Project Management and Activities:
Activity 1 - A welcome to each school from the Mascot. The children will take responsibility for putting together a presentation about the Mascot. This will require a range of literacy and ICT skills. This will be presented as either a word document or power-point presentation.
Activity 2 - Logo This will help with a sense of belonging and community. It will represent the entire team. The children will create logos that they think best represents the project. The children and teachers will then all vote on which logo best represents the group. They will also be expected to express their views on the logos and provide feedback through the blog. This will be shared and evaluated at the first teaching and learning training event in Turkey.
Activity 3 - Core Values The children will work in their schools about what their core values are. These will then be shared with the partner schools to collaborate on what is similar in regards to beliefs and values and to celebrate any differences. What is the same about our schools and what is different.
Activity 4 - Story-Telling. Children will record a version of a traditional regional or national story. Children will decide how to present their story to their European friends (Ipad-puppet pals presentation, record a play, interactive ppt, written story book)
Activity 5 - Christmas video messages.
The children will work in teams to create a video message to wish their European Friends a Merry Christmas. This will will require developing the skills of teamwork, negotiation and critical thinking to ensure they all agree on the materials being shared. These messages will be added to the blog and the children in all of the schools will be encouraged to provided feedback to their peers on what they really liked about the end product and also with ideas of how they could be further improved. The children will then be given time to perfect their original work to add to the twinspace.
Activity 6 :What is it like living as a child in Europe. This will further support cultural understanding and diversity, what our our values and how similar are these? During this activity we will focus on the children's life out of school and their local communities. The children will collate the work to make a book about the life of a child in Europe.
Activity 7: What languages do the children in Europe speak? The children will look at the different languages that are spoken in their schools and provide video diaries to share and celebrate. What languages are the same and what are different. How many different languages do we all have together? Can any of the children talk to their partner schools in the same home language? The children will then collate a book of languages spoken in Europe.
Activity 8: What challenges do the children of Europe face? The children will debate in their schools about any worries and fears they may have growing up in modern Europe. Do the children share any of these worries. They may for example look at climate issues or social cohesion.
Activity 9: The rights of the children This main focus will be on the right to education. Why is this so important? Why is it important to have a good education. What will a good education lead for us in the future. The children will work on their aspirations for the future and what they would like to do when they grow up. Are any of the children's wishes similar?
Ongoing activities : - Development of project blog, this will be an ongoing resource throughout the project to work as diary of the Mascot's adventures both in the school and the community. There will be a variety of different tools and ipads used to create this blog which will also increase ICT skills. Teachers will also benefit as it will be a vehicle for their teaching and also support their own use of communication skills and ICT, which in turn will help to make their lessons more interesting and help to provide outstanding lessons.
- Use of twinspace. This will be a safe place for the children to communicate and be used as a learning platform. It will aid collaborative learning. It will also be used to upload all of the learning activities completed by the children and teachers to keep a bank of resources and ideas. The blog will also be available to see within the twinspace.
- European Week - Dissemination Activity to show results to the school and wider community, the children and teachers will be able to articulate to a wider audience what they have learned and what skills they have developed throughout the project.
- Impact report - this will be a report created by both children and teachers to show the impact the project has had on the teaching learning. This report will be shared with the stakeholders and also help support the application for an etwinning quality label.