The objective of our project is the teaching process inovation in the area of environmental education at every partner school. We will create methodological materials which will help teachers not only in teaching cross-cutting topic of the environmental education, which is taught as an independent subject at our school, but also in teaching all the subject included in Science, for instance nature and biology lessons, introduction to environment and society, elementary geography or local history and geography education, English language and drama classes. It will be possible to enrich and ameliorate teaching and learing process of the Environmental education with visual and authentic aids for practical use, for example power point presentations, different kinds of board games, picture memory games and interesting pictures that will be created during our project activities. Environmental education will become one of the subjects or the integrated part of Science. Moreover, learners will acquire new information by experiential method that they will be able to influence by their participation. Six countries will participate in the project. They will be involved in producing one corpus – the environmental education by doing activities about one particular element of the environment. The division of the elements is: CZECH REPUBLIC - air and traffic,fauna POLAND soil and waste material, PORTUGAL - flora, water and SLOVAKIA man and healthy diet. Each participant country will create stories, poems, fairy-tales, powerpoint presentations, colouring pages, various experiments, games, models and dictionary with vocabulary connected to given topic and we will present and work with them at individual meetings which will be held on the occassion of worldwide important environmental days : World Water Day – Portugalsko 03 2018, Earth Day-Poland 042018, Mobility week – Czech republic 092018 , Slovakia 042019, World Health Day, Car free Day (092019)World Forest Day – Portugal 032020, Slovakia 062020 ,Activities: presentations of the project results – the best ecoschool announcement). The students will develop their positive attitudes towards the environment, learn about different elements of the nature in a detailed, more profound way and they will do it with the regard to differences of the specific locality and country. All the pupils will develop their talent, creativity and imagination while making various materials (a book, a strory, a video, poems, drama, the models of the animals, plants and watercourses, a herbarium, etc.) They will be active in protection of the environment by cleaning waste and garbage from their surroundings, mapping and recording the illegal rubbish dumps which will be compared among the participated countries, and by collecting secondary raw materials. We gather the information about environment conditions not just in our country, but also from other participated states (in our case, it means 3 other states), which will serve as a basis for the alliance of combining our efforts to collectively enhence, protect and conserve the Earth. This project will enable us to introduce the beauty of other countries, flora and fauna, which is not possible to see at our own country and their living conditions in the different climatic zones, since 3 Central European countries and 1 country from Southern Europe will be participated in the project. There will be the Best EcoClassroom competition at every participated school from January 2018 to March 2020. Through the realization of the individual activities(of the schedule), the students will discover and they will be introduced to the elements of the nature by experiential method. We will toghether contribute to the results and to the objective achievement of the project . Besides, the teachers may develop and improve their personal and preliminary competences in the linguistics, ICT, multiculturality, innovation thinking, European project creation, usage of the new methods in teaching. The project will influence not only teachers, but also the students (they will be more open to innovation, changes, eager to work in multinational groups), their parents, local educational institutions, local primary and secondary schools, regional, national and European envienvironmental organizations that will be informed about the activities and results of our project. The students will gain new competences in the area of the environment protection, multiculturality and linguistics. They will become more self-confident and responsible for their future. All the project activities will continue even after the project is finished, because the created didactic will be further used in teaching.
The EXON project - The Explorers of the Nature - was implemented from 2017 to 2020. Four partner European countries, the Czech Republic, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia, cooperated on the project. The aim of our project was to innovate the teaching process in the field of environmental education and science literacy. As part of improving students' science literacy, we focused on research-oriented teaching that uses children's natural curiosity. The target groups of the project were pupils aged from 6 to 15 and teachers of primary and secondary education. Pupils from the partner schools solved tasks in the basic areas of the environment - Water, Air, Soil, Transport, Waste, Plants and Animals, Man and Healthy Diet. During the duration of the project, activities were implemented on individual topics, which were planned by coordinators and school headmasters at transnational meetings. For each topic, we made CLIL methodologies, worksheets, coloring books, created models of watercourses, wetlands, models of a wind turbine, videos about illegal landfills, the school environment, PowerPoint presentations about our national parks, protected plants and animals, transport and its impact on clean air, maps of our school surroundings. Moreover, we worked together on board games such as a memory game of water bodies, a quartet of protected species of plants and animals and a red book of protected animals. All didactic material and teaching aids were processed and presented during short-term exchanges of groups of students, which took place on the occasion of various environmental festivals: C1 Water Day - Portugal (032018), C2 Earth Day - Poland (042018) C3 Mobility Week - Czech Republic (102018) C4 World Health Day - Slovak Republic (05 2019) C5 World Day of Forests and National Parks - Portugal C6 Car Free Day - Czech Republic (092019). Through the implementation of individual sub-tasks (schedule), students got acquainted with the experiential form and discovered the individual components of the country, thus jointly contributing to the results and achieving the goal of the project. They were active in environmental issues, examining the various components of the environment, comparing the state of air, water and the number of illegal landfills around schools, municipalities with protected areas, which they visited during excursions. They participated in improving the state of the environment in their surroundings - cleaning, mapping illegal landfills, sorting waste, creating a composting site, using waste material in classroom decoration and making gifts, monitoring the acidity of precipitation, lichens, feeding animals and birds during the winter. They developed their talent, creativity and imagination in the creation of individual materials, improved presentation skills, language and digital skills. They had the opportunity to get to know the beauties not only of their homeland, but also of partner countries, to make new friends, compare the culture and way of life in different European countries. Teachers developed their personal and qualification competencies - in linguistics, technologies, multiculturalism, innovative thinking, creating European projects, using new methods. The acquired didactic material, teaching aids and proposals for activities in the field of environmental education were presented at professional seminars, conferences for teachers and the professional public in partner countries throughout the project and at the final project conference in August 2020, which took place in the coordinating school with the participation of the professional public. With this project we managed to create comprehensive didactic materials for the implementation of environmental education in schools. The EXON project has contributed to improving the climate in lessons, using innovative methods and improving the approach of pupils, teachers and school communities to environmental issues and awareness of their own responsibility for the quality of life on our blue planet.