Mobilities

Our project includes also 3 group mobilities: 1 in Leuven (Belgium), 1 in Rhodes (Greece) and 1 in Jesi (Italy).

By bringing together both students and teachers from 3 different countries with different social and cultural backgrounds, we can create a bigger empathy for cultural diversity and improve pupils' overall and specific language competences.The collaboration between our three countries will:

- facilitate the development of stronger language teaching

- strengthen the insights and awareness of the challenges against global warming

- promote the exchange of good practices.

Moreover transnational cooperation and intercultural education:

- fosters European integration

- enables our three countries to jointly find solutions that go beyond borders

- produces new knowledge, shared experiences, enhanced capacities

- create a bigger empathy for cultural diversity.

Programme of the mobility in Leuven from the 3rd to the 6th of October 2023:

Tuesday 3/10

18:00:  Welcome and dinner together in the Campus Corso

Wednesday 04/10 

08:20-10:10: Meeting at school and getting to know each other with icebreaking activities focused on sustainability

10:20-10:40: Tour of the school

10:40-11:00: Break 

11:00-12:00: Guest speaker Simon Sterckx : Simon is senior UN Youth Representative for Sustainable Development More information: https://vlaamsejeugdraad.be/nl/team/simon-sterck 

12:10-13:20 Lunch break at school

13:20-15:10 Scavenger hunt (city tour with focus on ecological aspects of Leuven) 

15:10-16:05 checking the results of the scavenger hunt and awarding the winners

Thursday 05/10 

8:20-12:30: visiting the European Parliament with a green deal speaker. 

12:30-13:30: lunch in Brussels 

13:30-16:05: visiting the House of European History 

Friday 06/10 

8:20-16:05: guided tour in English and green activities at the Doode Bembde (a natural reserve near Leuven). 

18:00: Farewell dinner. The students cooked all together a sustainable meal at school.

Programme of the mobility in Rhodes from the 18the to the 22nd of March 2024:

Day 1. On the way to Rhodes. During the journey, the students were divided into groups, and each group interviewed some passengers with questions about the sustainability of air travel. Another group investigated sustainable practices implemented by airports and airlines to reduce environmental impact. The students collected material that they will use to create a video report in the coming weeks.
Day 2. Visit to the partner school in Rhodes where colleague Panos presented us with the results of their work (creation of an oven made with recycled material and renewable energy and a program for recycling organic waste from hotels to make fertilizers). Then, in the schoolyard, they offered us a practical demonstration of how to cook with their solar oven. In the afternoon, the students and Greek colleagues offered us a tour of the old town of Rhodes.
Day 3. In the morning, a guided visit to the Palace of the Grand Masters in Rhodes, where we learned about some aspects of Greek culture. In the afternoon, the students cleaned the beach of Rhodes, collecting 10 large bags of plastic. This was followed by a reflection on the impact of pollution on marine life and our lives.
Day 4. Visit to the Acropolis of Lindos with a reflection on how mass tourism affects the landscape and structure of the village beneath the acropolis. In the afternoon, we visited the natural springs with a reflection on the impact of climate change on the springs. After dinner, the students expressed and filmed their impressions on different aspects of the mobility. 7 videos in English and 6 in French.
Day 5. Return home. Also, during the return journey, the students collected material to be used for our report on sustainable travelling (see the video reportage edited by Vincent in "Gallery").

Individual mobility Italian coordinator

From June 17 to 20, the coordinator from our Italian partner school participated in an individual mobility to exchange best practices. During her visit, she observed the English oral exams to evaluate the effectiveness of our examination processes and assessment practices. Her goal was to learn more about our system of testing and assessment in the area of foreign languages. She aimed to determine how well our system measures students' knowledge and skills and how it supports their educational development. 

Here are the aspects that were taken into account: 

1. Clarity of objectives. If the assessment measures what it intends to evaluate. 

2. Validity. Whether the assessment measures what it claims to measure. For example, if the goal is to assess problem-solving skills, the assessment should be designed specifically to test those skills rather than just recalling facts. 

3. Fairness. The assessment should be fair to all students, which means it should be free from bias and should not give an undue advantage or disadvantage to any group of students. 

4. Transparency. It’s important that both the criteria and the scoring system are clear to all stakeholders, including students and their families. This transparency helps in understanding what is expected and how the evaluations are made. 

5. Comprehensive coverage. Whether the assessments cover all relevant aspects of the subject matter, ensuring a holistic evaluation of student performance. 

6. Practicality. The feasibility of the assessment method in terms of time, resources, and effort required should be considered. It should be efficient without compromising quality. 

7. Differentiation. Effective assessments can accommodate diverse learning styles and abilities, providing opportunities for all students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills. 

8. Feedback mechanisms. How feedback is provided to students. Good assessments not only evaluate but also help students learn by offering constructive feedback.

The outcome of her observation....

From June the 17^th  to 20^th I took part in an individual mobility at HDC in Leuven to observe  testing and assessment  practice in ESL. More specifically, I observed 5^th and 4^th grade students’ oral exams in Martina Giuliano’s classes. I was given an evaluation criteria grid, in order to observe the following areas: 

• Clarity of objectives
• Validity
• Fairness
• Transparency
• Comprehensive coverage
• Practicality
• Differentiation
• Feedback mechanisms

The students had several tasks to fulfil; some had to be completed at home, others were written on an exam sheet they had to sort out among others, 15 minutes before the exam. As an example, 5^th grade students had to start from a conspiracy theory they had made up (or found on the net); then, they had to briefly summarise a court case written on the printed set of tasks, underlining the charge and sentence they would pronounce, using the appropriate vocabulary. The students continued the exam describing a cover they had created. The cover was about a novel they had read, and it had to contain a quote from the novel they found particularly adequate, explaining the reason of their choice. Next, they had to pick up the elements from a passage that allowed them to label it as dystopian. Finally, they had to show the infographic of a real spy and summarise their biography. The oral exam ended with this task, though the students had also sent a podcast on their Erasmus experience. After having observed the exams, I can state the following: 

• objectives were explicitly communicated before the exam (the teacher had already sent students clear and thorough instructions on the tasks and the expected outcomes). When students didn’t stick to them, the teacher reminded them of what they had received, underlined the task again, reformulating it if necessary; moreover, the tasks always matched the objectives;
• the grid assessing the students’ skills was clear and  covered all the objectives, from language skills, to other competences such as originality for the conspiracy theory to creativity for the cover;
• the teacher’s evaluation was bias-free: she made the necessary accommodations with weaker students, reformulating when necessary and accepting responses when logical and reasonable, assessing skills and not opinions; when students didn’t spend all the time given, she gave them the possibility to speak further, never urging them to do so if they had nothing more to say;
• the students were given the grid through which they would be evaluated so that they knew the criteria through which they would be evaluated before their exam;
• the teacher’s evaluation was holistic and balanced, the grid didn’t cover only one skill or area;
• the time given to each task was adequate; the exam wasn’t too long but long enough to allow students to express their opinions and show their language skills;
• the tasks were varied, ranging from tasks to be completed at home to tasks that had a shorter time to be prepared; they accommodated different learning styles and competences, like digital skills, critical thinking or creative skills like drawing;
• the feedback given was always encouraging, underling the positive achievements rather than the weaker parts, though it must be said that the students’ level of English was very good.  

Having said that, observing the oral exams at HDM was an enriching experience from different points of view. In my school (but I would say in Italian schools in general) teachers tend to focus more on content than soft skills, especially with 5^th grade students that study literature. The Italian Ministry of Education is now focusing on soft skills and is trying to push teachers to plan activities that can help students develop them, though the national curriculum has not been changed to help teachers through clear guidelines and singular teachers or schools have to find new paths through a “trial and error” approach. The good practices I have learnt during my mobility can certainly be replicated in my classes. I found the tasks involving critical thinking skills particularly inspiring and I will reproduce them in my classes (though not as a preparation for the final exam, which in Italy focuses on content). As an example, asking students to create a cover for the novel they had read was not only a way to assess content and communicative skills but also life-long skills, which are even more important than the declarative knowledge acquired but easily forgotten by students.