Extracurricular Activities in the international context – systemic approach and documentation - to increase intercultural awareness among students The "Europa School" Hermann-Böse-Gymnasium considers cooperation with partner schools from a range of European countries in the area of extracurricular activities and personality development to be an excellent opportunity. During our visits to partner schools we will pay particular attention to the ways in which the personality of individual pupils is developed and reinforced outside the daily teaching programme. From our first discussions it was clear that our partner schools were successfully implementing a series of strategies, particularly in sport, the arts and social engagement. In the course of lesson observations colleagues want to establish whether there are programmes available in the Middle school (from Year 7 in Germany), which offer pupils appropriate guidance on future studies and careers. In addition colleagues want to know what value is placed on pupils' extracurricular activities and are also interested in learning how these activities are integrated into everyday school life so as to promote intercultural competence. Our aim is to find out to what extent this can be not only of theoretical value to Hermann-Böse-Gymnasium but also be transferable into the every day life of our school. We want to further develop our pupils' personalities and at the same time motivate both teachers and pupils to render a substantial contribution to ensuring the quality of learning not just in the classroom but also outside it. To achieve this goal ten teachers will take part in different training activities over a two-year period. Eight teachers will each spend a week in partner schools in France, Finland, Spain, Italy and Turkey. During these visits they will observe lessons in order to familiarise themselves not only with how activity-based "empowerment" can be firmly established in a school but also with the relevant documentation. Special attention will be given to the areas of sport, the arts and social engagement. As a "Europa School" we want to use this experience to further develop our pupils' intercultural competence. The project coordinator will coordinate and document all activities and will take part in an appropriate training programme for coordinators in order to strengthen her project management abilities. By mutual agreement the German and Italian schools will each host a one-week visit including teaching assignments, in which they will exchange experiences and provide their colleagues with training. The activities we have described will enable the participants in our transnational project meetings to broaden their social, methodological and language competencies. They will become familiar with techniques and structures which promote independent learning relevant to the environment they live in. They will use these skills themselves in our school and also pass them on to their colleagues within the school. Furthermore the participants, through their participation in teacher training sessions and in Erasmus working groups, will pass on the contents of the training programmes not simply in the school but throughout the federal state of Bremen. The outcomes of the transnational project meetings are to lead to the development and creation of a template for a folder in which pupils from our school can document their extracurricular activities. The folder is to be made available to partner schools for them to use, in modified form, for their documentation and will also be presented to other schools in Bremen and in the partner schools' own regions as part of our dissemination process.