In the project “Clever and Healthy” (C&H) the participating schools from Germany, Romania and Spain aim at strengthening students’ development of 21st century skills by dealing with ‘healthy lifestyle and learning’ across different cultures of Europe. The topic of C&H was chosen as one possible way to encounter the fact that our pupils have very little opportunity to exchange with people from other European countries. Therefore our first focus is to offer ample opportunity to collaborate among the project partners both by use of ICT tools and during the activities at the three project schools. The second focus of C&H is healthy lifestyle. We wish to provide opportunities for students’ reflection on food and their eating habits by implementing school gardens and preparing and consuming culture specific health food. Exploring various kinds of sport activities provides an additional opportunity of enhancing healthy lifestyle, which we consider to be relevant, because some of our students are overweight or unfit while others seem generally indifferent to learning. Apart from that a healthy lifestyle seems relevant, because we think that it can have a positive effect on students’ attitude to and success in learning. The third focus of C&H is the learning of English. We aim at providing ample opportunity to use English in meaningful and authentic communication. Pupils will engage in such communication as they collaborate via ICT tools and personally with each other. Additionally they suggest, discuss and explore language learning strategies. C&H is a collaborative project of the IGS Volkmarode (Germany), Hermann Oberth Schule, Mediaș (Romania) and Colegio La Asunción, León (Spain). The German students will work on the project in a weekly 2 hour class “Cultural Studies”, open to pupils of year 9 and 10, aged between 14 and 16. The Romanian students will work on the project in a weekly 1 hour class “Economy”, open to pupils of year 7 and 8, aged between 13 and 15. The Spanish students will work on the project in a weekly 1 hour class, open to pupils of year 9 and 10 (3rd and 4th ESO), aged between 14 und 16. There will be between 20 and 30 pupils in each group. Five short term personal exchanges are scheduled: 1. September 2018 León - Teachers meet at the Spanish school to explore the existing school garden. 2. January 2019 Mediaș – Pupils and teachers meet to organise and carry out a market for European health food, produce a European health food cookbook and plan the first gardening season. 3. June 2019 Volkmarode - pupils and teachers meet to experience outdoor activities together. They take part in the local run “Braunschweiger Nachtlauf” and produce a guide to local low budget outdoor activities. 4. January 2020 León - Pupils and teachers meet to exchange seeds, reflect on the first school garden season, plan the second garden season and produce a shared guide to school gardening. 5. June 2020 Mediaș – Teachers meet for job shadowing and pedagogical reflection on the project. Our expected results are to implement eTwinning at the partner schools, train eTwinning coaches, take part in the “Dance for Kindness”, participate in local runs, produce a guide to outdoor activities, plan, look after and improve school gardens, establish a guide to school gardening, produce a cookbook for local health food, carry out a health food market, implement learner logbooks for the learning of English and produce reports on the project. With “C&H” we make sure that the results will continue to have positive effects on our schools by establishing a number of activities and products in each school such as training eTwinning coaches, establishing European health food markets, producing a guide to school gardening and to outdoor activities, producing a cookbook, providing the possibility to continue the school gardens in the future and sharing the pedagogical input gained from the exchange with local colleagues. In addition to that we implement the evaluation of the project as we proceed and after finishing it. We expect that C&H will support students’ development of 21st century skills, because it will support collaboration between the partner schools which goes beyond the pure presentation of results. In C&H students will come across real world problems such as physical well-being and eating habits which will require and further develop their problem solving skills. Students get the possibility to enhance their creativity as they are engaged in the choice, planning, design and implementation of a large variety of different activities. The use of ICT tools and students’ communication in English will lead to the development of both their ICT and communicative skills. As all communication takes place between different European cultures the pupils continuously expand their intercultural competences.
“Clever and Healthy” (C&H) was a collaborative project of Hermann Oberth Schule, Mediaș (Romania), Colegio La Asunción, León (Spain) and Sally-Perel-Gesamtschule (Germany). The German students worked on the project in a weekly 2 hour class “Cultural Studies”, open to pupils of year 9 and 10. The Romanian students worked on the project in a weekly 1 hour class “Economy”, open to pupils of year 7 and 8. The Spanish students worked on the project in a weekly 1 hour class, open to pupils of year 9 and 10 (3rd and 4th ESO). There were about 25 pupils in each group. In C&H the group dealt with ‘healthy lifestyle’ across Europe by dancing, gardening and cooking together. The project was initiated to expand students’ experience and skill in leading a healthy lifestyle and it was seen as one possible way to face the fact that they have little opportunity to exchange across Europe. The first focus of C&H was getting familiar with eTwinning as a tool and using it to meet each other for the first time and to and collaborate. Throughout C&H eTwinning was used for communication, collaboration and documentation. Exercising, which is obviously an integral part of a healthy lifestyle, was addressed by dancing – our second focus - during the project. The “Dance for Kindness” was used as a tool to support dancing. In different ways each group experienced the “Dance for Kindness” in autumn 2018. The students reflected on the event in the eTwinning project “Clever and Healthy: Dance for Kindness 2018”. In this project they asked each other questions about the local event of the “Dance for Kindness” and used the information to present the event of the partner countries. Additionally they discussed their idea of kindness nationally and internationally and developed ways of implementing kindness into everyday life collaboratively by creating pictures, stories cards and presentations on eTwinning. The third focus in C&H was gardening. Gardening is an integral part of producing health food, which is obviously part of a healthy lifestyle as well. In spring 2019 C2 in Romania was used to initiate school gardens for all three partner schools by building mini gardens for the school yard in Romania. The design of these mini gardens was copied for mini gardens in the schools of Spain and Germany after the exchange. The fourth focus was the preparation and shared consumption of healthy food. Parallel to the building of mini gardens the students cooked traditional food from each country which was later eaten by the whole group. All recipes were collected and printed in a cookbook called “Our Taste of Europe”. During the time between C2 and C3 all groups worked on their school gardens. In autumn 2019 C3 took place in Germany. All focusses of the project were picked up again. The shared week was used to exchange on the first gardening season, to cook together, to build insect houses for the German school garden and to dance the “Dance for Kindness”. Due to the COVID 19 pandemic C4 in Spain and all shared live events had to be cancelled. Therefore there was no possibility to use our gardening experience for a second garden season. We also couldn’t meet up for a meeting in Romania during summer 2020. This meeting had originally been planned for job shadowing and pedagogical reflection of the project. The project was finished digitally on the last pages of the eTwinning project “Clever and Healthy: Our Team - Our Story”, where the students reflected on C&H. The results of the project are that eTwinning has been established as a tool at all three schools. Students expanded aspects of leading a healthy lifestyle by exploring into the new when they created school gardens, by dancing together and by tasting healthy food from all three partner countries. Additionally they hugely enjoyed exchanging with their European peers and in their collaboration added to their communication and intercultural skills.