In spite of being an up-to-date subject in schools around Europe nowadays, climate change is not something pupils are aware of in their everyday lives, nor the social changes they entail. Children need to be taught about it - and that's what science teachers - geography teachers, biology teachers, history teachers - all around Europe are trying to do. But it will certainly be much more relevant to pupils if they can measure climate change themselves, if they can compare results from all over Europe and come up - with their teachers help – with ways to cope with it, identifying real impacts of climate change on day to day activities. To be able to do that, our pupils must be ready to deal with climate labs or meteorological stations in a scientific way and teachers must be prepared for the challenges of hands-on science teaching. Another way of stating the same ideas is to say that curriculum knowledge about climate change has to be relevant to our students. Teachers should be able to convey it through experimental activities that both appeal to the common experience of the students and foster scientific attitudes towards the world and their future experience. To build a project around these subjects will certainly increase students' awareness of the importance of respecting the environment and the relevance of their personal commitment in reducing their own carbon footprint. To achieve that, the first year project focuses on collecting weather data with home-made weather stations with the objective of raising pupil’s awareness of actual climate changes and their effects on everyday life in the participating countries. In addition to the scientific study of data the project, the second year of the project aims to achieve artistic output to appeal to the creativity in the students. The students’ tasks will then be to illustrate the abstract data collected and also draw conclusions that will later be displayed in creative work to reach a larger public and to inform the people around them of the problem. The International Environment Day (5th June) fits perfectly into the project's schedule to present the project to the public. To summarize the project tries to involve many different subjects, i.e. physics, geography, social studies, art and music, to appeal to the students in various ways and also to show the complexity of the topic.
In spite of being an up-to-date subject in schools around Europe nowadays, climate change was not something pupils were aware of in their everyday lives, nor the social changes they entailed. Children needed to be taught about it - and that's what science teachers - geography teachers, biology teachers and history teachers - all around Europe were trying to do and that was what our project was aiming at. The activities connected with this project created an awareness of climate change with the students as the topic was much more relevant to pupils if they could measure climate change, compare results from all over Europe, identify real impacts of climate change on their day-to-day activities, and come up with ways to cope with it. To be able to do that, our pupils dealt with climate labs or meteorological stations in a scientific way and teachers were prepared for the challenges of science teaching. That meant that curriculum knowledge about climate change was relevant to our students. Teachers were able to convey this relevancy through experimental activities that both appealed to the students and fostered their scientific attitudes towards the world and their future experience. A project around these subjects increased students’ awareness of the importance of respecting the environment and reducing their carbon footprint. The project focused on collecting weather data with homemade weather stations with the objective of raising pupils’ awareness of actual climate changes and their effects on everyday life in the participating countries. In addition to the scientific study of data the project aimed to appeal to the creativity of the students through art. The students illustrated the abstract data and drew conclusions. These conclusions were displayed in creative work to inform the larger public of the problem. The students worked together to create a leaflet which could be distributed in all member countries to inform the public about the reasons for climate change and what young adults could do to fight global climate change. The leaflet also described what the students would do in their own schools to reduce their carbon footprint. The International Environment Day (5th June) fitted perfectly to present the project to the public. The project involved many different subjects, i.e. physics, geography, social studies, art and music, to appeal to the students in various ways and also to show the complexity of the topic. The instructions for building weather stations, how to analyse statistic data and the research material, results and documented material were either displayed at the participating schools or could be found on the projects’ webpage.