‘Our cultures-our treasures’ is a two-year project which brings together schools from Slovenia,Greece,Estonia,Portugal,Spain and Croatia,whose team members have worked on an on going eTwinning project.It focuses on the promotion of social inclusion through cultural diversity with the aim to exchange best practices on teachers’/pupils’ level and develop a feeling of inclusion among partners.Our main objectives are:-To enhance the social and educational value of European cultural heritage through education,lifelong formal/non-formal learning,including actions to support social skills development and assist our students’ cultural awareness,thus narrowing the cultural gap between the countries involved and open up to diversity. -To promote the social inclusion of our students,support our disadvantaged ones(disadvantaged socio-economic background,learning difficulties,lower level of qualifications or poor school performance)foster diversity and equality by applying culturally sensitive pedagogical approaches,that can ensure our education programs have built-in spaces to include all learners’ voices and perspectives. Our project activities are based on four main blocks that cover the most important part of our cultural heritage:traditional dances/music,museums/monuments,fairy tales,traditional cuisine.Through the activities designed in each block,students will know about their country/other countries in a real context with the objective to improve the target language,identify European linguistic diversity and become aware of the importance of learning European languages.Experiential learning through art and culture will serve as a starting point in the co-creation of culturally conscious and aesthetically sensitive individuals.It will enhance lifelong learning competences,in particular those related to cultural awareness and expression,which includes extending personal growth,cooperation,adaptability and self-evaluation,constructive control of emotion,innovation,creativity and intercultural communication.All activities,that will become the final project products,are designed in order all three main learning styles,visual(DVD’s on our schools/towns/countries,DVD’s on presentations of cultures of hosting countries during meetings,documentary films,digital books)audio(CD’s of local traditional songs/music,CD’s with mother tongue language lessons)and kinesthetic(dance/cooking sessions,drama performance)to be involved and utilized,further ensuring the inclusion of every participating student.During the two years’ period of cooperation,all participants will elaborate specific common project activities,exchange work and contact through extensive communication in the English language via Twinspace,which shall improve their language skills and Learning/Teaching/Training activities.A number of mobilities will be organized to help participants meet physically with different cultures,understand and accept the tangible and intangible heritage aspects of European countries.For realization of a project aiming to an inclusive education,through cultural heritage,teachers will create a virtuous synergy of the most significant instances proposed by the different active and innovative student's centred teaching methodologies such as:Outdoor Learning,Peer Learning,Cooperative learning,CLIL,Learning by doing and PBL(project based learning). All activities will be integrated in the project website(connected with social media:Facebook,Twitter,Instagram)and eTwinning portal.Both digital platforms will be structural elements for interoperability of content and design among partners,significant elements of union and exchange of project processes to partners,communities and bigger audiences.They'll be open to consultation and expanded in their content,which will be in English,by teachers and students.Its expansion will remain available for periodic and final spread. The main envisaged impact on the participants will be cultural consciousness and awareness,to realize that they belong to a world without borders and should live positively with respect and tolerance to others.Our students’ horizons,especially our disadvantaged ones will be broadened,by giving them the opportunity to be introduced to different cultures and communities.The promotion and diffusion of innovative programs and interventions as well as alternative pedagogical and teaching practices shall encourage teachers to take initiatives and integrate innovation into their teaching activities and goals,reflect their expectations about the long-term impact of the project results on their schools after the completion of the project.Gaining contrasting knowledge and understanding among participating students,teachers,communities and educational authorities of the cultural,linguistic and educational diversity of the participating countries and schools will increase social cohesion and will considerably strengthen the sense of belonging to the same united community.

“Manual skills in 3.0 web age “, a heavy title for a meaningful three-year project.From September 2016 to August 2019 IC of Castelcovati led the following primary schools: 4o DIMOTIKO SCHOLIO of Edessa (Greece), Moorfield Primary school of Widnes (England), Agrupamento de Escolas Soares of Braga (Portugal) and Szkola Podstawowa of Pazskowka (Poland), in a project that proposed laboratory paths with the aim of underlining the connection between cognitive development and manual skills through the creation of artifacts, from the simplest to the most complex, in an increasingly digital age.The needs analysis carried out in the involved schools has indeed brought to light the necessity to recover various manual skills, essential to achieve effective personal, social and future professional autonomy. An increasingly evident difficulty in the resolution of simple problems or daily and concrete troubles has in fact been noted in the studentsOn the other hand, nowadays there is instead an innate predisposition to the digital field that in many cases allows a faster analysis and a theoretical solution of problematic situations.We then entered an experimental path, both for teachers and pupils, promoting situations to be faced with the help of digital technological tools to develop and use the key and life competences, in which the experience becomes value and sharing and the manual skills become a cognitive process.The recovery of simple tools and technologies has effectively turned into a powerful inclusive communication channel, where hands and other sensory organs have replaced words and allowed many foreign students to actively and enthusiastically participate in the learning proposals.During these three years the students of our schools have chosen different types of activities in which they have been designers and creators of various kinds of artifacts in artistic, scientific, musical, historical, technological, and theatrical field, in sewing, recycling, disassembly, bicycle repairing and folder bag making.The students were the real protagonists of concrete operative proposals based on problem solving, whose aim was not the product but the path designed and carried out by using innovative methodological techniques, already known but not often used.We are talking about the Cooperative Learning with objective and defined criteria, according to which pupils work in small teams with assigned tasks and for which they are responsible; we are talking about upside-down classes, in which the students personally build knowledge and skills in an active way; we are also referring to educational methods such as the Brainstorming, used to start any operative proposal in order to probe and share knowledge and content; and last but not least CLIL, the acronym of Content and Language Integrated Learning, a methodology that makes use of the English language to teach different school subjects, which allows both the acquisition of disciplinary contents and the learning of the foreign language.For our project the English language also played the role of the vehicular language through which pupils and teachers entered into communication. Needless to say, the more one is exposed to the use of a different language, the more it becomes less unknown and distant.For teachers also, in recent years we have seen an increase in the knowledge of English, thanks to conversation courses and CLIL methodology courses held by native British speakers.All the carried out activities have been planned, shared and proposed in the five partner schools, diversifying according to the needs of the students themselves. At the beginning of each school year, project meetings were organized among teachers from all the five countries in turn in the various school locations, in order to plan annual courses; in the same way in the spring months the short-term mobilities took place to allow the meeting of small representatives of pupils.These were special occasions for the students, certainly not trips for tourists, but intense, tiring days, during which they had the chance to live next to new European friends, attending their schools, staying by their families and showing their own creations, as well as the route taken and the skills acquired.During the last year the schools created together a unique multi-language and multiple-hands theatrical artifact, complete with scenographies, music, dances, costumes, staged in Italy during the last short-term exchange of the students.Particular attention was paid to the inclusion of foreign students in the project, both in school activities and in the selection for mobility.In each partner country the involvement of the many local associations, parents and administrations was essential.