Project description

The Erasmus+ project “Essential Life Skills” will be conducted in the partnership of six secondary schools from Poland, Finland, Greece, Italy, Lithuania and Slovakia. The aim of the project is to cooperate and share the learning and teaching knowledge and experiences in the field of practical life skills – a subject often neglected in the schools’ academically-oriented curricula. This way, we intend to equip teenage students with certain life skills and key competences, in order to prepare them for successful, self-efficient adulthood.

The three main areas of life skills that the project focuses on are: daily living skills, personal and social skills and occupational skills. Those life skills will be obtained by the students during work in the schools’ Essential Life Skills Groups, as well as during their learning/teaching and training activities. Our cooperation is a result of previous project cooperation, as well as partner search on eTwinning platform and social networking devoted to Erasmus+ partnerships.

After establishing common goals and needs, we designed basic framework and guidelines for the project and began working on the application form. The project is designed for a two-year period during which we will cooperate both virtually and personally in order to achieve our objectives. In each partner school we will establish Essential Life Skills Groups, in which students and teachers will work together and study on the project subjects. The Groups will work together using social networks, the internet, online calls, project website etc. The students and teachers will also have the opportunity to work together during 5 Learning/Teaching/Training short-term student and teacher events. During them, the participants will have an opportunity to work on the given subjects and to practice their foreign language and teamwork skills.

The students and teachers’ work and studies in the given countries will focus on the following topics: Healthy nutrition, Self-management, Home economics, Career orientation. There will also be three transnational project meetings for the coordinators and teachers held during the project duration. They will monitor the general schedule of the project, clarify and supervise the evaluation criteria for the implementation and assessment of the project, its final products and the contribution of the project to the students’ key competences. The management team will also overview the distribution of the project tasks among all the partners, the course of all the activities and the means of project dissemination.

The project coordinators together with all the participating teachers will be in charge of the formal course of the project and the rest of tasks is completed by the students. Thanks to this international cooperation students will gain practical life skills necessary for everyday existence, which our young learners often lack. Moreover, they will obtain cross-cultural awareness and personal experience in the project areas, which will broaden their minds and abilities as well as their communication and language skills.

The project will be beneficial not only for the students but also for the teaching staff. They will learn and share good practices, experience and knowledge with their peers from other countries. Moreover, they will communicate and cooperate with all the partners when working on the project. With our project, we expect the following outcomes: Tangible results will be, among others, a project website with all the information about the project and its results (e.g. lesson plans, posters, presentations, videos etc.) that will be continuously updated, a detailed guidebook on practical life skills for both students and teachers, all the outcomes obtained during LTT activities (photos, reports etc.).

Intangible results of the project will be students’ and teachers’ knowledge, skills and experience gained during project work. Throughout the whole project all the partners will stay in contact, providing each other with help and support.

Project objectives

The aim of our project is quipping our students with certain life skills essential for their further development and well-being. The students taking part in the project will develop key competences as reflected in life skills and become prepared for successful self-sufficient adulthood. Three main areas of life skills we will include in the project are:

  1. Daily living skills -we aim to: – equip our students with necessary skills and knowledge on what constitutes a healthy diet, basics of cooking, food preparation, safety and hygiene, preparing their own healthy meal plan; – prepare students for managing their own finances, establishing and maintaining a personal budget.
  2. Personal and social skills – we aim to teach students: – self-management (self-confidence, dealing with their emotions, assertiveness, problem-solving, creativity, team-building), – good manners (how to behave in public places, kindness and respect for all people despite cultural differences, proper social behaviour).
  3. Occupational skills – we want to equip students with basic knowledge concerning successful job searching, such as writing a CV or a covering letter, dressing for a job interview, as well as career guidance (choosing the next step in their education according to their interests and aptitudes).

Teachers involved in the project will provide and learn good practice examples of innovative teaching and learning methods in the area of life skills development. The project participants will also work with the same European tools and improve their IT skills while working with modern technologies and technological devices.