Agenda for the Fourth Partnership Meeting, Kosice

23th-27th September 2015

Review since last meeting in May

Scratch Training in Galway Partnership Newsletter

Interim Report

Modules: Democracy and Citizenship

Migration and Urban Growth

Nature Trail

Banners

eTwinning

Music for Project

Scratch Programming

Online Book

Tomar Meeting

Any Other Business

Minutes of the 4th partnership meeting in Kosice, Slovakia 24th - 27th of September 2015

Participants: Brendan and Paul from Ireland, Nikos and Olga from Greece, Carlos and Christina from Portugal, Isabel and David from Spain, Anna and Marita from Sweden, Heidi, Elke, Elisabeth, and Johannes from Germany, and Maria and teachers from Slovakia.

Thanks to Maria for the city tour, the art exhibition and the fantastic choir, the visit at your school, pupil performances and the other wonderful events in our visit in Slovakia!

Review since last meeting in May: Scratch training in Galway - a successful course for participants of our project.

It took place in June in Galway for a week. Partnership Newsletter: This collaborative newsletter on Sustainability and

Environment was published in June by Nikos. Interim Report Evaluation: The Irish National Agency gave a very positive

evaluation of the interim report of our project: " This is an excellent example of intelligent use of Erasmus + funding to engineer real change in the class room while upskilling teachers and raising the awareness and competences of pupils across a range of subjects. All activity is well managed and of high quality. The project is innovative and engaging and should be observed for best practice."

Work proposals:

Partnership Newsletter Next topic is Democracy and Citizenship. Nikos is responsible for our newsletters. Each country will send him a contribution about the module. We will also send him one or two articles, 4-5 photos, 500 words. Deadline 10th of December.

A report about the democracy module from each country:

Sweden has a long tradition of pupils participating in different conferences in school. Teachers, and sometimes the principals as well as the parents, also take part in the pupil’s council meetings. Three areas are processed: food for lunch in school, culture in and outside school and also children’s right and obligations. A topic we will discuss during the year is what consequences are suitable for pupils that break the rules.We will have two whole weeks working with democracy and also the Nobel day in December.

Ireland participated in Blue Star Project. This project focused on Europe under the headings of Geography, History, Culture and Democracy and Institutions. We received EU Flag for our work.

Greece – gave an example of pupil’s power. The pupils wanted a small building to be put away on the schoolyard and they sent an email to the local politicians. After some time they also sent a photo to the Major. The photo showed the pupils trying to push the building away themselves. A week later the building was moved by the municipality! They also discuss

bullying, migration and everyday problems- the pupils are given a story about a problem and then they discuss how to solve it?

Portugal – focused on the Rights of Children.

Germany – have invited politicians to discuss status of Special Schools.

Slovakia – the pupils have an hour/week when they can choose from a range of different subjects.

Spain – pupils create games, cooperate in groups, and make a visit to the parliament.

Carlos suggests us to have collaborative activity for this module. This activity will pose 6-10 questions for parents to answer. He offered to make a set of questions and Maria wishes one or two open questions. We continue this issue next meeting.

Nature trail – Heidi told us about her work making the trail together with the children. If we all send our work with the nature trail to Nadine she will put it together using Windows Moviemaker.

Banners – banners from the former project will be sent to Portugal from Ireland. We will all share the cost of this expense. A bill from Brendan will be given to all of us in Tomar.

eTwinning - we are not active enough with the eTwinning twinspace, but we have an excellent website. We have a link from eTwinning to our website. eTwinning agencies gives the Quality label. Brendan will try to get more information regarding this matter.

Scratch Programming –The German kids have difficulties doing scratch. In Spain they start in small steps. Sweden has just started with 30 pupils in a one hour course/week. In Ireland?In Portugal 150 schools are in progress for scratch.

Online Book –Carlos suggests should include an interim and final report, pupils reflections from each country, a few particular aspects of local works, general reflections on the two years’ work from each country and the impact and benefit for each school. Brendan will reflect on the modules of work. Deadline is by the time of the Barcelona-meeting and the launching is in Stockholm in May.

Music for the project- Anna sang the “Erasmus” song she made. All countries will contribute to the song by recording two lines of a verse on video. These individual videos of pupils singing in mother language will be put together to form one collaborative video. We also decided to make a video recording and send it to Anna by the end of March. Anna will send you all the needed information about how to do it, along with lyrics, notes, recordings and sing-along backgrounds.

Migration and urban growth – a slideshow about refugees and migration was shown by Björngårdsskolan. We had a discussion in small groups, how does your school take care of newcomers?

Next meetingsTomar meeting in Portugal 12th -15th of OctoberBarcelona in Spain : 20th -24th, of April Stockholm in Sweden: 25th-29th of May Stockholm meeting- Stockholm is a busy town that time of the year and we would like to book the rooms you need, singles and doubles, as soon as possible. Please get back to Marita latest before 8th of October. There are rooms booked for you on two big boats. One is a cheaper hostel where you share toilets and shower with other rooms in the corridor. A message will be sent to each coordinator.

Minutes written by /Marita and Anna