The title of our project "Knowledge without love will not stick" is a quotation by John Burroughs, an American naturalist. He stated that if love comes first, knowledge is sure to follow. This quotation is our starting point of our project. We mostly teach abstractly to our primary level students, away from real life, away from nature, so they forget easily what they have learnt.The main aim of our project is to develop pupils' observation skills, to let them find out the beauties around them, and observe them. As a result of focusing on beauties, unique properties of their lives will motivate them to think positively. Developing positive attitudes and affection to the observed will end in curiosity for learning more. If our pupils are motivated and love the subject the learning will occur easily and will be longlasting. As primary school teachers we have crucial impacts on our pupils. We have to find survival skills to teach them in order to make them keep pace with the rapid advances of technology. Predicting which skill or skills will be more beneficial for our pupils to lead a successful life is not easy. Observation skill appears to be a simple skill but in fact it is the most important skill to be taught to our primary-school aged children. Our project aims to hone pupils' observation skills through applying constructivist teaching methods, which enable pupils to take part in the learning process actively. Pupils get into contact with nature, animals and shortly with the world in their learning process. The participants of the project are third graders, who are at the age of 9 or 10, and their teachers. There will be two transnational project meetings at the beginning and at the end of the project. The number of LTT activities is two. 4 pupils accompanied by 2 teachers from each country will attend the LTT activities. The main objectives of mobilities are to observe other countries' educational systems, teaching methods and be aware of the applications. Exchanging ideas, practices will strengthen our teaching professions. Our pupils will understand the importance of learning a foreign language and communicating in English will motivate them to be more enthusiastic about learning foreign languages. The activities planned for two years are hands-on activities, which are the best applications of constructivism. The pupils will do the observations within a disciplinary framework. Pupils start to take fields notes when they start observing, and they will develop their abilities in observing, comparing, assessing, all of which lead them to think critically and gain them different points of views. Interaction with nature in order to explore knowledge will be an invaluable experience for our pupils, most of whom are addicted to televisions, video games, ipads. Having been involved in virtual games, pupils lose their ability to connect with the real world. Parents think that keeping their children inside, either by watching television or by playing virtual games will be safer. However they are not aware of the harm they are giving to their children by keeping them inside. Going outside with their parents will strengthen their relationships and create a more positive atmosphere in their learning process. Observing how long a plant or a tree or an animal grows will raise their awareness towards them and help them be motivated to protect natural life. We want to connect our pupils with nature since our pupils learn more when they explore and experience the knowledge by themselves. As teachers we believe that when we integrate learning in the natural environment, we will get the most successful results. In order to diminish underachievement in basic skills, we have planned activities in which we integrate them with school garden. During the project process, we will do changes in our school gardens to provide the pupils to observe how a plant, a flower, a vegetable grows. The expected short-term results on our pupils will be observing their improvements both academically and personally. Having connection with the world, realizing what is happening around their surroundings, countries and in Europe or in other parts of the world, will raise their awareness to the problems and develop their critical thinking and problem solving abilities. In the long run we expect to bring up conscious citizens who will be concerned with their environment, social and economic issues and will have the capacity to solve the problems they face and lead successful lives.
The title of our project "Knowledge without love will not stick" is a quotation by John Burroughs, an American naturalist. This quotation was our starting point of our project. As primary school teachers we had crucial impacts on our pupils. We had to find survival skills to teach them in order to make them keep pace with the rapid advances of technology. We decided on developing observation skills of our pupils’ to help them lead a successful life, via applying constructivist teaching methods, which enabled them to take part in the learning process actively unlike the traditional methods. In the traditional jug and mug method the teacher’s job is to pour knowledge from the full jug to the empty mug, pupils tend to forget what they have learnt easily. Pupils could not make any connections between what they learnt and real life. The main aim of our project was to develop pupils' observation skills, to let them find out the beauties around them, and observe them. As a result of focusing on beauties and unique properties of their lives motivated them to think positively. Developing positive attitudes and affection to the observed ended in curiosity for learning more. Our pupils who were motivated to learn more loved the subject they were learning. The love towards the new knowledge led to a longlasting learning and helped them to become lifelong learners. The participants of the project were third graders, who were at the age of 9 or 10, and their teachers at four primary schools of partner countries; Turkey (coordinator), Italy, Poland, Portugal (Madeira Island). Each partner country had contributed to the objectives of the project via fulfilling the tasks they had taken. Madeiran partners created a project website, Italians made the project brochure, Polish partners wrote an extra-curricular activity book based on the implemented fifteen project activities, and Turkish partners made a documentary film via combining the videos of the uniqueness of each country.The participants of the project are third graders, who were at the age of 9 or 10, and their teachers. There were two transnational project meetings.The number of LTT activities was two. 4 pupils accompanied by their teachers from each country attended the LTT activities. The main objectives of mobilities were to observe the other countries' educational systems, teaching methods and be aware of the applications. Exchanging ideas, practices strengthened our teaching professions. Our pupils understood the importance of learning a foreign language and communicating in English motivated them to be more enthusiastic about learning foreign languages. The activities planned for two years were hands-on activities, which were the best applications of constructivism. The pupils made their observations within a disciplinary framework. They developed their abilities in observing, comparing, deducing, all of which led them to think critically and gained different points of views. Pupils employed “Mindfulness” in order to become a good observer, as it was mentioned on the book “How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes” by Maria Konnikova. The book guided us to integrate mindfulness practices into the project activities. Having been involved in virtual games, pupils lost their abilities to connect with the real world and were used to living very fast. Learning how to apply mindfulness helped students develop a deeper self-awareness, better control of emotions,improve concentartions, understand the abstract concepts such as; self-compassion,emphaty, gratitude and values. Both the teachers and the pupils benefited much from these practices. The Interaction with nature was an invaluable experience for our pupils, most of whom were addicted to televisions, video games, ipads.. Parents who were thinking that keeping their children inside, either by watching television or by playing virtual games were safer changed their opinions with the project activities implemented. Pupils went outside with their parents to make their outdoor observations, which strengthened their relationships and created a more positive atmosphere in their learning process. Observing how long a plant or a tree or an animal grew raised their awareness towards them and helped them be motivated to protect natural life. Connecting pupils to nature led them learn more explore and experience the knowledge by themselves.We integrated learning in the natural environment in order to diminish underachievement in basic skills. With the school garden implementations, each pupil took the responsibiliy of growing vegetables,fruits. As Einstein stated; “The important thing is to not to stop questioning, we encouraged them to be curious and ask as many questions as they can. In the long run we expect to bring up conscious citizens who will be concerned with their environment, social and economic issues and will have the capacity to solve the problems they face and lead successful lives.