Activities for special learners

When we started the project, our main goal was to professionalize the team. We wanted teachers and therapists to get to know new activities and methodologies for children with a severe mental disa...

When we started the project, our main goal was to professionalize the team. We wanted teachers and therapists to get to know new activities and methodologies for children with a severe mental disability. Activities that we could use to stimulate the development of these children. We experience a gap in our training, and we want to enhance our competences, specifically for this target group. We also wanted everyone from the team to exchange experiences about the activities with the partners so they could learn from each other and expand their knowledge by sessions of intervision. Our third objective was to get to work with the new input seen at a visit. To implement the new activities in the home school, to get colleagues involved and motivated again. And last, as the coordinating country, we found it important to introduce new partners to the Erasmus programme and to experience this as an interesting exchange.

During each visit in a school, we focused on 2 or 3 activities. The guest school had the chance to present these activities by showing them in a class or/and presenting the theoretical background. Then one activity was chosen to try out by the partners in the guest school. This created an interesting atmosphere in working with the activity, we discussed different approaches, and every country had its own touch because of different cultural backgrounds. We took these activities back to our own schools to try out, adept and implement them. Therefore, we organised meetings with our colleagues to share our experiences and talk about possibilities for implementation in our school. We also made a guide with all the activities that we focused on. Here you can find more info and a ready made preparation of hokus pokus, BIM, laying down dance, tik tak and many more.

By doing this project and cooperating with transnational partners, we learned new activities and gained new ideas, new insights. But we also noticed that quite a bit of the activities was similar to each other. We learned that the small differences in these activities are very meaningful. Just with a few different points of interest or a new approach, an activity can be renewed and improved. That was exactly what we needed and what the kids will benefit from. We already knew that repetition is very important for our children. But by seeing these little differences, little adaptations, we are able to continue working on the same subject while we keep interest and motivation high for both the children and the colleagues. The most important thing we experienced during our visits was the different mindset in the different countries. We learned that not only the activity should be looked at but also that there is an influence by the way school is organised, by cultural point of view to the target group and his development and by the financing of the educational system. This results in a broader perspective and possible impact than we expected.