21st century has brought a lot of social, political, economic and cultural changes and unfortunately huge natural environment destruction which is a very serious problem for mankind. The continuous use of fossil fuels and the production of waste on a large scale no longer has a future. Also, there are too many precious ecosystems which are on the brink of destruction and/or extinction. Facing such serious problems, we, European teachers, would like to create an international project to teach young people, who in the future will create reality, how to protect the natural environment. Our project intends to extend school curricula and educational programs and introduce ecology themes on as many subjects as possible. We would like to motivate students to take ecology actions which a single person or a family can easily take to be environmentally friendly and protect nature. We would also like to teach our students about our precious European natural heritage. As the teachers of future generation, our task is also to focus our students’ attention on the value, beauty and diversity of nature and activate students to take actions to protect and improve the condition of the natural environment and give them a healthy life. We would like to sensitize pupils to global problems and above all encourage them to propagate and apply rules of sustainable development according to 21st Rule of Rio Declaration made in 1992 (“Artistic work, ideals and courage of the young of the world should be mobilized to develop world partnership which will help to reach sustainable development and ensure better future for everybody"). We believe that shaping the correct attitude towards the natural environment amongst young pupils has got significant value. Children have got natural sensitiveness and empathy; that is why it is easy to enhance their awareness and attitude. Psychologists say that what pupils learn as children they will remember for the rest of their life. We hope that thanks to this project introduced to primary students their attitude towards the natural environment and habitats will be long-lasting. Engaging adults such as teachers and parents to work on the project will also shape their ecological awareness. Another important point of the project is to give equal educational chance and engage working on the project as many students as possible, particularly pupils with special educational needs. Due to the introduction of ecology themes on different subjects each student regardless of educational needs will find something for himself/ herself and through taking part in after school clubs and pro-eco actions will increase self-confidence and be successful. Moreover, carrying out project theme on different subjects pupils will develop a lot of skills such as literacy and numeracy, practical knowledge usage, reading diagrams and concluding. Due to developing mentioned skills students will get opportunity to be more successful at schools on a higher level and get to know and cultivate interests. These actions will help them to choose their educational career more consciously and in the future will have opportunity to get a job. However the most important factor of the working on the project is that students will be aware of the natural environment. Whilst working on the project students will use English language and will have real opportunities to develop foreign language skills and be motivated to learn languages as they will see that it is very useful communication tool to get to know new people. What is more, due to using CLIL method (Content and Language Integrated Learning), our students will learn about the natural heritage of partner schools’ countries, get to know new cultures, lifestyles, and in this way they will become more tolerant and open-minded. Didactic work combined with motivation will develop competence of teachers who additionally will have a chance of developing methodological skills and exchanging work experience with teachers from partner schools. Teachers also will have a reason to learn or improve foreign languages skills. Each participating school has, on average, about 250 attending students and 12 teachers, each one of them will be an indirect beneficiary of the project activities as within all partner schools will be widely distributed to the Erasmus + funding, and teachers directly involved will be called to pass on the skills learned to their colleagues in the dissemination of intermediate moments created ad hoc. The spread of new innovative teaching approaches are results that go to impact on entire school system. Summing up, all the mentioned factors explain why this ecological project is very important for us – teachers and our students. We, the teachers, feel that we have very important mission to carry out for our students and future generations. We have to teach how to protect places in which they live and have an input into saving endangered species from extinction.
H.O.M.E.- Help our Mother Earth project was written by 7 schools from Spain, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Italy, Greece and Hungary (applicant) in several activities, for a period of 24 months (01/09/2017 - 31/08/2019). Unfortunately, Greece did not start the project with us, so 6 partners made a project cooperation. The project idea came from the awareness that the environment we live in is getting more and more polluted. That is the consequence of our lifestyle, which does not keep the severe damages we are creating to the planet into account. It is a clear consequence of an almost total lack of that sensitivity that we, as teachers, should help to develop. Focusing on the students it was an effecting starting point to build up a sense of responsibility they might be able to transmit to their families, too. When writing the project, our main goal was to make students more environmentally conscious, to open their eyes for the enviroment problems and find solutions how we can solve them, to expand the colleagues’ methodological toolbox using cooperation among subjects, learning modern methodological strategies and trying them in practice. The other main goal was to include SEN, less talented students or students with disadvantaged backgrounds in the project in order to give them a sense of achievement, to decrease early school-leaving and to be part of an international cooperation. In everyday practice we tried to implement the tasks planned. During the implementation we examined how it is possible to take the enviromental problems into everyday activities, to make the learning process more colourful, to deepen our knowledge and to make the students more motivated. We have tried the theories in practice on local school level, sent the results and reflections to the partner countries, show them on trainings and meetings and shared them on google drive, facebook page and the common web page. We tried the partners’ ideas back at home, compared the feedback on TPMs and exchanged ideas, methodologies. Our task was to involve the students to an active research in the collection of information and scientific data observing and investigating nature, monitoring air and water quality, studying how renewable energy resources are exploited. The important point of the project was to give equal educational chance and engage working on the project as many students as possible, particularly pupils with special educational needs. Moreover, carrying out project theme on different subjects pupils developed a lot of skills such as literacy and numeracy, practical knowledge usage, reading diagrams and concluding. Due to developing mentioned skills students get the opportunity to be more successful at schools on a higher level and get to know and cultivate interests. These actions help them to choose their educational career more consciously and to be aware of the natural environment. Our further aims were to get to know the other nations’ school life, compare the similarities and differences of the education systems, to gain and give good ideas, to make friends between teachers and students from different countries (penpal partners amoung the schools), to learn about foreign cultures and to present ours. For the institutions this 24-month-long cooperation was very useful, it has its direct and indirect impacts. Our collagues participated in the international work with great enthusiasm. They learnt new pedagogical methods on trainings and can use good practices on their practice. Their digital and foreign language competences also improved. Each participating school has, on average, about 250 attending students and 12 teachers involved into the activities. During the project we developed learning materials (lesson plans,presentations and a book for using other teachers) and supported the effective use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in education and training. In formal and informal learning within the frame of school with new teaching tools, we could achieve the increase of students’ knowledge, skills and competences. We could also force critical thinking, especially through teaching science in environmental problems. Our students had a perfect chance to analyse natural problems from their own point of view and shared their experiences and analysis with their partners who had different backgrounds. Summing up, all the mentioned factors explain why this ecological project is very important for us – teachers and our students. We have a very important mission to carry out for our students and future generations. We have to teach how to protect places in which they live and have an input into saving endangered species from extinction. We have some different partnerships: between the Polish school Zespol Szkol w Karczmiskach and the Hungarian Újlaki Primary School we would like to make a twinschool partnership. With the Italian Piazza Gustavo VI Adolfo school pupils we organised an exchange programme.