SM Paolo VI – Istituto Pavoni – Tradate

Looking for Partners in Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal.

Our school: We are a Lower Secondary School for students aged 10-14, in Tradate, near Varese, in the north of Italy. SM Paolo VI – Istituto Pavoni is a private school in a building that was once a castle still surrounded by a beautiful park. Our school is in Tradate, a town easily accessible by local trains from Milan Central Station and Malpensa Airport. Nice trips from here can be to Milan, Varese with its beautiful parks, and Como lake. There are around 300 students, 28 teachers (for morning lessons) and 20 educators (for afternoon study and homework). 

Our Erasmus project: 

We have obtained the Erasmus+ Accreditation (2023-2027). We are looking for partners for staff job shadowing and the mobility of two separate groups of students (12-14 years old). We are mainly interested in sharing ideas and good practices in the following fields, on which our Erasmus+ project is focused: 

– European dimension in education: fostering and supporting language teaching and learning and plurilingualism (our students study English and Spanish or German)

–  Flexible school schedule supporting student agency: thanks to a flexible re-organization of the school timetable, our students have the possibility of personalizing part of their curriculum (around 20%). 

– Personalized learning: differentiation of learning outcomes and activities, to meet students’ full potential in accordance with their abilities, strengths, stages of development, and identified learning needs.

Summary of your proposal 

We are looking for partners for staff job shadowing and the mobility of two groups of students  (12-14 years old). Our Erasmus+ goals are: European dimension in education (learning through English as European citizens); strategies for supporting student agency; strategies for differentiation such as understanding students’  learning needs and planning the appropriate activities. Our school has a KA121 accreditation for the 2023- 2027 Erasmus+ Project. 

What are we looking for in potential partners 

• Communication in English
• Support in hosting students in local host families
• Help in organizing possible half – day trips with host students in the surrounding area 
• Projects where students can work together to know the culture of the hosting country
• Wish to share and collaborate in the future

We are looking forward to doing the same mutually with 

• support in finding host families 
• projects in class to know places in the surrounding area
• visit of the places discussed during lessons 
• Communication in English 

We are looking for schools to host 2 teachers for job shadowing in June 2024 and two groups of students aged 12-14 (2024-2025). We would like to share projects and collaborate in the future, as well. We are ready to host teachers and students as well. 

We would like to find partners who have experience in incorporating differentiation strategies in the classroom to cultivate learning opportunities, in order to exchange knowledge and good practices (such as observing and identifying the similarities and differences among students and then using such knowledge to teach students, which best way in differentiating content, product, process or environment). 

We would like to find partners, experts in making students active agents in their learning, to share ideas and activities in a plurilingual, pluricultural and pluridisciplinary framework. On this path, we are also searching for STEM CLIL expert partners. 

We have some experiences in teachers’ mobilities, and one in students’ mobilities in March 2024. It is our second Erasmus project, the previous one (2019-2022) was about Project and Competence Based Learning, Innovative Approaches to Teaching, Benchmarking Finnish Education System and Creative methods in special needs education. Our school sent teachers in Erasmus+ courses and some colleagues are involved in Etwinning projects. We have also received several colleagues for Job Shadowing mobilities.