5th LTT - Zajecar, Serbia
During the LTT activities in Zajecar, participants had a short walk through school, entered every classroom and talked to students about their countries and educational systems. They also visited several lessons to see how educational system in Serbia works, and to share good practice examples with the colleagues. Teachers observed the English lesson with preschoolers which were held by students as a part of the activity English by Teens. After that they participated in a panel discussion during which students talked about their experience, how they felt at the beginning of this activity, how they prepared lessons, what skills they developed, and what the benefits of getting the opportunity to teach are. They also attended several workshops – origami and Young physicists (they did various experiments). We visited an archaeological site Lepenski Vir where the participants found out about the settlement, the culture of Lepenski Vir and its sculptures dating from 7000 BC. Then we visited the Golubac Fortress, a medieval fortress, which was built at the entrance of the Iron Gate gorge, a place where the Danube is the widest. After visiting the National Museum and an archaeological site Felix Romuliana participants took part in a mosaic workshop, and they tried to make mosaics they saw there by themselves and got the ideas which they can implement when they return to their schools. Scratch workshop were held during which all the participants learned the basic steps which they can use with the students to familiarize them with the engaging world of coding using scratch, thus developing teamwork, problem solving and self confidence in students. During the workshop Gamefication and game-based learning participants worked in pairs and prepared questions for a board game called “Small Researchers – Great discoveries” which will be presented during the last mobility in Slovenia and which can be used by all the participants. Kahoot quiz was a good chance for all to show what they learned during their stay in Serbia. They also visited Nikola Tesla’s Museum saw a short video about his inventions as well as some demonstrations of his inventions.
Observing the lessons the participants learned a lot about education in Serbia, got the opportunity to share their ideas with Serbian colleagues, but also to gain new ideas and to incorporate them later in their work. They also worked in teams and groups thus developing their language skills, social skills, communication and collaboration. During the Scratch workshop teachers got acquainted with the basis of programming and tried to create the game and use it later or try to make similar games with their students and develop digital skills. Through mosaic and origami workshops they learned about mosaics, techniques and how to develop creativity. Gamefication and game-based learnig gave them ideas how to use games in their everyday work in order to motivate students, but also to be creative and make a new game which all the participants can use with the students to help them learn new things about the countries that are a part of this project and also to develop it later and use it in some other contexts.