Publication Date June 07 2021
From 26 - 30 April 2021, Jeta e Re Gymnasium in Suhareka, a partner school in the USAID financed ‘’After School Support for Teens’’ – ASSET‘’ program, was engaged in carrying out projects for the Project Week. The ASSET program representatives visited students and teachers on 28 April 2021 to monitor the Project Week implementation process.
The Project Week was manifested based on the knowledge gained by teachers from the Project based teaching training. This has turned out to be one of the most effective methods, helping students to apply critical thinking, be creative and able to solve different problems. During this process, students had the chance to particularly develop and apply soft skills required for life and work, such as: teamwork, problem solving, creativity, communication, responsibility toward work and others, etc., which directly contributes to the development of the key competences in school curriculum.
Taking this into account, the Suhareka Gymnasium developed three projects applying this method:
1. Negative Phenomena in Society - What is the Attitude of Students towards Smoking?
2. Geometrical Shapes and Determination of Volume through Geometrical Shapes
3. Albanian Traditional Culture.
Thus, the project work means that it is the student who presents the topic and the platform, as well as the final material. This is what students of this school did in this activity. Students and teachers enthusiastically shared with the representative of the Program the process of carrying out and finalising their final projects, pointing out their experiences and results achieved. In three different classrooms, students were working to finalise their projects and they waited for the Program representative and school management to present their 2 months work in details.
Methodical progress of Project based teaching
Alketa Kololli, a student in this gymnasium, told us in details about her and other students’ engagement.
‘’When the project work started, we respected the anti COVID measures and we were divided in groups, allowing for each participating student to be engaged. The first step taken was the development of a questionnaire in Google Forms based on the knowledge we had gained from the ICT subject and other researches’’ – she said. Then, Adea continued, we electronically distributed the questionnaire.
By working in this project, respectively ‘What is the attitude of students towards smoking’ project, we have developed our communication skills, we have learned to listen to each-other and receive feedback’ – Adea stated at the end.
The final projects’ exhibition took place on 30 April 2021 at gymnasium environments. A large banner promoting the event was standing at school hall, and participating students proudly presented their wonderful work in front of their peers, teachers and management.
A corner was dedicated to Albanian Culture, presenting various traditional motives. Students had gathered antic pottery, traditional clothing collected from their families. They also presented various manifestations, such as Girls Night, lullabies, etc. Here you can watch the video of the Project Week exhibition published by the Gymnasium.
At the end, the school management said that the Project Week was an integral part of curriculum and that its organization will become a tradition because this activity will be included in annual school plans.
