Erasmus+ is the European Union programme for education, training, youth and sport. It runs for seven years, from 2014 to 2020, with organisations invited to apply for funding each year for life-changing activities.
Erasmus+ aims to modernise education, training and youth work across Europe. It is open to education, training, youth and sport organisations across all sectors of lifelong learning, including school education, further and higher education, adult education and the youth sector. Through Erasmus+:
UK organisations can collaborate with international partners, to drive innovation, share best practice, and offer new opportunities to young people.
We are working with Poland and Estonia to create a project to develop the pupil’s ability to speak an additional language to correspond with Donaldson’s new curriculum and to help develop our pupils respect and tolearance towards others from different countries around the world. We have named the project “Little Language Learners.”
Summary
Our young people are European citizens able to work, visit, live or study in every country within the European Union. As a result, it’s our responsibility to provide opportunity and experiences to them about the different parts of the EU, in order to help them understand different ways of life and also what we have in common. Therefore we must provide them with key basic skills to aid them to discover the European Union in a far more knowledgeable and confident manner.
This partnership aims at developing basic language skills of our pupils and their ability to learn a foreign language successfully through songs and games in a fun and enjoyable manner where they will learn the language without stress as pupils will be familiar with this type of activity in their mother tongue. The age range of the pupils will be from 3-5 years old. The purpose of this is to not only focus on learning the language itself but to also creating a basis for learning study skills and taking an interest in a foreign language. Through being able to learn about the language they will also in turn learn about their different heritages which will highlight their differences, but will also see despite these differences they are all equal.
We will be focusing on developing their tolerance for people from other countries and creating social cohesion as they learn from one and other and develop a personal connection with these countries through developing friendships.
The project itself will mainly focus on developing and teaching our pupils the basic skills of a foreign language, it will be achieved through introducing the languages through song and games prepared by the school of that language, where it will be demonstrated to pupils and staff through the use of Skype or video message in order for that country to pronounce the words correctly.
This project will allow us to open our school and the kindergartens to multicultural Europe, which is something very important in the ever growing world to make sure that we can connect positively with others around the world, combating stereotypes and prejudices. This project should be carried out transnationally as we are focusing on developing the pupils ability to learn and speak a foreign language, therefore they wouldn’t have the same calibre of experience learning a language than learning directly from the relevant sources.
The project will allow us to learn from best practice during our visits to each nation and allow the visiting staff to demonstrate best practice of their language. Wales will share and demonstrate good practice from the “Lost Words”, an action research initiative promoting outdoor learning and literacy with a focus on environmental words being lost from children’s vocabulary. Poland will share good practice of collaborating with parents. Estonia will share good practice of outside learning. This will offer a unique authentic experience that neither staff nor pupils would otherwise experience.
The project enables us to achieve the following objectives: – To develop all participants’ awareness and pride of the cultural heritage of their own country through teaching others about it -to develop participants understanding of other cultures. – to develop participants language skills and ability to speak another language that is not their mother tongue (Welsh, Estonian and Polish) – Create a positive attitude towards people from different countries in order to promote social cohesion through developing their tolerance towards others. – To develop positive links with our partner schools, that will thrive through collaboration through sharing practices and methods to better each others teaching. – To develop early interest in learning a foreign language – Pupils to start to develop the ability to speak a foreign language, through the means of songs and games.
The project lasts for 18 months and involves three educational institutions with approximately 800 persons being involved and effected by the planned activities. The planned activities will include short term staff training visits where two members of each institution will have the opportunity to travel and experience the language and culture of the different partners alongside a series of school based activities to engage students regardless of their ability, all members of staff, parents and also the local community The tangible results will be a collection of books and resources of songs and games thats each school can use to teach the foreign language and also video instructions on how to play games in the outdoors and inside. We believe that an important result will be to installing a love for language at the earliest opportunity that will help