A Melting Pot
of teaching methodologies
Although maths and statistics were the foundations for this project, a desire to encourage
curiosity and cultural awareness amongst students lies at the very heart of it:
Teacher motivation
While the impact international projects such as these have for students are clear, there are also tremendous benefits for the schools and teachers themselves: “It makes my job a joy”, explained Ian. “I wake up in the morning not feeling the need to pull the duvet over my head and sob about how I’ve got to go to work, and the international element is part of the love of going to work. I feel that I’m learning as there are so many teaching methodologies out there that I would never otherwise encounter, so having access to an international project like this is like opening the door to a massive range of influences, a massive melting pot of ideas.” Since participating in eTwinning, the Academy at Shotton Hall has successfully secured substantial funding through Erasmus+ for a Key Action 2 project entitled ‘Smart Maths’. The project aims to build digital competency through the use of ICT and develop analytic mathematical thinking through problem solving. As well as giving students more tools and opportunities to travel (a field trip to Pompeii and visit to an observatory in Croatia are already on the cards) communication with their partners abroad will improve students’ linguistic ability.
“Working on eTwinning supported our Erasmus+ application by giving us a good portfolio of
projects”, Ian explained. “It also meant that we all shared information, for example on different
teaching methodologies, and were able to learn from one another through our partnerships.”
The school hopes that, through this funding, that students will also develop a sense of
entrepreneurship through solving problems which require initiative and innovative thinking:
“For about 150 years Peterlee has been an inward looking area”, Ian explained. “If we want to
give our students the opportunity to guide the 21st century, they can’t be inward looking: they
need to look out. All of these projects are designed with the sole purpose of giving our young
people the chance to see the world in a larger, less closed way, in order to be able to respond
to the needs of the 21st century.”
“My students absolutely loved the collaboration with their partner schools”, said Ian, “at first they ere a bit nervous but then they got into the swing of it and realised that these kids were just ids and that they had this opportunity to exchange ideas. So, in the end, the project not only mproved their maths, citizenship and life skills, it also increased their ambitions and their
expectations of where they’re going to go beyond school.” tudents greatly enjoyed the autonomy and the opportunity they had to shape their own earning through the project, such as by having free rein to set maths challenges for one nother, which ultimately made them feel they had real ownership of the project: The collaboration has allowed students’ curiosity to flourish and given them the confidence to d0 things that perhaps otherwise they wouldn’t do, and it has generated genuine excitement
and interest”, Ian said.
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