Summary
Studying the PISA test results and analyzing the situation in their schools the teachers of 6 partner schools from Romania, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Croatia and Lithuania noticed that a large number of students have low learning outcomes and sometimes absenteeism and early school leaving because they don’t understand the literary and non-literary texts and they have not developed critical thinking, they have not the capacity to solve new things, they are not taught to think freely on new issues. More of them learn as simply "robots". The project “The Power of Understanding” proposes an exchange of experience through which to identify new methods of teaching and learning in a new form of extracurricular activities of pupils, in clubs.
The general objective of partnership is to improve students ‘competences and level of understanding of literary and non- literary texts in order to raise their success rate and avoid early school leaving. In project will be involved about 30 teachers of different subjects and min.300 pupils aged 11 to 15 years old, of which min. 240 students have difficulties in understanding of texts and about 60 students with good learning outcomes, they will act as mentors. In each partner school will be 5 clubs with max.13 students on different domains, “The magic of the word”(mother tongue, foreign languages),“Traveling in time and space”(history/geography),“Ecology club”, “The little journalist”, ”We are European citizens”(European culture and civilization).The clubs will work as extracurricular activities and their activities will be based on interactive methods such storytelling, role play, theatre, comics, etc. The club “The little journalist” will involve the mentors, they will be “the voice” of the pupils from clubs.
There will be 5 transnational learning activities and a transnational staff training activity. Each transnational learning activity for pupils will be focused on the activities from a club. In Romania, the students will participate at “The magic of the word” club where they will learn about national folk tales and traditional holidays of partner countries; in Croatia the learning activities will be carried out within the “Ecology club” where the students will learn about protected animals and plants in each country, in Spain they will learn about national legends within the club “Traveling in time and space”, in Cyprus the students will have the opportunity to come across various cultures and civilizations giving emphasis on their eating habits within the club“ We are European citizens “and in Lithuania the students will take interviews, will make exercises of writing of articles for newspapers within the club “The little journalist”. The transnational activity from Portugal "New teaching- learning methods centered on understanding the text and forming critical thinking" will bring together teachers from all partner schools who will exchange experience on the new methods that have been used in the clubs on different domains, methods that have been successful among the students from the target groups.
We expect that through activities to develop the understanding competencies of literary & non-literary texts to min. 40 students/partner school, to form the ability of understanding texts in the daily life of min 40 students/partner school, to develop to min. 40 students/partner school new reading and writing comprehension skills, in order to be able to use them in everyday life, to improve the learning outcomes of min. 40 students/ partner school, to raise awareness among at least 300 students from the six partner schools about the importance of understanding reading and developing critical thinking for lifelong learning and the last but not least, to develop for about 300 students' cooperation an collaboration skills, tolerance and initiative, increasing self-esteem and motivation for learning, as well as friendship between pupils from partner schools. During the activities each partner school will edit a magazine “Words” with results of the work from clubs. The pupils from “The little journalist” club will present significant moments of clubs activities on the students’ blog and towards the end of project the teachers will gather all activities plans, methods, tests, analyses, good practice examples in the guide “The Power of Understanding”, guide which will be used in the future activities for other target groups. From beginning we will initiate and develop the project in eTwinning space where we will ensure the visibility of our activities and results from partner school, at international level, were we will initiate international conferences aims to ensure the meetings of students and teachers from partner schools before the transnational learning activities. Through this transnational exchange of experience the schools will achieve the development of all theirs members by promoting personal, academic and professional growth.
