Blog

The end of the year at the youth center is a difficult and emotional time. On the one hand, this is when the youth finish school and are happy and fulfilled - yes, they did it!

But at the same time, this is a stage when they are required to say goodbye to the young volunteers at the youth center because they are at the end of their year of volunteering. The young volunteers are starting to prepare for army recruitment and feel stressed before three years of military service.

by Michal Meishar & Dolly Levi, Levinsky College

Toward the parents' meeting at the end of the school year, we set up an exhibition of the children's LU products as part of the KIDS4ALLL project at the school.

During the preparation phase of the exhibition - in class, we presented the idea to the children. They had to choose learning outcomes to share with the parents. The buddy checked their folder and decided together. They wrote an explanation next to the learning outcomes so the parents would understand the subject, competence, and what was learned. The buddies were helping to set up the exhibition with other maintenance workers at the school.

It is important to note that during the organization phase, the other teachers at school came to the children and asked them questions. Therefore, the children had to explain to the teachers, which was good practice for the meeting in the evening with the parents. Also, in the teachers' room, despite the pressure before the parents' meeting and the final preparations, there were spontaneous conversations with fellow teachers who complimented the initiative. We were happy and proud to be a part of this powerful project.

by Michal Meishar & Dolly Levi, Levinsky College

“Alone or together?!” While translating content for the KIDS4ALLL learning platform in our German team at the University of Jena, this was a recurrent question. The KIDS4ALLL platform offers a variety of content from eight subject areas – competences – that children and teenagers can choose from and then work with in groups of two – the buddy teams. During the translation process, we sometimes wondered: Are the buddy teams targeted by a certain learning unit supposed to do a particular task together or independently of one another?

In the English units that served as a basis for translations to German and other languages, this was not always clear. That is because in English, the pronoun ‘you’ allows no distinction between plural and singular (and context is key to understanding). German, however, not only has ‘du’ for the informal singular you, but also ‘ihr’ for the informal plural you and ‘Sie’ for the formal singular and plural you. This was just one of several challenges that we faced while translating and proofreading the German learning units, but that other teams such as the Italian one surely must have struggled with as well.

by Annika Wappelhorst, University of Jena 

Within the many collaborations built through KIDS4ALLL, the Levinsky-Wingate college in Tel Aviv has started a partnership with Hagalil school in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. In this article we talk about the project presentation day, dwelling on the teachers’ reactions and opinions about KIDS4ALLL activities. Enthusiasm and passion have driven this important occasion!

By Michal Meishar

Louisa from Germany shares her experiences teaching Hebrew as an additional language in Israel at the Levinsky-Wingate Academic Center and belongs to the educational team leading the KIDS4ALLL international project.

by Louisa Leuchtenberg

By Sotiris Petropoulos, Katerina Doundi and Asteris Huliaras

The European Commission recently decides to make 2023 the Year of Skills. The overall purpose is to support the full participation of citizens in the economic life of countries while countering all forms of discrimination (particularly those concerning women and young people).

KIDS4ALLL welcomes this initiative, being in full harmony with the European mainstream on skills, as it aims at implementing the 8 key skills for life long learning in different learning contexts, formal, non-formal and informal, with an approach that involves all the actors of the educational process.

In a globalized world, children are immersed in an intercultural reality, at school and outside of school. In order to relate successfully to diversity, cultural competence must be acquired and developed with a view to lifelong learning. In this process, teachers and educators play a key role. At the same time, they also need continuous learning to develop a global competence, so that it can be passed on to new generations. For this reason, training trainers is a key step in the process of acquiring cultural awareness, which fosters a more inclusive society and school.

by Stella Pinna Pintor, Tiziana Lorusso, Viviana Premazzi

Parental involvement in the education of their children among all sections of the population is of great importance in the professional literature, which shows that parents who maintained contact with the school were involved, volunteered, attended meetings with educators, assisted, or had a positive impact on the children's education. This involvement is especially important when it comes to children and adolescents from a low socioeconomic setting of a minority culture, in groups that are on the social fringes. For example, migrant parents lack the knowledge, skills, and social support to deal with the difficulties posed by the receiving society.

by Dolly Eliyahu-Levi & Michal Ganz-Meishar, Levinsky College of Education