International Project Meeting

26.11.2017  |  Marta Lenda

The International Project Meeting took place on 15th and 16th May 2017.

During the meeting all the actions within the project and their results were summarised. The rules and regulations of financing project actions and ways of documenting them were discussed. The participants also discussed how the univeresities can help the schools in creating and developing effective learning environments. How to make project products useful?

The participants decided that the key elements to work on shoul be: teachers’ understanding of the learning process, cooperative learning, motivation and emotions.

The ways of assessing the project were discussed and actions for the nearest future, partners meeting in October and study visit in Riga in November were planned.

 


Study visit in Cracow

28.10.2017  |  Marta Lenda

On 15 – 19 May 2017 we hosted the second study visit. The teachers from partner schools came to Cracow to visit our school. All the actions during this visit were coordinated by G. Mazurkiewicz and other members of the Institute of Public Affairs of the Jagiellonian University staff. The plan of the visit included:

  • the discussion about the aims of the visit, reflections on teachers’ personal goals, what was going to be observed during the lessons?
  • presenting the schools.
  • lesson observation in our school and in the second partner school in Cracow (Zespół Szkół Ogólnokształcących Integracyjnych nr 7).
  • meetings with teachers and students.
  • discussions and teachers’ reflections on observed lessons and sharing experiences in this area.
  • the visit overwiew, reflections on achieving personal goals and on the visit’s influence on participants’ personal developement.

It was agreed that emotions, motivation and cooperation during lessons should be the main areas that participants should focus on while observing the lessons. What are the students’ and teachers’ emotions during lessons? How are they expressed? What motivates students to be active during lessons? How do students work together with others? How do teachers organize it/encourage students to work with others?

The teachers’ meeting was a very important part of this study visit. During the meeting all the participants discussed their thoughts about the lessons they saw and they gave feedback to the teachers who prepared the lessons.They also shared their experiences and thoughts on emotions, motivation and students’ cooperation.

All the delegates declared their contentment and pointed out a lot of positive things from the visit which can help them deepen their understanding of the learning process.


Actions within the project

05.04.2017  |  Marta Lenda

A teachers’ project meeting took place on 21 March 2017. During the meeting:

  • the study visit in Wales report was presented;
  • „metaphors” and „puzzles” exercises were analysed;
  • the teachers did an exercise concerning students’ assessment.

Study visit in Wales 5 March – 11 March 2017

02.04.2017  |  Marta Lenda

The first study visit as part of the Erasmus+ „Culture of learning” project took place in Wales on 5-11 March 2017. It was organised by the Cardiff Council, UWTSD, Greenway Primary School and St Joseph’s Secondary School and 6th Form Centre. All the schools and universities which participate in the project delegated two representatives. Our school was represented by Marta Lenda and Małgorzata Szostek. During the visit the delegates attended lectures, workshops (UWTSD) and visited Greenway Primary School and St Joseph’s Secondary School and 6th Form Centre. The main purpose of the visit was to present the participants the ways of developing knowledge of methods of assessment of the educational process and to exchange the experiences and good practices leading to the improvement of the quality of teaching and the work of the school. This knowledge and acquired skills are the inspiration for further actions. They will be used in planning the educational process and creating intellectual outputs such as guideboooks, descriptions of the actions, scripts. They may also be used in creating and implementation of the self-evaluation tools.

 


Workshops for teachers

02.04.2017  |  Marta Lenda

On 21 February 2017 the teachers gathered to wonder how they understand the process of learning and what are their beliefs on this subject. Teachers worked in groups and their task was to create a description of an ideal school out of different puzzles. To do this, they had to answer the following questions:

1/ Why do we need schools? What is the aim of the school?

2/ What does the school teach? Why does it teach this?

3/ What is the curriculum? Who creates it?

4/ What are the teaching methods? How do we assess students?

5/ What is the role of the student, the teacher, the headteacher?

6/ What are the realtions between people?

7/ How is the leadership?

The teachers also discussed the results of using metaphors to describe what teaching others is like. As the result, the teachers came up with the conclusion that we all see our school in a similar way. We have different personalities, but our vision and priorities are similar. We act and think about our work in a very similar way.

 


International project meeting

20.03.2017  |  Marta Lenda

On 21-23 November 2016 the headteacher took part in the first international meeting on „the Culture of learning” project, which took place in Cardiff (Wales) in Greenway Primary School. The decision-making people from all the institutions taking part in the project participated in this meeting. The participants discussed and planned actions in the following areas:

  • managing and financing the project,
  • ways of communicating between partners (including the project website),
  • teachers’ work in the nearest future,
  • creating intellectual outputs such as guide-books, descriptions of the actions, scripts, analysis, etc.
  • creating and implementing self-evaluation tools.

The detailed schedule of the project actions was established including study visits and project meetings in 2017. The first teachers’ study visit is scheduled for 5-11 March 2017 in Wales and the international project meeting for 14-17 May 2017 in Cracow.