ACTIVITIES
&
SUBPROJECTS
•A1 Logo
•A2 Unity School Club
•A3 Erasmus + Corner
•A4 Webpage
•A5 School Choirs
•A6 Children’s right
•A7 Student’s presentation on different cultures all over the world
•A8 Celebration of International Day of People with a Disability (IDPD)
•A9 Greeting cards
•A10 Street Games
•A11 Academic lessons including “peer learning”.
•A12 Academic lessons including “gamification”
•A13 Academic lessons including “active learning
•A14 Art works
•A15 Combination of the lesson plans
METHODOLOGY OF THE PROJECT
Social exclusion may start from the early ages in the school or even in the playground and has very long-term negative effects such as early school leaving and poor physical & mental health. Immigrants, children with disabilities and children from different cultures are the group which are most vulnerable to exclusion. Main aim of this proposal is to promote social inclusion of these groups at schools and to do so it uses series of activities most importantly education as a method for inclusion.
Intervention at early stages of exclusion in the schools provides better solution for excluded students since teaching behavior to kids is easier than doing it at older ages and nourishing self-esteem to prevent from being excluded is easy for kids. As schools are the best way to reach the kids this project focuses on educational activities as a tool for inclusion. People fear what they do not know or understand says Andrew Smith. If the interaction via school lessons among students increases, they will have more chance to know each other, share and learn each other’s feelings, understand their culture therefore they can feel sympathy. This project utilizes following methods in order to contribute to inclusion process of the socially excluded children such as; immigrants, disabled children, children from different cultures. Immersing them into learning environment actively by using gamification, peer learning and active learning. All of these methods ensure the active participation of students into the learning process thus contributing the interpersonal skills of them which are important in communicating with others and making new friends.
In peer learning students work collaboratively with others, giving and receiving ideas therefore they interact with each other which is actually a great chance for excluded child to make friends, express their feeling and ideas, showing that they are no different than other children. It is also an important step for excluder children to understand other’s feeling and feel sympathy. Since gamification and active learning both require children to work and learn together, they also yield similar results. Street games activity also supports inclusion since these games require involvement of many students and these games give opportunities for making new friends. Including all children in art – music activities which emphasizes the importance of diversity, tolerance for different cultures and beliefs. Via produced art works' students learn different cultures and get familiar with them, learn the idea that being different is not a choice for some people. Art is also a great way to express feeling to others without words, therefore excluded kids will have a great opportunity to express their emotions and ideas via art. Informing students on the believes, contributions (made to world’s
development), life styles of people from different cultures via students’ club works, presentation, displays are another method of this project to contribute to social inclusion since by this way all students will understand different cultures and respect them. In all part of this project students were active by participating local and international activities. Teaching methods (gamification, peer learning and active learning) of this project were implemented in all classes of participant schools for at least 60 hours (5 branches, 3 teaching methods, 2 plans for 2 hours). These lesson plans were a sample lesson plans and teachers continued applying these methods in their lesson which meant students were having interaction more than 60 hours. Art activities of the project were implemented in a group work. Street games of this project were played in PE lessons with all students participating. Considering all these core activities students had chance to work together for more than hundred hours which were adequate for kids to know each other, make new friends. Rest of the activities (Choir, greeting cards, Erasmus+, IDPD, children’s right, presentation and logo making) which were called supplementary activities supported school climate and core activities by changing the attitude of
students towards differences, feeding the sympathy skills of students. Through these supporting activities and mobilities students learnt different cultures, believes, traditions, life styles, difficulties that disabled people or immigrant students have and students developed empathy, tolerance and respect to students from different cultural backgrounds, immigrants and disadvantaged students. This project contributed to socially excluded children’s self-esteem by giving them opportunity to express themselves (via activities of the project).
