IT'S ABOUT US, IT'S ABOUT EUROPE!: Welcome to our Comenius school project

" IT'S ABOUT US! IT'S ABOUT EUROPE "!

The year 2013 is the European Year of Citizens, and that is why we decided to use this opportunity to create partnership that will make our students truly informed European citizens. Each of the partner countries is unique in its geographical and historical features. There is one transcontinental Eurasian country, one island, one land-locked country. All of them have rich histories; one has other currency than EURO, one of them is a constitutional monarchy. All these factors will contribute to improving our students' awareness of how rich our European heritage is.

Every day through radio, TV, newspapers our students hear disturbing information that EU is in trouble, the best example are the events in Greece and England. Do we really face the risk of disintegration? Can we live in harmony despite the current economic complications and crises? How much do our students actually know about EU? What do they know about individual countries , their geography, history, childrens rights, basic words and phrases? What can they expect as members of the EU from it? How do our students in visage EU if they are regularly informed only about troubles. We want to focus on the information that is true and relevant.

We guess that all of us do not know much about EU, therefore, we decided to disseminate the European horizon, during the project activities. Every child has rights, no matter what country they’re from, no matter how old they are, no matter if they’re a boy or a girl. Even though every child has rights, these rights are violated every day. All partner countries think this project will allow our students achieve new skills and knowledge through a wide range of learning experiences in Geography, History and children’s rights education. The project will also address the issue of prejudices by developing "intercultural intelligence" (understanding diversity and "making profit" of it). It will be a means of finding out European values, similarities and differences between the countries involved and reflecting upon preconceptions and stereotypes we can have about our European partners.

All the six countries involved in the project are seeking new educational approaches to meet the needs of the 21st century learner. Project-based learning is one of this forms. Teaching with the project-based method enables students to work cooperatively with peers and mentors in a student-centred environment where learners are encouraged to have a voice in how and what they learn, while building intrinsic motivation towards problem-solving.

The partnership will be a motivation for all educational actors (students, teachers and parents) to get involved in joint activities and a way to link school with Europe and cultivate European values and attitudes.

Students and teachers will develop fluency in English language, improve skills in other modern languages, like Italian or Spanish or get aware of less studied languages, like Turkish, Slovenian and Slovak.

Partner schools: (in alphabetical order of country names )