<< Background >>Around the world and especially in Europe, the last decade, cultural diversity in the classroom from children from national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities is on the rise.In our increasingly diverse and multicultural society, it’s more important than ever for teachers to incorporate inclusive teaching in the classroom - whether the level of education they are teaching. However it proves to be more crucial at the early stages of education, at pre primary and primary education because at this stage students need to have an active part of the school community. For this reason the intercultural competence and readiness of the teachers is a challenge for the institutions responsible for their education.SMILE project aims to provide teachers with a practical framework and examples of best practice to assist them in meeting the challenges of inclusion and diversity in education.The main goal of this project is to provide teachers of pre primary/ primary schools new knowledge, key competences and ready to use educational material to effectively use music as a didactic and pedagogical tool for inclusive education. Further, teachers will develop social skills and digital skills by using the repository and the online training.Although, SMILE project is proposed for the teachers, its real beneficiaries will be students, who’s well-being and performance in schools is expected to be improved.<< Objectives >>SMILE introduces music as an effective tool to inclusive teaching methods.Specifically the objectives of this project are divided at two parts:a. Firstly, the main goal of this project is to provide teachers of pre primary/ primary schools with educational material to effectively use music as a didactic and pedagogical tool for inclusive education. Teachers will:-Acquire a new knowledge delivered from SMILEs Teacher’s Guide-Provided with education material and ready to use tools, from SMILEs Repository, in order to incorporate them in their teaching-Acquire skill and key competencies and develop digital skills by attending SMILEs Training and SMILEs MOOC-Increasing awareness on effective integration of music in inclusive education among EU citizens-Personal development on a European levelb. Secondary, the final beneficiaries of this project will be students from diverse cultural needs. SMILE project will contribute to:-Raise achievement of all learners at the exposure to typical classroom structure and curriculum-Incorporate inclusive tools into learning processes so as to make these practices sustainable in the longer term-Preventing early school leaving-Promote learner voice by the improved social skills of learners-Celebrate and respect diversity and multiculturalism<< Implementation >>-PR1 Need analysis Survey: A transnational research concerning teachers’ attitude towards the use of music as a tool for inclusive education and the classification of the needs for the material developed during the project.-PR2 Digital Repository: A digital repository of songs, activities, methods and examples that can be used as an educational tool for inclusive education. The repository will also list activities, instructions, lesson plans and music techniques that will help teachers integrate music effectively in their daily teaching. -PR3 Teachers’ Guide: A guide that will include research for the relevance and importance of music in intercultural learning and inclusive education. It will include information about inclusive education and methods of integrating music in formal and non formal education. The results of the PR1 Need analysis will be applied and the material from the PR2 Digital repository will be exploited. -ACTIVITY 1 Teacher’s Training: Teachers from all parner’s countries of primary and preprimary schools will participate in the face to face training. The training will focus on ways to use music in their daily teaching as a pedagogical tool for social inclusion. -Piloting Phase: The teachers will give feedback of the challenges they faced in their classes during the implementation of the activities and the consortium will then proceed to improvements. At least 3 activities that will be implemented in their classroom will be recorded, and presented as good practices in the PRs. In addition, for dissemination purposes these teachers will be asked to share their experience during the multiplier events. -PR4 SMILE MOOC: The development of an online training designed as MOOC will be developed as the final Project Result, giving the chance to more teachers, among Europe and beyond, to be trained on how to use music in their multicultural classes, in terms of inclusive education. -Dissemination: The aim of the dissemination activities is to maximize publicity, transparency and proliferation of project results in order to ensure maximum impact and wide-spreading public outputs and outcomes towards our target users and wide public.<< Results >>-PR1 Need analysis Survey-PR2 Digital Repository-PR3 Teachers’ Guide-PR4 SMILE MOOCDuring SMILE’s implementation teachers will come familiar with an innovative pedagogical tool, the power of Music, for achieving inclusive education and acquiring the knowledge and the competencies on how to use music in their classes. SMILE aims to have an impact on the educational field both during and after the project lifetime:-Encouraging and supporting teachers to implement new teaching techniques in their classrooms that will contribute to the increase of students’ engagement in learningprocedures, enhancement of positive clima in the classroom and improvement of academic results.-Using inclusive pedagogy to enhance teaching and learning for all -Providing opportunities to acknowledge the benefits of European cooperation regarding experience and practices on education-Supporting improvements at ministries of education, decision makers on methodologies and pedagogical approaches that can enhance inclusive education -Improving the professional development and support the attempts for providing quality education-Teachers will provide inclusive tools and procedures to students in order to help them to become more active learnersAlthough, SMILE project is proposed for the teachers, its real beneficiaries will be students, who’s well-being and performance in schools is expected to be improved.

The rhythm4inclusion project directly addressed the need to promote social inclusion in European Classrooms by developing, piloting and applying an innovative methodology to combine music and dance to promote social, emotional and learning skills of students focusing on mixed classrooms that include children with special needs. The innovative learning approach promoted by the project is the use of rhythm to enhance the students' skills and create an atmosphere of collaboration and respect in the classroom. The project partners have years of experience in using arts. In specific dance and music integration in traditional school curricula. They have also undertaken significant training programmes to enable teachers to use the arts in their teaching practices. This project moved one step beyond to focus on rhythm (both in music and in dance and their combination) and piloted ways to use rhythm to promote student engagement and collaboration while at the same time promote classroom management for effective inclusion of all children in the learning process including children with Special Education Needs.The involvement of participants in the different activities of the project proceeded gradually starting with the participation of the partners’ personnel and selected artists and teachers directly linked to the partners, from the start of the project, and ending with a wide participation of artists and teachers in pre-primary, primary and secondary education during the online training programme of the project that was implemented in the last semester of the project.The project developed a curriculum and implemented an online training programme offering to the teachers the necessary skills and knowledge to promote inclusive learning by using arts and in specific music and dance, secondly by acquiring psycho-pedagogical skills and knowledge that enabled identify the unique characteristics and needs of their students including students with Special Education Needs and build an atmosphere of collaboration and trust in the classroom in an engaging way. The project also promoted the acquisition of digital skills by teachers and developed a Digital Competences Assessment Framework that is inline with current developments on EU level (DigiCompEdu framework).The number of participants in the online training programme organized by the project reached 230. Most of them were teachers in primary and pre-primary education. Furthermore, teachers in secondary education and artists have actively participated. Several participants were teachers in Special Education. During the implementation of the training programme, apart from following the weekly webinars and accessing the training materials prepared by the project partners, the participants were able to discuss the applicability of the rhythm4inclusion approach and how it can enhance their daily teaching practices. Lesson plans that showcase the rhythm4inclusion methodology in the form of rhythmical exercise were developed by participants at the end of the training programme. A final evaluation questionnaire was also distributed to them. The results collected clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the rhythm4inclusion approach and the need of teachers to use this approach in order to effectively address student inclusion and create a collaborative atmosphere in the classroom while promoting creativity and playful learning that engage students and cultivates important psychosocial skills.An important aspect of the project was its dissemination strategy, starting from the first phase of the project, to reach the greater number of teachers, raise awareness about the project topics and diffuse project results in the wider possible audience. Several dissemination events were organized including a number of multiplier events, one in each participating country and a final project conference organized in Edsbyn, Sweden by the coordinator that was organized as a blended event with local and remote participants, thus extending the possibilities of participation and sharing the project results. Scientific publications and articles in local media and TV reports were another important means of dissemination. Two special sessions were organized with the context of the IMCL 2019 and the IEEE/EDUCON 2021 conferences.

MultiLib supports primary school teachers to tackle the challenge of teaching increasingly in multiethnic and multilingual classes. The project has provided innovative didactic tools that contribute to equip them for the task. The project completed:Output 1 “MultiLib e-Library”Output 2 “MultiLib Children's Activity Set” Output 3 “MultiLib Teacher Guide” Output 4 “6 MultiLib Case Studies” Output 5 “Replicability Templates and Rules of participation” Output 6 “MultiLib Repository (OER) and web 2.0 communication website” MultiLib Teacher Workshop in Sweden (E1), in the United Kingdom (E2), in Belgium (E3), in Czech Republic (E4), in Greece (E5) and in Turkey (E6), in March 2018.MultiLib International Conference was held in Belgium, in April 2018.The project activities have been focusing on the design and delivery of the above, but also on piloting the resources, evaluating the outputs and the project processes, and disseminating both project concepts and outputs.Five partnership meetings have been organized during the project life and they have been pivotal in organizing work, tasks, deadlines and exchange of expertise. They have also been essential to create team spirit and ownership of the project. Geographical distance among the partners has been overcome. The partners managed to work closely, with a creative sharing of information, reflections, choices and common productive results.Each partner delivered contemporary and traditional children’s stories of their own country’s culture and from the culture of the country of migrant groups they worked with during the project. They delivered attractive illustrations created by appointed artists and designed effective and engaging childrens’ book-based activities to exploit the books and serve as a springboard for more creativity by teachers across Europe. The partners, led by the technical partner, the Technical University of Crete, Greece, have made the resources available as OERs on Coursevo platform and have activated the MultiLib community of practice. Piloting in six school; in Sweden, UK, Czech Republic, Turkey, Belgium and Greece, were implemented.About the project activities that were supported by the grant for Project Management and Implementation, in particular, the partners have performed dynamic monitoring and evaluation (outcomes and project phases) through proper tools and plans.The kick-off meeting was held in Viksjöfors, Sweden. The project coordinator provided a clear time frame for each activity and the necessary management tools: project work-programme, Gantt charts and templates; the templates were prepared for internal descriptive and financial reporting by the partners (1 report every 6 months). The coordinator was also in charge for updating the work-programme and the Gantt charts during the project lifetime. The consortium also agreed on management and reporting procedures; the time table and work plan, tasks and responsibilities.The next meetings took place in Crete (GR), Brno (CZ), Adana (TK) and Brussels (BE). At each meeting, the main discussions were about progress of all outputs, project management, time schedule of all activities, financial coordination of the project, preparation of all documents and reports, dissemination and multiplier events of the project.The final conference was held in Brussels (BE) at the European Economic Social Committee, EESC. The project outputs were presented by representatives of the consortium as key note speaker and the MultiLib library was exhibited in the lobby of the institution. Besides regular meetings in person, project management issues were regularly discussed via Skype meetings. As the main platform, BaseCamp was chosen and all project documentation and outputs were stored there during the time of the project realisation, as well as the minutes from each meeting and the list of tasks to be done.The tasks were assigned in agreement with the partners and according to their specific competences. In accordance with the tasks undertaken by each organization, the budget was allocated in such a way to keep a balanced budget across the partnership. The allocated staff days were sufficient for the achievement of a high quality of the outputs. The development of the outputs was structured into several phases (e.g. development, testing, evaluation of testing, adaptation after testing, translation). Staff days were planned accordingly to these phases and helped to follow a smooth realisation of the project. http://multilibproject.eu/ - here online library is for downloadinghttp://multilib.coursevo.com/http://artinedviksjofors.se/multilib/We will enlarge our library with new partner in Finland. In upstarting project MUSILIB also music will be added to books. The library is produced for future expansion

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