The project 'Gardening: Culture and Science' is about creating cross-curricular good practices in 7 European schools. In each school there will be a group of students (approximately 20-25 students/school) who will carry out the project guided by teachers. Teachers in the fields of science, language, mathematics and history will be involved in the project and they are responsible for the quality of activities carried out. This project is about gardens, gardening. The basic idea is how a few seeds, after some time and hard work turn into a harvest. What are the cultural and scientific aspects of such activities? How does each country deal with vegetables in the garden, in the kitchen, in folklore, in culture? What are the similarities and differences in the growing situation of these plants in each European country? Each partner school chooses a culture plant typical of their national/regional cuisine: vegetable, fruit, herb, flower etc. Plants will be chosen before the first meeting. Key points to consider when choosing a plant: it must be edible, typical in the partner country and it must grow from seed to harvest in one year (if possible one that grows between September and June). Three types of activities will be carried out simultaneously: 1. Gardening Each school shall determine the possibilities for a school garden. The structure of the garden should be planned and built by students. This is where they will carry out their observations/experiments. At the project meetings students exchange seeds of all the cultural plants and give presentations on their ideal growing conditions. They also discuss some expectations on how each cultural plant will live and grow in each school's garden. Students will plant the seeds and carry out examinations the same way. The following measurements, examinations will be carried out by the students: - plant growth chart - examination of the growing medium - temperature chart - measuring hardness of irrigation and rain water - sunshine hours chart This will allow for international comparison of European plants grown in various conditions. Each school provides their results to the country which chose the plant who will then carry out European comparisons of the provided data. We will also create a mini e-Twinning project to teach members how to create time lapse photography/video to be used in the project. This would show the growth of the culture plants. 2. Culture At each meeting students will work on the role of their plant in national culture. They will do research on their plant pertaining to its role in history, agricultural traditions, folklore, folk arts and the medicinal uses thereof. They will hold short presentations for which they will design short quizzes or games based on the presentation. The gastro-culture role of the plant will be covered in the cooking programs in which students from various countries show each other how to cook different types of food using the culture plant. This can be carried out in the school building or at host families via cooking contests in mixed groups. Furthermore, arts and crafts sessions can be held to show the traditional representation of plant motifs to each other. 3. Agricultural research Each country will carry out interviews and use questionnaires to compare their agriculture with the others. Two schools can work in partnership and create a series of questions that will be asked in each country. Possible interviewees: - agricultural engineers, - produce dealers, - small share farmers, - agrarian politicians/lawyers, - the man on the street. The students of the partner schools should work together, developing the questionnaires via eTwinning or other ICT tools. They create the interviews in partnership and present them at the project meetings. During the presentations the partner schools can point out some critical opinion which should be considered before finalizing the interview. The final interview should be conducted in each country and the results will be tallied, compared and presented by the partner schools responsible for the interview. One of the final products will include the school gardens in each school which will be further used. There will be a web-site where all the results of the gardening, the examinations, the time lapse videos, the cultural and historical background information, the results of the agricultural research and the actions made on the project meetings will be shown. On the web-site there will be also a teacher's page where the project will be described in details to help other schools use this project. The other final product will consist of information, descriptions/instructions on how to carry on this project on a national/regional/institutional level, that is how to implement these good practices. This will also contain exaples of how we expanded the good practices to the international level.
The main objective of the project 'Gardening: Culture and Science' was to create two cross-curricular good practices with inquiry-based and project based learning and teaching methods. Using projects as a method within inquiry-based learning students participate from the very beginning, from planning to project assessment playing seminal roles in the process, planning, carrying out and managing various work phases. Being involved like this in their assignments motivated our students to be more precise, interested and to take responsibility for their studies. Teachers involved in this project had the opportunity to help their students as facilitators instead of the traditional role of leaders/controlleurs of the learning activities. Seven secondary schools participated in this project. - Közgazdasági Politechnikum Alternatív Gimnázium és Szakközépiskola (Budapest, Hungary) - Het Assink (Haaksbergen, the Netherlands) - Aepec College/Lycee Prive St Joseph (Bruz, France) - Instituto Statale Pitagora (Pozzuoli, Italy) - Städt. Alexander-Hegius-Gymnasium (Ahaus, Germany) - Zespol Szkol Ogolnoksztalcacych nr 19 (Cracow, Poland) - Gerze Sehit Nurullah Sarac Anadolu Lisesi (Gerze, Turkey) In each school there were 2-3 teachers and 20-25 students involved in this project throughout the years. This project was about gardens, gardening. Each partner school chose a culture plant typical of their national/regional cuisine (key characteristics: it must be edible, typical in the country and it must grow from seed to harvest in one year). In the first year, each school built an indoor and an outdoor school garden. The structure of the gardens was planned and built by students. In the following years, students planted the seeds and carried out examinations of their on choices (soil, water, sunny hours, temperature, growth of the plants etc). At the project meetings students shared their plans, their struggles and their successes with each other and gave each other helpful tips. They discussed some expectations on how each cultural plant would live and grow in each school's garden. Students also created time-lapse videos on the growth of the plants. Finally, students made international comparisons on the growth of each culture plant in each country and they made some suggestions for planting these plants in the future. Simultaneously, students prepared interviews with some experts of different fields. In the first year, students debated on the possible interviewees and decided to interview the men-on-the-street, a medical expert, an agriculture expert and a chef. Students in partnerships created a series of questions (debated on the project meetings) and each country conducted the interviews with the experts. The results were tallied, compared and presented by the partner schools responsible for the interview. We had 7 learning/teaching/training activities (we called them project meetings) with 2-3 participating teachers and 5-6 students from each school. The main objective of these meetings were to get to know each other, to visit the school gardens and the possibility of discussing arisen questions of gardening and the interviews. Cultural and creativity elements of the project meetings were very important for us. Creativity workshops (like a cooking contests or different types of arts and crafts sessions) were organized at the meetings. One of the final products includes the school gardens in each school which will be further used. There is also a web-site where all the results of the gardening, the examinations, the time lapse videos, the cultural and historical background information, the results of the agricultural research and the actions made on the project meetings are shown (https://erasmusgardening.poli.hu/). We also created to pamphlets to advertise the good practices (both can be find on the website as well). Finally, the students created a magazine on what they had done throughout the three years (this was also uploaded to our website in four parts - https://erasmusgardening.poli.hu/product/resoults/ ).