From Zero We Start / Začnimo z rojstvom! is a school strategic partnership in Erasmus+, KA2. There have been three schools involved in our project. Zavod za gluhe in naglušne Ljubljana as coordinator and Vrtec Ledina from Slovenia and Paddock school from the United Kingdom. All partners have also kindergartens within their organizations, two are them are centers for educating special needs children. According to priorities from Erasmus+ programme, our project was oriented in improving education in kindergartens focusing in researching early language developement. The research field - early language development - is a field which should be researched more - in Europe and also around the world. We researched and developed a lot of small as well as biggger intelectual results. We prepared five intellectual result: guidelines for parents, guidelines for a preschool experts, guidelines for special needs. We also prepared a questionarre for early language development and the recommendation to nacional policies. WE broadly disseminatted our project from the beginnig to its end. A lot of Slovene and foreign participants attended our final conference in May 2017. We prepared two learning, teaching, training activities, one in Slovenia and one in United Kingdom. Our work has been carefully planned and management of the project forseen all activities as the coordinator is really experienced in European projects. All tasks have been shared between three partners. Research work has been mainly done by teachers, as an external expert dr. Ranko Rajović joined our project. Lizbon strategy and strategy Europe 2020 stresses social inclusion of special needs children, in our project we included: deaf and hard of hearing children, autistic children, children with cohlear implants and children with speech and language delays. Project duration was 1. 9. 2014 till 31. 8. 2017. The results have been available to all also in Moodle platform of Ljubljana School for the Deaf and on the platform of Erasmus plus projects.

The purpose of the project was to strengthen cooperation between early childhood education and care institutions in European countries by building a well working network between the project countries. The project was aimed at developing quality and innovation in second language teaching to children of ethnic minorities, migrant and deaf community in pre-primary education.The project addressed the specific objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy, especially the teaching and learning of languages, in the project case, the second language. It also addressed the priorities in the field of early education: access and quality in pre-school education, the importance of the language development during the earliest childhood period. The main objective of the project was to increase language teaching competences of pre-primary education for children with migrant background or ethnic minorities.Objectives:1) To promote networking of ECEC in European countries in language teaching acquisition for ethnic minorities in a transnational framework.2) To improve the accessibility of education by training educational staff for diversity and inclusion education challenges.3) To facilitate experience exchange of ECEC educational staff and to develop holistic and age appropriate collaborative approaches in state language acquisition. 4) To strengthen collaboration with parents to increase their participation in early childhood education and language learning.The partnership included 4 pre-primary educational establishments from 4 European countries (Latvia, Belgium, Norway and Slovenia). The project realized three main activities. The first activity “Project management”, the second - “Building teaching capacity” and the third - “Information and dissemination”. The first activity “Project management” was created to ensure smooth and transparent project implementation according to the application and approved budget. The second activity package - “Building teaching capacity” which consisted of LTT activities and local events was aimed at strengthening cooperation, exchanging experiences and elaborating new teaching methods and approaches in second language teaching in pre-schools. Third activity - “Information and dissemination” was aimed to inform about project and disseminate project results. To ensure dissemination of the project results and to inform the wider society about the project activities the Facebook page Erasmusplus was created, web pages of partners institutions were used, articles about project activities were published at newspapers and internet resources in partner countries.The project results:Increased language teaching competences in pre-primary education for children with migrant background or ethnic minorities: 1) Educational staff of ECEC have obtained new knowledge and teaching materials in state language teaching as a second language in a holistic and age appropriate approach;2) Educational staff of ECEC have strengthened their capacity and skills in diversity and inclusion education;3) An online platform http://www.zgnl.si/moodle/course/view.php?id=285 created for networking and sharing experiences and methods internationally on second language teaching for children from migrant or ethnic minorities groups;4) Raised capacity of ECEC institutions in Europe implementing language teaching programmes;5) Increased level of state language knowledge of children with ethnic minorities’ background;6) Parents have received help and information on early childhood language education;7) 4 Learning/Teaching/ Training Activities have taken place in 4 countries with 49 visiting teachers involved;8) 4 transnational project meetings have been organized in 4 countries with 40 participants;9) 2 project reports prepared.Impact foreseen in the project:1) The quality of early childhood education and care have strengthened and serious long-term contribution to developing basic and transversal skills in inclusive language education was provided locally and in Europe.2) The project has created a wider network of all stakeholders in inclusive education that will continue cooperation and will organize joint activities after the project in national and European level. 3) The project has influenced other organisations, schools and have an impact on a larger scale (attitudes in society, curriculum, teacher training, political decision making, ministries in charge, etc.) in each partner country and in Europe in general. 4) The European educational cooperation was strengthened and a serious long term contribution in the establishment of a European educational region in inclusive education was provided.5) The project contributed to implementation of social integration policy in each partner country and in Europe.

The project Methods used in education of children with multiple disabilities plan of all schools followed the long-term plan of development and furthereducation of pedagogical staff. The main impetus for the schools involvement in the project was the requirement to acquire new knowledge in the field of special education. The main goal was to improve existing knowledge, acquire new ones and support the motivation of teachers in teaching children with multiple disabilities. The project was prepared as a two- year mobility period. 4 mobilities were planned in four different destinations (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia).The output of the project is a brochure that can be used by all teachers to implement new teaching methods and others interested in working with children with multiple disabilities. The brochure is meant for special education teachers, tutors, assistants who are workingwith children who require special educational methods regarding their prime and additional disability and for those who have no previous experience in working with students with special needs.Project was created on a basis of common and individual experiences, sharing knowledge in thes trategic partnership / school cooperation. Methods that were described were being presented to the project participants during international project meetings and in betweenthese meetings during the project. The team involved in these activities was composed of special educators, teachers, psychologists, social workers, vocational school teachers, speech therapist, interpreters, school counseling staff and other specialists. Various didactic methods have been presented. Partners selected the most useful ones for their institutions and adapted them to the individual target groups.We hope that the project will bring long-term benefits for all involved, such as the inclusion of methods in the school curriculum, but mainly increase the quality of education for children with multiple disabilities.

The aim of TRAP UP (Transnational Professional Upgrading Project) is to ensure and secure deaf and hard of hearing (from now on: DHH) children, access in life, educationally and socially.The overall aims of TRAP UP is to:1.Raise awareness and increase knowledge about how teaching methods can be used within the DHH teaching profession to improve the quality of teaching.2.Increase motivation for teachers by upgrading their special knowledge within teaching DHH children.3.Collect and share the great diverse knowledge of best practice for teaching DHH children, within a transnational perspective.4.Create the best possible school life for children who are DHH .5.Create the best possible life for children who are DHH, accessibility from the UN Goals https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/disacc.htmThe field of teaching and preparing DHH children for adult life with the competences, this requires, is struggling, partly because of the increasing inclusive teaching paradigm. We wish to address this challenge by securing and qualifying transnational knowledge sharing at European level. Many children who are deaf or who are hard of hearing also have other challenges. Approximately one third of the DHH children have some sort of genome deficit or learning disability that demands special needs attention in the local schools with included children who are DHH (Andersen, 2014 & Cole & Flexer, 1999). The children are having a hard time to get access to the sourroundings, what is beeing tougt, the social communication and becomming the ultimate version of who they can be in life(Anderson 2015). Our mission is to help the access for these children through this project.This is a struggle we, all 4 partners: The School for the Deaf Ljubljana, Slovenia, State Development Center, Hearing and Communication, Germany, Valteri-koulu Onerva, Finland, Center for Communication and Welfare Technology, Denmark, identified and agreed upon in december 2019 at our second meeting in Slovenia. We would like to develop better ways to help this group of children in the best possible way and document this proces and share this knowledge on a web based platform. All 4 partners have been working with this group of children for several years. All 4 insitutions have a consulting function, that visits these children in the inclusion system. We all work with several schools who include DHH children. In the preparation phase each partner organization reaches out to some of these schools in order to make agreement with them, that they will serve as test schools in the project. In collaboration with the teachers in these classes we will execute testing periods based upon the test design that is prepared in the preparation phase. By working with user involving methods, and using co-creation, we make sure that the users get to know their own needs and they are at the same time able to give feedback while they are testing and implementing the tools.Our products will be:- Teacher training material on inclusion of DHH children in ordinary primary schools (e.g e-learning)The teacher training material is aimed towards teachers who work with inclusion of DHH children.- Distance education concept that aims to teach the individual partners how to implement distance education as an extra service in the individual organizations. Distance education is a necessary tool to reach all DHH children in our countries, but it has been difficult for many to find the right technological solution.- Classroom design concept. A documented guide that describes the best way to design classrooms to include for DHH children.- Differentiated materials for learning, e.g. books with visual stories and with sign language. The materials will be in English with a template for translation into any language.Every organization will get new tools and materials for teaching DHH children in different contexts. This means that the quality of the teaching and counselling will improve in general. The services that the counselling units provide towards inclusive schools will get more flexible, formalized and more standardized as they are getting conzeptualized new tools. This means a higher standard of counselling which leads to better inclusion for DHH pupils in inclusive schools.We hope to improve the quality of teaching within primary and secondary schools by focusing on knowledge, materials and new tools to improve the DHH children’s learning curve and their satisfaction, motivation, and results.The main target group for the project activities are school teachers in primary and secondary schools with DHH children and counsellors, who will benefit from the project through concrete competence development by developing new tools and concepts for their everyday practice. Finally the project seeks to include associated partners in the dissemination proces, to secure impact and sustainability on a broad level across Europe.

Smart Child + is a project in Erasmus +, a key action 2 of a strategic partnership between schools only. Four partner organizations from Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Italy have exchanged good practices in a three-year project. The coordinator of the project was Ljubljana school for the Deaf, which cooperated with the kindergarten unit, the Galjevica kindergarten from Ljubljana, the Andilek kindergarten from Prague and the kindergarten at the school - Al. Gatto from Salerno. All organizations are highly experienced in applying and managing projects and have already participated in at least one Erasmus + project, most of them in more than four. The partnership of experienced organizations has enabled us to develop a program to strengthen children's potential in preschool, addressing two key aims, improving the quality of pre-school education and strengthening the teaching profession. We have started from the problem of all of Europe, that the potential of our children is not used enough. To keep up with Europe 2020's sustainable growth goals, we need to start with the youngest. Each of the partner organizations is an extraordinary expert in one area, so with the help of an international partnership, we have upgraded the areas into a single program with recommendations on what we can do to optimally develop the child. We organized 4 training, learning and teaching activities and included important topics for the professional development of participants in the program. At the meetings, we exchanged examples of good practices , also with the help of two external experts, We added the necessary theory with a help of dr. Ranko Rajović from Serbia and Andreja Semolič from Slovenia, They also led workshops and participated in the final conference. Other areas were covered by the partner organizations themselves.At four international project meetings, we have upgraded our project management, controlled the quality of the project and evaluated the events. Dissemination was also of great importance, and we have drawn up a plan and also included European networks through which we have disseminated the project internationally. All partner organizations also disseminated the project in their other projects. Thus, outside the borders of the three countries, they were able to learn about our child development program, the materials we produced in the Moodle online classroom and our project management. The project lasted from 1.9. 2016 and ended on August 31, 2019. In April 2019, we also held a final conference in Ljubljana.