SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS ACTION! SDGs Action! The overall aim of this KA229 Erasmus + project is to prepare the next generations of students to function successfully and sustainably in our interconnected world. This will be achieved through creating two games as an end product. The first will have a technology focus and will involve creating a Scratch game on the 17 SDGs. The second more practical hands on approach will involve generating a “SDGsbox” game. The results we envisage apart from the two games of SDGs are a complete set of short movies or adverts about the seventeen sustainable goals, an Art gallery, a sustainable city , two eTwinning projects called “ Women who changed the world” and “ International Day of Peace” and a SDGs fair. Tools such as Scratch, animation, Makey Makey, and others will be used by the children in the presentation of project results. The project seeks to push the boundaries of exploration to further understanding of the world and to foster solutions for a healthier and more sustainable future. By working cooperatively students will learn to value each other, the world around them and their contributions to their community and their planet. Involvement in this project will raise the levels of awareness and meaningful engagement with the global goals in the 1300 students (aged 6-12 years) and the 30 teachers from 6 participant countries: Spain, France, Bulgaria, Romania, Finland and Italy. SDGs Action! will aim to enhance, among teachers and school communities in the partnership, the understanding of SDGs which will be integrated in our schools from early education via modern pedagogical methods: gamification ,PBL, technology innovation , multiple intelligences and key competences. This project will provide initial and ongoing training for teachers, and offer pupils and staff the opportunity to experience and share specific strategies and tools during the two project years in order to learn about the world in innovative and interdisciplinary ways. We will also strive to provide all children within the project with access to innovative teaching methodologies in STEAM which will help them to cultivate an “ explorer mindset” that will empower them to become change agents. International cooperation will be a key resource and a project goal, bringing in cultural comparison, expertise and actual examples, and enhancing communication skills and European spirit among the participants. The cooperative ethical spirit will help us respond to the inclusiveness of disadvantaged students and families. The results from every LTTA meetings ( the ones with teachers and the ones with students) , in terms of assessment and of acquired knowledge skills,will be brought back and shared in the partnership’s schools. Regular communication will allow and support cooperation and play a strategic role in the project implementation. This will be mainly ensured by the eTwinning platform- where activity and assessment tools will be shared, results documented and live meetings organized – and in the LTTA, where coordinators will monitor, plan and assess the project implementation. We will exhibit the project at local, regional and national fairs and make it available to a wider audience via a website. This Erasmus + project will also foster awareness about the 17 SDGs among families and community. Stakeholders such as National and International organizations, eTwinning platform, educational governmental agencies will also help to spread our findings to other interested groups. Access to this is something that can be beneficial to all involved for the foreseeable future. Education changes with the needs of society and has to respond to the current needs of the students. Our great challenge was to integrate the education of the UN Global Goals to our schools new curriculum thanks to "Sustainable Development Goals Action! (SDGs ACtion!) Erasmus+ project. It contributed to enhance among teachers and school communities the STEAM skills to be promoted from early education. It also provided initial and on-going training for teachers, and offered pupils and staff the opportunity to experience and share specific strategies and tools during the two project years through setting up individual and collective actions that helped students to make connections across school subjects and across the human and natural world. Involvement in this project raised the levels of awareness and meaningful engagement with the Global Goals in 1300 students (6-13 years) and 38 teachers from 6 countries. Teachers and students became more confident in using ICT education and thus activities in schools increased and the digital approach was broadlier used in teaching. International cooperation has been a key resource, bringing in cultural comparison, expertise and actual examples, enhancing language and communication skills and European spirit among participants. In our vision, the creativity that children expressed working together within SDGs Action! encouraged the communities to value and support children’s role in an inclusive, open-minded and collaborative society with equal opportunities. The project had an impact on schools and communities, enhancing educational standards, cooperation attitudes and European citizenship awareness. All participant countries` students learnt according to the new XXI pedagogies: collaborative active learning, expressing and creating, researching, discussing and connecting with experts, project based learning, problem solving, critical thinking and learning by doing. Gamification was achieved by creating SDGs games : 2 tangible, 7 digital, 23 Scratch and 17 Makey Makey. Flipped classrooms were realized by building six 3D sustainable city mock-ups and 3 digital ones, 17 SDGs presentations based on different digital tools and 30 video advertisements. SDGs Action! became an interdisciplinary project covering STEAM and also History, Biology, Literature and Music.Some creative, innovative and collaborative STEAM tasks have been done: SDGs 3D art gallery, Let’s celebrate a zero waste Christmas video, visible actions for invisible waste interactive online board game, water experiments, insects hotels, international team sculpture creations, SDGs in a pizza box with Makey Makey, MAPPING fair, pollinators challenge, Peace art alphabet, etc. They fostered their level of English, improved their digital skills and enhanced the collaborative work by making choices and taking actions.The project broke down our classroom walls and connected students from European countries. It was student-centered and so the students had to do the research, brainstorm and discuss. Teachers have been driven outside their comfort zones as they were requested not to give away any knowledge. Partners shared 6 good practices during the LTTAs for teachers and 13 students STEAM workshops via online meetings.Far beyond studying and memorizing facts, SDGs Action! project allowed them to find solutions and take actions to improve the world. They became content creators as well as real problem solvers. Despite the changes done to the project in order to cope with the Covid 19 pandemic, the team managed to achieve all the project goals without compromising the final aims. Due to the adaptations and the collaborative work done by the teachers and the students our project was recognized as an example of good practice by the School Education Gateway. Our Erasmus project was initially created and designed on the eTwinning platform by making a group called “Sustainable Development Goals in our schools”. Once the project was approved an eTwinning project with the same name started. Two other eTwinning projects were created to further deepen SDG5 and SDG16 and to disseminate the project results with more people. Most of them were awarded with the European Quality Label and Finland and France got the National Prize for SDG5 project. Five partner schools were awarded with the eTwinning school label. All project results are free and available on the internet through our project website and eTwinning Platform. All participant schools applied to become an UNESCO school. The partner teams participated in three International campaigns: Climate Action Project and two editions of the European Week for Waste Reduction (EWWR) winning two Special European Prizes in 2019 and 2020. The project will be kept alive due to the successful integration of the SDGs in the school curricula that will be reinforced by the interdisciplinary way and will be improved as years go by thanks to our long lasting partnership.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS ACTION! SDGs Action! The overall aim of this KA229 Erasmus + project is to prepare the next generations of students to function successfully and sustainably in our interconnected world. This will be achieved through creating two games as an end product. The first will have a technology focus and will involve creating a Scratch game on the 17 SDGs. The second more practical hands on approach will involve generating a “SDGsbox” game. The results we envisage apart from the two games of SDGs are a complete set of short movies or adverts about the seventeen sustainable goals, an Art gallery, a sustainable city , two eTwinning projects called “ Women who changed the world” and “ International Day of Peace” and a SDGs fair. Tools such as Scratch, animation, Makey Makey, and others will be used by the children in the presentation of project results. The project seeks to push the boundaries of exploration to further understanding of the world and to foster solutions for a healthier and more sustainable future. By working cooperatively students will learn to value each other, the world around them and their contributions to their community and their planet. Involvement in this project will raise the levels of awareness and meaningful engagement with the global goals in the 1300 students (aged 6-12 years) and the 30 teachers from 6 participant countries: Spain, France, Bulgaria, Romania, Finland and Italy. SDGs Action! will aim to enhance, among teachers and school communities in the partnership, the understanding of SDGs which will be integrated in our schools from early education via modern pedagogical methods: gamification ,PBL, technology innovation , multiple intelligences and key competences. This project will provide initial and ongoing training for teachers, and offer pupils and staff the opportunity to experience and share specific strategies and tools during the two project years in order to learn about the world in innovative and interdisciplinary ways. We will also strive to provide all children within the project with access to innovative teaching methodologies in STEAM which will help them to cultivate an “ explorer mindset” that will empower them to become change agents. International cooperation will be a key resource and a project goal, bringing in cultural comparison, expertise and actual examples, and enhancing communication skills and European spirit among the participants. The cooperative ethical spirit will help us respond to the inclusiveness of disadvantaged students and families. The results from every LTTA meetings ( the ones with teachers and the ones with students) , in terms of assessment and of acquired knowledge skills,will be brought back and shared in the partnership’s schools. Regular communication will allow and support cooperation and play a strategic role in the project implementation. This will be mainly ensured by the eTwinning platform- where activity and assessment tools will be shared, results documented and live meetings organized – and in the LTTA, where coordinators will monitor, plan and assess the project implementation. We will exhibit the project at local, regional and national fairs and make it available to a wider audience via a website. This Erasmus + project will also foster awareness about the 17 SDGs among families and community. Stakeholders such as National and International organizations, eTwinning platform, educational governmental agencies will also help to spread our findings to other interested groups. Access to this is something that can be beneficial to all involved for the foreseeable future. The project is rooted on the environment needs, very relevant to the children’s lives, cross curricular by its very nature and uses tools and technologies that are embedded in the digital era. It will undoubtedly foster a keen interest and motivation in our children in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics and make these subjects extremely relevant for these students in pursuing future careers in STEAM and the world needs. The project itself will help students to make connections across school subjects and across the human and natural world. It will motivate them to become more independent, creative, problem-solvers, artistic and critical-thinkers. The project will impact on schools and communities, enhancing educational standards, cooperation attitudes and European citizenship awareness. Teachers will become confident in SDGs education, the number of specific activities in schools will increase and SDGs integration will be more broadly used in teaching, so that pupils will be trained to be active, creative and responsible towards the needs of our current world. In our vision, the creativity that children will express working together within SDGs Action! will encourage the communities to value and support children’s role in an inclusive, open-minded, collaborative and sustainable society.