The aim of the project is to focus on Early School Leaving, the reasons for it and to increase awareness while developing intercultural dialogue.

Schools will work together to elicit the reasons for E.S.L. and will use the information to make social campaign to raise awareness among parents, local, regional and European communities which should help prevent the problem.

Children face many challenges: economic, family and social. Moreover, there are special needs pupils in the partner schools. Some of these children are left to wander the streets to spend time after or during school hours. They're not guided to productive activities, such as studying or creating some work. Some of these students leave school early. They may fail at school but are great singers, actors, ICT experts etc.

Our aim is to make all these children more sociable and school more attractive to them with the help of games, drama, music, ICT, native language and English lessons, art, PE & Maths. We intend to identify and foster the students' talents and thus increase the motivation for learning and better achievements at school and teach them key skills for their life after school.

The children who haven't gone abroad and can't afford this will have the chance to see different countries with different languages, religions, ethnic groups and cultures. This will increase their tolerance and respect of other nations and prejudices will be overcome.

By actively communicating within the lessons, free-time activities, via internet and on visits, the pupils will improve their language skills, self-esteem, raise their awareness of other cultures and break down barriers between each country. They will find common and different points of challenges in different nations and find answers for these challenges.

OBJECTIVES

-to familiarize students with the local and national cultural legacy and of the partner country and to improve their knowledge of different cultures and life-styles

-to consolidate European identity among pupils and enable them to learn

-to encourage the learning of modern foreign languages;

-to develop pupil and teacher friendships and relationships through various communication methods

-to raise tolerance and respect of their classmates, teachers and foreign people

-to enable the children having economic, social and family challenges and special needs students to become aware of their talents and responsibilities

-reduce the amount of E.S.L. (Early School Leaving) by engaging the pupils having problems actively in the planning, implementation and evaluation of the project, they will enhance their self-esteem, confidence and motivation to learn. They will be given chance to talk about their problems and make up some strategies for solving these problems with a variety of activities.

-children who have never gone abroad and can't afford this will have the chance to see different countries with different languages, religions, ethnic groups and cultures.

-to develop enthusiasm for creative activities among students

-to improve pupil’s social skills

-to support students’ school and life successes

-to support the development of innovative ICT

-to teach conflict-avoidance skills

IMPACT ON THE PUPILS:

- Pupils increase their self-esteem and motivation for learning; the number of graduates will increase

-Pupils will improve their native language by presenting their work at their own schools (presentations, Comenius display board, local newspaper articles, school website).

- Pupils will build continuous, international friendships, learn mutual understanding and overcome prejudices

-Pupils will improve their MFL skills by learning basic phrases of the different languages in the partnership. (survival dictionary,language DVD). Since English is the working language, all nations will improve their English language skills .

-Surmount communicative difficulties by creating a positive and friendly atmosphere both in the school during the activities and with the partner schools' pupils during the pupils' visits and through e-mails, Skype and facebook.

-to develop the students' ICT capabilities by learning to research information on the internet, preparing powerpoint presentations and DVDs. 

Pupils will enhance their creative skills/ key skills throughout the project, especially when presenting work, performing the short version of Grease, designing the partnership logo and posters, producing DVDs and videos, updating Comenius display boards and the school website.

IMPACT ON THE STAFF:

-Teachers of the participating schools will share different teaching methods, pedagogical ideas and school curriculum content. These new ideas will lead to a higher quality of teaching throughout the partnership schools.

-Teachers will widen their ICT skills especially with the new technologies being used in this project for communicating as they are learners themselves.

-The teachers will get a good insight into the standard of living of different European Union Member States, their knowledge and understanding of cultural differences and similarities. They will build friendships and links between partner schools.  These contacts can lead to a sustainable partnership for many years after the project.

-Teachers will widen their knowledge of different educational systems, monitoring and assessment methods by observing lessons and discipline structure which can be implemented in their own school. 

IMPACT ON THE PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS

-The reputation of the school and the teaching will improve through positive reports in a variety of media methods such as local newspapers, local TV.

-A better relationship between students and teachers will be developed  ;

All schools within the partnership will be fully involved and committed to the activities. All partners will meet in partnership countries (5 pupils, 2 teachers visits) to share developments and disseminate good practice. 

Germany is the coordinator of this project. They will take care that all the products will be delivered on time, write an agenda for each visit, write a summary of the teachers meetings during each visit. They are responsible for the evaluation throughout the project, open a closed facebook group for the pupils to communicate and organize the first pupils' visit in December 2013.  

Activities:

Project website (Romania) (09/13)

Questionnaire 1 (Italy)  (09/13)

Questionnaire 2 (Turkey) (09/13)

Each partner country develops a logo (11/13)

The best logo is chosen in each partner country (11/13)

A Comenius corner (All partner countries) (12/13)

All partner countries produce a DVD of their native language (09/13) and a DVD about their school, city and country (09/13)

All countries make a presentation of their school systems (10/13)

All schools give Questionnaires 1 & 2 to as many pupils as possible aged 13-17 and analyse them (11/13)

The common logo (Poland) (01/14)

Survival dictionary (Italy) (02/14)

All schools perform the short version of Grease in English at their school (by 03/14)

All partner countries perform Grease on stage in Romania and Romania shoots a film (03/14)

Romania makes the film of Grease (05/14)

Italy produces the posters (pdf-data) which will be developed by all pupils during the Turkey visit (07/14)

Germany and France plan, edit and copy playing cards, all schools make copies (09/14)

All partner countries give the questionnaires again and compare the analysis between the one given at the beginning and the one given at the end (01/15).

PARTNERS in the project ,, School is cool’’:

1) Schule im Innerstetal-DE, General secondary school (EDU-SCHSec), Baddeckenstedt, Germany

2) Collège Henri Guillaumet, General secondary school (EDU-SCHSec), JOUY-le-Moutier, France

3) I.S.I.S.S. "Enrico Mattei", Vocational or technical secondary school (EDU-SCHVoc),Caserta, Italy

4) Gimnazjum nr 121 im. Wojciecha Zawadzkiego, Other type of educational organisation (EDU-OTH), Mazowieckie, Poland

5) Colegiul Economic „Virgil Madgearu”, General secondary school (EDU-SCHSec), Ploiesti, Romania

6) Orgeneral Eşref Bitlis Orta Okulu, General secondary school (EDU-SCHSec), Istanbul, Tukey