The name of the project is Environment surrounding us as a challenge and responsibility. It is made as a project for the European ERASMUS+ project, key action KA2, Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices, Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only. Objectives of the project are to: raise interest in natural environment, increase the awareness, understanding and responsibility for environmental protection, encourage learning of foreign languages through modern teaching methods, learn about other countries using new opportunities created by new technological tools and devices, support greater understanding and respecting of social, cultural and linguistic diversities of the countries in developing of the European identity, build up understanding of the European Union policy, promote multidisciplinary and inter-disciplinary approaches by using the CLIL methods, develop transferable skills (communication, creativity, decision making, organization, planning, problem solving, team working) and develop better cooperation between schools, public and participating educational institutions. The coordinator of the project is the Czech Republic; partners’ countries are Croatia, Spain, Turkey, Poland, Latvia and Italy. All the institutions are state schools. In the project we want a variety of activities, some are listed above. We plan transnational meeting for teachers to discuss issues of the project (management, implementation, evaluation and dissemination). For pupils we plan online activities, but also mobility activities, which will help us to enforce the experience and knowledge gained in online activities. In the activities we discover the characteristics of natural environment through its elements: water, air, soil, flora and fauna. We discuss its problems and its protection. We also deal with CLIL lessons (integration of school subjects with foreign languages). In addition we learn about cultural and social differences between our countries. To produce activities outputs we use various digital tools. Finally, we develop our transferable skills by problem solving, planning teamwork, communication. As a result we create website of the project, blog where we uploaded all the results of the activities. We hope that these various resources (videos, reports, online brochures, dictionary, gallery of photos, etc) will help pupils and schools as an inspiration to their classes. The project will have an overall impact on participating schools, students, teachers, various educational institutions and local communities. We plan that the expected impact will be achieved during the project. However, we expect that knowledge and experienced gained in the project will endure after the project ends. For pupils it will be a unique possibility to: develop their knowledge about environment and its protection, be familiar with ways of waste sorting, recycling, arise their participation in environmental protection on the local level, increase, verify and apply their gained knowledge about historical and geographical facts by using foreign languages (method CLIL), realize their European identity through contact with different European countries, increase their awareness, understanding, tolerance and respect of cultural and social differences between nations, improve their social skills through the development of sustainable and long-lasting friendships, increase their foreign language competence and motivation in language learning, develop their ICT skills necessary not only for the project outputs, but also to be able to utilise ICT in order to communicate with others in the future, build up higher level skills (such as, problem-solving, decision-making, cooperation, interpretation, organizational, presentational, literacy skills). For teachers it will be a great chance to be engaged in European collective team work and interdisciplinary cooperation, improve their pedagogical skills by exchanging and sharing teaching methods, good practices and ideas that will enrich their professional expertise; and as a result to participate in the lifelong learning process and foster closer European links. For schools it will be an important experience how to develop links with European schools, find the way to open up to and appreciate new ideas coming from other European countries and have a better understanding of collective working in European context, enrich the teaching of foreign languages with new ideas and implement project outputs into their teaching programmes. For educational organizations outside the partnership it will be a good way to find the way how to develop their mutual cooperation with schools, present themselves to a wider range of participants, explore differences in teaching within European Union, use the online resources for their training activities in the field of teaching.
The name of the project is Environment surrounding us as a challenge and responsibility. It is made as a project for the European ERASMUS+ project, Key Action 2, Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices, Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only. The main objectives of the project were to raise interest in the natural environment and the necessity of its protection; encourage pupils not only to learn foreign languages, but to use them actively in their everyday life; find out about cultural, social, historical and geographical differences between nations living in the Europe and to respect these differences; discover more about the European Union policy; help pupils with learning using modern teaching approaches (CLIL, modern technologies); develop transferable skills (communication, creativity, decision making, organization, planning, problem solving, team work) and build up better cooperation between schools, public and participating educational institutions. The coordinator of the project is the Czech Republic. Partners’ countries are Croatia, Greece, Latvia, Poland, Spain and Turkey. All the institutions are state schools providing general education for the pupils 6-15 years old. During the project we carried out three main types of activities: project activities at our schools, realized international mobility to partners’ countries and organized project meetings for the coordinators to discuss issues of the project (management, implementation, evaluation and dissemination). The aim of all activities was to fulfil the main objectives of the project. We dealt with flora and fauna (learnt about endangered plants and animals and the reasons / ways of their protection); we discovered the characteristics of the natural environment through its elements: water, air and soil; we talked about recycling (how to recycle and why to recycle); we learnt about geography and history of our partners’ countries through CLIL lessons; we discussed cultural and social differences by doing projects about customs, typical food and holidays. The international mobility helped us to enforce the experience and knowledge gained in the online activities. Furthermore, we met our partners, did activities together by developing transferable skills such as problem solving, planning teamwork, practised English in real, everyday situations, and got know about the way of life in different countries. To produce activities outputs we used various digital tools to create a project website, reports, online brochures, dictionary, gallery of photos, etc. The project had an overall impact on pupils, teachers, participating schools, parents and general public. However, we expect that knowledge and experienced gained in the project will endure even after the project ends. For pupils it was a unique possibility to learn about the environment and its protection, to increase and apply their gained knowledge about historical and geographical facts of partners’ countries, raise their awareness, understanding, tolerance and respect of cultural and social differences between nations, enlarge their foreign language competences and motivation in language learning, build up higher level skills (such as, problem-solving, decision-making, cooperation, interpretation, organizational, presentational, literacy skills). For teachers it was a great chance to cooperate with the teachers from the other countries, to improve their pedagogical skills by exchanging and sharing teaching methods, good practices and ideas that will enrich their pedagogical job, and to make contacts for further cooperation. For participating schools it was an important experience to develop links with other European schools, to get known about different educational systems and approaches. For parents and general public it was a great opportunity to find out more about European Union, European projects, to gain new experience by hosting international pupils and to find out more about various cultures in Europe.