Introduction

Welcome to the SPIRIT project’s in-service teachers’ training module called “Activating Learning Activities to Develop Transversal Skills.” This module is about the capacity of learning activities, meaning active learning techniques and methods, to develop SPIRIT transversal skills of the 6-10 years old elementary students.

The SPIRIT “learning activity” approach (as the project partners interpret it) is an interactive, purposeful, curriculum-implementable short activity – meaning it can be used in any lesson – that involves student activities in individual, pair, small groups, or the entire class, which teaches through experience-based activities and joint discovery rather than passive knowledge transfer, thereby developing students’ skills. For the 6–10 age group students, this method is highly recommended and extremely effective because active participation builds a bridge between concrete experience and the understanding of concepts that are still abstract to them, while successfully focusing their easily distracted attention on the given lesson topic.

Beyond subject-specific connections, this method also fundamentally develops transversal skills: during group activities, students unconsciously practice paying attention to one another, emotional communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and problem-solving. They can develop their creativity and flexibility while becoming more open and tolerant of others’ thoughts and values. As a result, children not only understand academic material more easily, but their empathy and sense of belonging to the community also strengthen, shaping them into confident, open, cooperative, and mentally and emotionally healthier, happy people in the long run. In addition, well-designed activities provide an immediate sense of success, which in the long run motivates primary school children and makes them confident and open to further learning.

What to Expect

The SPIRIT in-service teacher training program is a blended learning program. Accordingly, like the other modules of the program, this one also includes online activities (individual and/or group work) and in-person training sessions. This module also consists of three parts: self-activities before the in-person training/workshop, in-person workshop activities, and individual or group online activities after the workshop.

In the Before the Workshop section, it consists of Read and Do tasks, and the educators have to complete two preparatory tasks:

1. Read – Learning activities for transversal skills development. This requires reading a short practical overview of the topic. This greatly helps participants be well prepared for the in-person workshop and get the most out of the training.
2. Do – Reflecting on Your Teaching Practice: Learning Activities and Transversal Skills. In this section, participating educators must consider their own teaching practices, as participants will be asked to complete related tasks during the in-person workshop

The Workshop Activities section is primarily addressed to the trainer leading the training and includes the practical and reflective activities that trainers must have participants complete during the training. These activities are designed to help participants to experience learning activities from the learner’s perspective on the one hand, and to analyse them from the teacher’s perspective on the other, as well as to reflect on how they can apply these in their own teaching practice. Through their own experiences, participants should discover how active learning activities and methods can support the development of the 10 SPIRIT skills and how they can be linked to curriculum content.

The After the workshop section includes two additional individual tasks: participants must select and adapt a learning activity, and then try it out with the children in their classroom. Specifically, these two tasks are as follows:

1. Do 1 – Adapt the activity to curriculum needs.
2. Do 2 – Implementation and reflection

Detailed descriptions of each task can be found here on the website and downloaded in PDF format.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this preparatory study, you will be able to:

• Understand the meaning of learning activities and the wide variety, and recognize that you are already using it as part of your practice
• Understand that learning activities are perfect for developing transversal skills and that they develop transversal skills in a complex way (not just one skill).
• Understand the role of the teacher during the learning activity in order to effectively support the development of the targeted skill.
• Understand the logic of the template and be able to use it effectively.
• Understand that learning activities can adapted to different contents
• Adapt and implement the learning activities in the toolbox in line with the needs of the children
• Reflect and assess the success of their application of the LA in real life, and be able to improve and refine their future practices