Background Nowadays children live mostly in the imprisonment of their home and school walls. Several reasons have pushed children indoors, including technology, migration to cities and their development, demands on children’s time (homework, parental fear of strangers…). In these times of indoor children, personal connections with nature seem hard to attain, an aspect which is related to a decrease on the environment care on the part of future gener-ations. Increasing proofs demonstrate many benefits of nature on children’s physical and psychological well-being, such as reduction of stress, better physical health, more creativity and a better focus on their tasks. Furthermore, an increase of leisure time on greener areas might enable children to learn more successfully, improving their ability to concentrate in the classroom. Exploring creatively and self-experiences discovering nature seem to be the best way for children to learn about a lot of subjects, mainly Science, according to recent research. Taking into account these study results and based on our needs to find different activities which allow students to perform better in class, we have created this project aiming to get the desired results and sharing them with other schools from our areas and all around Europe. We have decided to make this initiative transnational with the purpose to observe how other pupils relate to na-ture, how other schools challenge the issue of children spending so much time on indoors activities. We want to share good practices and knowledges which will help in the improvement of all the involved schools. Our main aims are: 1. To improve the competence of teachers designing outdoors activities integrating them in a systematic practice. 2. To enable teachers within the EU countries to cooperate and to produce common outputs that will be used by their schools as well as by other schools. 3. To promote nature as a learning setting. 4. To improve the acquisition of skills and competences by pupils. 5. To make parents aware of the importance of outdoor time. 6. To develop teachers and pupils’ critical thinking and intercultural competence. 7. To develop interpersonal skills among the participants. Participants Teachers (5/country/LTTA) will attend transnational events to meet their partners from other countries. There, they will be able to check their methods comparing and contrasting realities of different educational systems, to participate in cultural events and to organized activities and then distribute the information locally. Activities C1 – Learning outdoors – current trends in Europe (organized in TURKEY in Nov 2018) C2 – Nature activities and numeracy (GREECE in Feb 2019) C3 – Nature activities and literacy (POLAND in May 2019) C4 – Nature activities and science (MACEDONIA in Oct 2019) C5 – Nature activities and the exploration of the self through arts and crafts (SPAIN in Mar 2020) Results - Report related to activities in the nature developed at regular basis in schools, their main aims, purpose and methodology, the frequency of these actions (as discussed during LTTA1) - Assortment of activities to develop skills which can be performed outdoors (as presented during LTTA2) - Assortment of outdoor activities to develop Literacy (LTTA3) - Assortment of outdoor activities to study Sciences (LTTA4) - Assortment of outdoor activities to increase self-awareness, self-expression through arts and crafts (LTTA5) Impact As an outcome of the implementation, all participating schools will reinforce their association with the parents, students and teachers. There will be enhanced dialogue among the chain of schools and among schools’ students and teachers, on account of the immediate contribution of all classifications. This can only be of a great value and profit for the school over the long run. It is likewise believed that this partnership will provoke future joint efforts with parents, increased parents’ support and improved parents-school collaboration. By enhancing the synergy in the school, we will turn out to be more alluring to nearby schools and more students will wish to enlist in our school. The teachers will enhance their aptitudes, which implies that there will be a change in the nature and quality of teaching also, which brings about better school outcomes and results for the students. Similarly, students will turn out to be more roused, more motivated, they will appreciate the learning background more, find pleasure in the learning experience, another gain for the school.
Background Nowadays children live mostly in the imprisonment of their home and school walls. Several reasons have pushed children indoors, including technology, migration to cities and their development, demands on children’s time (homework, parental fear of strangers…). In these times of indoor children, personal connections with nature seem hard to attain, an aspect which is related to a decrease on the environment care on the part of future generations. Increasing proofs demonstrate many benefits of nature on children’s physical and psychological well-being, such as reduction of stress, better physical health, more creativity and a better focus on their tasks. Furthermore, an increase of leisure time on greener areas might enable children to learn more successfully, improving their ability to concentrate in the classroom. Exploring creatively and self-experiences discovering nature seem to be the best way for children to learn about a lot of subjects, mainly Science, according to recent research. Taking into account these study results and based on our needs to find different activities which allow students to perform better in class, we have created this project aiming to get the desired results and sharing them with other schools from our areas and all around Europe. We have decided to make this initiative transnational with the purpose to observe how other pupils relate to nature, how other schools challenge the issue of children spending so much time on indoors activities. We want to share good practices and knowledges which will help in the improvement of all the involved schools. Our main aims are: 1. To improve the competence of teachers designing outdoors activities integrating them in a systematic practice. 2. To enable teachers within the EU countries to cooperate and to produce common outputs that will be used by their schools as well as by other schools. 3. To promote nature as a learning setting. 4. To improve the acquisition of skills and competences by pupils. 5. To make parents aware of the importance of outdoor time. 6. To develop teachers and pupils’ critical thinking and intercultural competence. 7. To develop interpersonal skills among the participants. Participants Teachers (5/country/LTTA) will attend transnational events to meet their partners from other countries. There, they will be able to check their methods comparing and contrasting realities of different educational systems, to participate in cultural events and to organized activities and then distribute the information locally. Activities C1 – Learning outdoors – current trends in Europe (organized in TURKEY in Nov 2018) C2 – Nature activities and numeracy (GREECE in Feb 2019) C3 – Nature activities and literacy (POLAND in May 2019) C4 – Nature activities and science (MACEDONIA in Oct 2019) C5 – Nature activities and the exploration of the self through arts and crafts (SPAIN in May 2021 - online meeting) Results - Reports related to activities in the nature developed at regular basis in schools, their main aims, purpose and methodology, the frequency of these actions (as discussed during LTTA1) - Assortment of activities to develop Maths which can be performed outdoors (as presented during LTTA2) - Assortment of outdoor activities to develop Literacy (LTTA3) - Assortment of outdoor activities to study Sciences (LTTA4) - Assortment of outdoor activities to increase self-awareness, self-expression through arts and crafts (LTTA5) - Online book with the compilation of all of these activities. - Newsletters about each transactional meeting. Impact As an outcome of the implementation, all participating schools will reinforce their association with the parents, students and teachers. There will be enhanced dialogue among the chain of schools and among schools’ students and teachers, on account of the immediate contribution of all classifications. This can only be of a great value and profit for the school over the long run. It is likewise believed that this partnership will provoke future joint efforts with parents, increased parents’ support and improved parents-school collaboration. By enhancing the synergy in the school, we will turn out to be more alluring to nearby schools and more students will wish to enlist in our school. The teachers will enhance their aptitudes, which implies that there will be a change in the nature and quality of teaching also, which brings about better school outcomes and results for the students. Similarly, students will turn out to be more roused, more motivated, they will appreciate the learning background more, find pleasure in the learning experience, another gain for the school. CHANGES IN THE PROJECT: Background These days children have lived mostly in the impresionment of their home and school walls. Several reasons pushed children indoors, including technology, migration to cities and their development, demands on children’s time (homework, parental fear of strangers…). In these times of indoor children, personal connections with nature seemed hard to attain, an aspect which was related to a decrease on the environment care on the part of future generations. Increasing proofs demonstrated many benefits of nature on children’s physical and psychological well-being, such as reduction of stress, better physical health, more creativity and a better focus on their tasks. Furthermore, an increase of leisure time on greener areas might have enabled children to learn more successfully, improving their ability to concentrate in the classroom. Exploring creatively and self-experiences discovering nature seemed to be the best way for children to learn about a lot of subjects, mainly Science, according to recent researches. Taking into account these study results and based on our needs to find different activities which allowed students to perform better in class, we created this project aiming to get the desired results and sharing them with other schools from our areas and all around Europe. We decided to make this initiative transnational with the purpose to observe how other pupils related to nature, how other schools challenged the issue of children spending so much time on indoors activities. We wanted to share good practices and knowledges which would help in the improvement of all the involved schools. Objectives During the project’s life, the main objectives achieved were: - To integrate in schools’ curriculums outdoor activities, improving the teachers’ competence. - To develop cooperation in between European teachers to produce a common output which was share to other schools. - To promote nature as a learning environment. - To improve pupils’ skills and competences acquisition. - To make parents aware of the importance of nature and outdoor time. - To develop critical thinking and the intercultural competence in both students and teachers. - To develop the interpersonal skills through partners’ communication. All the project partners decided to design these teaching methods in an European context, the lack of outdoor activities related with the lack of motivation and concentration in academic life, which led us to our first priority. This priority was to promote the skills and key competences acquisition (objectives 3, 4, 6, 7 and the activities related). Then, the objetives 1, 2 and 6, and the activity related, were linked to our second priority: to provide teachers the enough tools to collaborate and innovate in their practice teaching, improving their teaching profile. Results Our project produced the following results: With intangible character: increase of the European identity, improvement of coexistence, advance in the professional competences of the teachers, motivation for learning foreign languages, participation of the educational community in the school life, improvement of the ICT tools both in students and teachers, etc... With tangible character: - Presentations of outdoor activities to develop numeracy, literacy, science and develop self-awareness, self-expression through arts and crafts with their aims, objectives, contents, course to develop, methodology and evaluation criteria. - All of the activities were collected in the final project product, in e-books with project ideas to use in Primary Education, lesson plans, examples, activities, etc… - Five newsletters, one after each transactional meeting, also used for dissemination purposes. - A brochure comprising of pictures and different information were related to all the partner countries and were exhibited in the Erasmus+ corners at schools. - A project website that recorded all the main activities and results as a portfolio and a dissemination tool. - An Etwinning page and a blog, used as platforms for communication and also dissemination. - Participation certificates. - Different pictures about the activities. - The tangible outcomes resulted from students’ work. - Curricular changes in some schools developed in their official documents of centers. One of these examples was done in the Spanish partner. They changed their methodological trend and from since then, they created different atmospheres in school where one of them was an outdoor environment. Participants Teachers (5/country/LTTA) attended transnational events to meet their partners from other countries. There, they were able to check their methods comparing and contrasting realities of different educational systems, participated in cultural events and organized activities and then distributed the information locally. The age of the students participating in the project was between 6 and 12 years. In countries such as Turkey, Poland and Spain, early childhood education or pre-primary students, aged between 3 and 6, also participated. One of the main objectives was the impact of the project on the educational community, so it was agreed by all partners that the entire educational community would be part of it. Activities C1 – Learning outdoors – current trends in Europe (organized in TURKEY in Nov 2018) C2 – Nature activities and numeracy (GREECE in Feb 2019) C3 – Nature activities and literacy (POLAND in May 2019) C4 – Nature activities and science (MACEDONIA in Oct 2019) C5 – Nature activities and the exploration of the self through arts and crafts (SPAIN in May 2021 - online meeting) Impact As an outcome of the implementation, all participating schools reinforced their association with the parents, students and teachers. There were enhanced dialogue among the chain of schools and among schools’ students and teachers, on account of the immediate contribution of all classifications. This could only be of a great value and profit for the school over the long run. It was likewise believed that this partnership would provoke future joint efforts with parents, increased parents’ support and improved parents-school collaboration. By enhancing the synergy in the school, we would turn out to be more alluring to nearby schools and more students would wish to enlist in our school. The teachers enhanced their aptitudes, which implied that there was a change in the nature and quality of teaching also, which brought about better school outcomes and results for the students. Similarly, students turned out to be more roused, more motivated, they appreciated the learning background more, found pleasure in the learning experience, another gain for the school.