. We agreed we will develop a bi-annual project and we decided the activities to carry out according to a fixed chronogram and the final objectives:• Using English as the working language.• Using of Technologies for Learning and Knowledge, especially the newest ones.• Visiting cultural heritage places in every country.• Promoting tourism in every region.• Enhancing the feeling of belonging to a same identity which joins us as European citizens.• Improving action protocols when working with students with Special Educational Needs or in danger of exclusion.The phases of the project are related to the activities to be carried out.INITIAL PHASE: selection of students. The “commission of selection of students” in every country organizes a “Club of Erasmus+ students” with extra-curricular activities to select the students according to their level of implication instead of being selected on their academic marks, offering all of them the same opportunities. They will exchange emails with personal experiences, motivations and points of view about topics of general interest in order to promote their internationalization. They will elaborate, under the teachers’ supervision, an online tourism guide of their cities with photo galleries and descriptions of monuments, interesting buildings and places, traditions, popular festivals, local cuisine…All final products will be uploaded to eTwinning and to a Blog especially built for the project. These products together with the students’ achievements and experiences will also be essential for the spread and impact of the project at a regional level during the dissemination phase through presentations and forums especially set up for the purpose.DEVELOPMENT PHASE: three international visits will take place, one to every country. All visitors will meet together in the receiving country for a linguistic and cultural immersion week. An Integrated multidisciplinary Didactic Unit has been elaborated by every partner to connect the visit to the official curriculum of the main subjects. Every Didactic Unit comprehends the necessary elements as to be implemented in real lessons among the students who do not travel. We have used the freeware Genial.ly to share the Didactic Units online. Some activities include the newest digital applications, for example, while visiting The Alhambra in Granada, students, through HP Reveal, will use Augmented Reality to find out the different mathematical and geometric patterns with their mobile phones. We will also use Geogebra, gymkhanas, storytelling, forms, etc. As a final product Students will have to make an ePortfolio which will be shared with the international educative community on all types of webs apart from the Blog of the project. One Didactic Unit has been attached as an example to this application and can be checked on Genial.ly through the following link https://view.genial.ly/5a998615c35a7e5836688799/udi-erasmus FINAL PHASE: in order to impact and disseminate the project at a local and regional levels, we have created a detailed chronogram which includes when and how different events to share good practice with other schools in every participant partner’s area will be carried out. These events will have an additional important impact through the press, radio, brochures and the implication of local authorities. The set of final products, achievements and experiences will be shared on all online platforms. In addition, we want to keep the Erasmus+ Club alive for at least 5 years with annual meetings where we will be able to analyse how the participation in this project benefitted our students’ lives. They will explain to the future generations how this project helped them to make decisions about their future both at an academic and personal or professional levels. Although ambitious, we would like the Erasmus+ Club to be a reality even in the long term, adding new students interested in internationalization processes or coming from other future Erasmus+ projects developed by every participant school.