Comenius multilateral school partnership

Project title:  The European Artefacts: Project of Theatrics

Project acronym: TEA-POT

TEAPOT: The European Artefacts-Project of Theatrics is a Comenius Multilateral Partnership project prepared by seven schools of countries: Turkey, Slovenia, France, England, Ireland, and Greece.  It aims to bring solidarity among different generations and societies of Europe, therefore includes tasks specially designed referring to 2012 ‘the European Year for Active Ageing’ and multiculturalism of societies in Europe.
TEAPOT focuses on the skills, knowledge and attitudes needed to help prepare young pupils for tomorrow’s world of integration with the ability to cooperate with other generations and societies.
Pupils will learn from older generations, research about their own cultural heritage, work on cultural elements (cultural artefacts, house models, theatre plays, tolerance figures) of partner countries, debating, reflecting and being in direct contact with other cultures.
They will have to reconsider their attitudes towards older people, foreign languages and cultures.
The project will also develop curriculum based cooperation of preschool teachers, by challenging them to use the skills of multicultural team working to fulfil the outlined local and international project activities. They will plan, organise and deliver courses to pre-primary school students on a comparative and cooperative scale.
This will necessitate research on how preschool pupils learn and will focus upon the differing methodologies across Europe.
This will be further enhanced by development of preschool teaching materials within the project process.
The partnership is collaboration among schools which have formed close working relationships in Europe.
The partnership will have an important impact in our schools and allow us to develop further projects for our pupils.

2012 is designated as the "European Year for Active Ageing" by the EU, "to initiate systems for older people of Europe to take active roles in society". It is stated that "the EU is in a process of significant population ageing and over-60 population will continue to increase by about two million people a year."This necessitates the solidarity between generations and taking tangible actions for significant actual contribution of older people.
Therefore, TEAPOT plans to include minimum 100 old people (who are over 60 years-old) participating in the project activities. These old people will have pre-planned sessions with preschool pupils telling local/traditional tales while recorded by teachers and shared as English texts with other partner schools. The pupils will draw pictures of the traditional tales and these will be used as illustrations of the project book of folk tales. With these sessions, it is aimed to strenthen the bonds among generations, creating more inclusive opportunities for older people, who will be in direct contact with the younger.

We define tomorrow’s world as the world of integration and think the most important skills of success in social and professional life will require strong background, knowledge and experience of different cultures, their differences and similarities, as in the term coined as intercultural learning.
Therefore, it has become crucial to provide for younger generations of Europe as early as possible with the skills of learning to negotiate with people from different cultures, living with people from different cultures, living in a different culture and the prospect of peace among different cultures.
TEAPOT uses preschool curriculum tasks spread on two year process which focus on researching for their own cultural heritage, share and learn different cultures as well, during project lifetime.
 It has six major actions for pupils:
• The local cultural objects are collected and placed in School’s Comenius Artefacts Museum with its tag of mother tongue explanation(old names, uses of the object in daily life,etc)
• Visits to excavation area /local museum reflecting on the history of their culture,
• Research for forgotten/or about to be forgotten professions of their local area,
• Observe old traditional houses at their local area, comparing them with modern houses; and produce models of typical houses of the partner countries to exhibit,
• Research for a tolerance/humour figure of their country and prepare a theatre play in mother tongue (including some English lines) for their partners to be used as project movie,
• Grow herbs at the school garden and share them with partners to be used for the cooking of partners’ typical dishes (using authentic recipes), thereby learning how to cook six other typical dish recipes.
We hope these plotted tasks will enable our pupils to develop insights and tolerance for other European cultural heritage, values, customs, the relations, norms and taboos; therefore reduce xenophobia and prejudices of project participants (pupils, teachers, parents) against other cultures.

TEAPOT OBJECTIVES

Find ways of solidarity among generations, integrating  age groups,
Increase the contribution of old people for responsibility of raising up newer generations, transfer of values, fight against cultural extinction,
Raise the awareness for active ageing,
Learn about healthy food for life,
Learn about culture of partner countries (daily life, food, theatre plays, songs, model making, human figures)
Raise interest about cultural heritages in EU and develop directed inquiry and researches,
Develop open/ tolerant attitudes towards others in EU,
Strengthen the analytical and observatory talents of the pupils at an early age.
Develop the cooperation and teamwork among preschools
Discover facts and elements of different cultures in Europe,
Bring an insight of critical cultural awareness (that there are different cultures next to one's own)
Improve,
• the conceptual development of Foreign Languages,
• preschool pedagogical approaches and techniques,
• teachers’ motivation and skills of other languages in Europe (English, French, Turkish, Greek, etc)
• ICT skills and digital literacies (as in Website development, e-communication and materials share).
  
TEAPOT APPROACHES
Research for any cultural objects (function old name past story) Founding School’s Comenius Artefacts Museum with artefacts and tags of explanation
Visits to excavation areas/local museums. Reflections on the cultural objects, sharing impressions with class friends
Old people visiting classes telling folk/fairy tales to the children (recorded by the teachers and pupils draw pictures inspiring from the folk tale told). Translations of the folk tales into English and used as illustrations of project folk tales book
Researches on forgotten professions: (real visits and interviews with the professionals). Old professions brochure in English
Observation of old traditional houses of local area, (Vs modern houses) Cardboard models of typical traditional houses. Preparing models of typical houses of partner countries. Exhibition to parents and project partners
Presentations of tolerance/satire figure, used for theatre play for project show (dance, songs, acting and some English lines)
Herbs at the school garden, write a recipe of a typical dish, cooking typical dishes of partner countries and inviting parents to taste
Questionnaires (inclusion, integration, comments)
Project website, downloadable project materials
Common Exhibition of cultural artefacts
“Learning to Learn” techniques

TEAPOT aims first of all to promote intercultural dialogue and intercultural learning with and by different generations and societies of Europe. The project themes are based on preschool curriculums adopted by seven partner schools and transformed with more focus on learning about other cultures in Europe including all people of preschools like grandparents, parents, teachers and pupils.
Within this respect, intercultural dialogue is not just the purpose of TEAPOT but also the tool for intercultural learning to occur. In our case, interculturality occurs in preschool classes where authentic materials like cultural artefacts, model houses, traditional recipes and tolerance figures of partner countries are brought and a safe setting is created for young pupils to have their own experience of other European cultures.
European context, which features not only tangible actions of understanding different world views, central to intercultural dialogue and addresses, the daily realities of the European societies is sought to be connected throughout the project.

IMPACT
With the help of project activities and the issues covered in them:
The pupils are expected to:

*Gain positive insights about Europe at early ages,
*Learn about the concepts like culture, interculturalism, cooperation, communication,
*Be more interested to learn about foreign languages and different countries of Europe,
*Be motivated to learn about their own culture, develop intellectual links of their daily life and with their heritage,
*Develop their mother tongue expression skills,
*Improve artistic skills like theatre, design handicrafts,
*Improve their social skills learning to work in teams sharing and collaborating,
*Learn to respect old people and their values, at the same time to other people with cultural, ethnic or racial differences,
*Become more aware of healthy eating and organic food,
*Learn to learn (developing metacognition), become more independent learners and taking responsibility for their own learning experiences.
The teachers are expected to:

*Develop their pedagogical and methodological skills of teaching preschool subjects,
*Improve their methodological skills of integrating preschool with intercultural learning,
*Improve their competences and skills of partner languages (mostly English and French),
*Reduce their xenophobia or rooted prejudices about other countries in Europe,
*Develop their skills of including parents into ongoing school life,
*Learn European project management and underlying mechanisms (legislations, treaties, funds),
*Find and search for other EU programmes for further projects in the future,
*Establish long lasting social relations with their colleagues in other countries of Europe across borders.
The partner school institutions are expected to:

*Develop and integrate their curriculum and management systems learning the best practises from partner institutions,
*Become role-models for other schools in their area and encourage the other educational institutions to collaborate in similar projects,
*Find opportunities to bring all people of their institution together working for the same goals, thus creating positive work climates,
*Gain credit and credence for having forged links at European scale and become centre of interest for prospective parents.
*Build background for further projects and cooperative work in Europe.

DISTRIBUTION OF TASKS

At the preparatory meeting of the project and during the other e-communications, it is decided every partner takes a leading role in one of the crucial tasks of the project. Therefore the following distribution of responsibility is planned:
Turkey: Management of communications and distribution of project materials among partners, production of project final report, publication of old professions project book (minimum 1000),organisation of "Common Exhibition of Cultural Artefacts"
Slovenia: Preparation of Project web site, uploading the project e-materials and e-products, updating the web site once a month, keeping the web site online for project process and after two more years(min)
France: Preparation of project dissemination DVD content to include Folk Tale videos, project activities at all partner schools
United Kingdom: Preparation of project questionnaires and monitoring their applications and reporting results for the Final Report and project Web Site, coordination and collection of Theatre Shows of Tolerance Figures at each partner school,
Ireland: Design of project Logo, monitoring Partner School’s Comenius Artefacts Museums and organisation of visits to Excavation areas/local museums, gathering reportable data and writing report of the activities,

Each partner of the project is entitled to do the following in time and within the quality and quantity crietia of the plotted project:
1. Establish Comenius Artefacts Museum,
2. Organise visits to excavation areas/local museums,
3. Organise the folk tale narration sessions of old people (grandparents or others) visiting classes, record,translate to English and share,
4.Research forgotten professions, through real visits and interviews with the professionals,
5. Prepare cardboard models of their traditional houses and send to each partner. Preparing models of traditional houses of the partner schools,
6. Research and present a tolerance/satire figure of their country and prepare a theatre play,
7. Grow herbs at the school garden, write a recipe of a typical dish and cook partners' dishes,
8. Conduct/analyse questionnaires min. twice
9. Sustain efficient communication with partners.

TEAPOT partnership focuses on pupil involvement throughout the project tasks and activities.
All 3-6 year old pupils of partner schools will be actively included in the project. The following will be produced by the pupils:
• Project display boards at schools,
• Logo design,
• Herbs at greenhouses and keeping the greenhouse suitable for planting,
• Working with old people, communicating with them over folk tales, drawing illustrations for the folk tale book of the project,
• Collecting cultural artefacts from their and grandparents’ houses,
• Presenting the cultural artefacts to class friends with its function and old name,
• Sharing impressions of excavation areas with peers,
• Plotting theatre play of tolerance figure, researching for the figure and acting in the theatre performance,
• Shooting photos and videos of the project activities,
• Conducting researches on “Forgotten Professions” of their Culture and experiencing them, interviewing professionals,
• Observing traditional houses of local culture, comparing them with modern houses, preparing scale model outlines for partner pupils,
• Producing partnership village of model houses (making house models of partner countries),
• Preparing invitation cards for parents for Exhibitions,
• Cooking partner country meals for parents dinner,
• Making hand-made T-shirts of TEAPOT Comenius project.
• Answering project questionnaires and expressing their opinions of the project openly,
The following will be formed upon pupils’ views:
• The project Website
• The project display board designs
• Brochure of Old Professions
• Book design of Folk Tales
• Project T-shirt Design (Colour, shape of collar etc.)

PROJECT PARTNERS

Project Number	Institution name	Agency Code	Approval flag	Number of participating pupils	Number of participating teachers
2012-1-TR1-COM06-37202 3	ECOLE MATERNELLE	FR1	Approved Second run	42	2
2012-1-TR1-COM06-37202 1	Ayten Cagiran Anaokulu	TR1	Approved Second run	208	10
2012-1-TR1-COM06-37202 5	Edendork Primary School	GB1	Approved Second run	274	21
2012-1-TR1-COM06-37202 2	VRTEC Nova Gorica	SI1	Approved Second run	120	10
2012-1-TR1-COM06-37202 4	Hazelbury Infant School and Children’s Centre	GB1	Approved Second run	300	15