1. Context/background of the project: - the project meets the neccessity of continuous lifelong learning in the way of teachers` personal and professional development, meeting teachers from different European countries, exchanging ideas and experience, develop cooperation - implement new up-to-date topics and methods of teaching, including new technologies (ICT), and creativity in the classroom, raise students´ motivation - focus on the European culture and education in order to experience, understand and tolerate people of different cultures. 2. Objectives of the project: - acquire new teaching methods and ideas, skills and materials, teachers´ language skills improvement - to increase students` motivation to learn - thanks to meeting teachers form different European countries we hope to learn something new about their culture, and let them learn something about our cultural heritage - increase students and teachers´ motivation to cooperate on new projects - develop cooperation with other European teachers on new projcts - improve cultural education focussing on the European Community and increase students` awareness on that, in order to develop European dimension in education 3. Number and profile of participants: - two participants on two training activities - 1-week courses (´Empowerment in ICT Skills´, Malta; ´Language, Life and Culture in the UK Today´ , Oxford). The selection of participants was seriously done under formal selection taken by the school management staff, considering the strict criteria for personal and professional requirements, as well as the set project objectives. The most important criteria have been teachers experience with European projects, willingness to implement new methods into teaching, grow personally and professionally, motivate students and collegues. Another important fact is that they teach different subjects, not only English, so thus the new ways of teaching can be implemented into more school subjects. 4. Description of activities: - the participants´ pre-course prepration - studying the recommended literature, the survey - questionnaire preparation -for other course participants from different European countries (the questionnaire focused on different aspects of European cultures, traditions and way of life) - published in the e-book ´We Are Europeans´ (www.gympe.sk/Ersmus+) - the participants` attendance on two training activities, in Malta and the UK: -´Empowerment in ICT Skills´, Malta - concentrating on skills in technology, ICT improvement and its integrating into teaching, increasing students´ motivation, develop links and exchange ideas with other European teachers, language skills development... - ´Life and Culture in the UK Today´, Oxford - gaining new experience and knowledge, language improvement, new teaching ideas and motivating materials, exchanging ideas and developing links with other European teachers... - summarising gained information from the questionnaire and e-book preparation with the help of our students (presented during the European Day of Languages at our school) - students prepared interesting facts about chosen European countries to be published in the e-book focusing on similarities and differences of various European cultures, traditioins and their way of life which should lead into their understanding and tolerance (project teaching) - dissemination of the gained information, exhange experience with other colleagues on the school and local area through teachers´ meetings, implementation of new teaching methods - e-book publishing on our school website www.gympe.sk/Erasmus+ 5. Description of the results / impact: - increased knowledge and experience of the project participants, their personal and professional growth, better way of teaching - through dissemination and sharing gained materials, acquired knowledge and skills with other colleagues which results in enrichment of all teachers in our school, students and the whole school can benefit - increase European awareness within our school and the whole area through e-book publishing, texts in the local newspapers... - increase teachers and students´ motivation to cooperate in new European projects (at present we are preparing a new e-Twinning project with teachers from Portugal and Poland; we are also planning a new Erasmus+ project to involve more teachers and students from our school)