Students often learn from examples and contexts that are especially created and contructed to match general school settings. These constructions are necessary in teaching but often not enough to give students a realistic insight into the numerous topics they learn about. Unfortunately these learning arragements often get stuck on a theoretical level. This project is meant to react against these common ways of teaching and learning in oder to promote interaktive processes in school that combine subjects such as Natural Sciences, Geography, the Arts as well as English as a foreign language in interkultural learning arrangements at home and abroad. The project will start in the individual schools to form a core basis for further communication and project development. Then the activities spread to museums, laboratories as well as nature itself as places for intercultural learning in contexts that are not specially constructed for learning in school but demonstarte a broader, more future-oriented learning invironment. In fact this project focusses on the concept of urban gardening that the students will explore with its potentials and limits for their individual cities and regions to then pass the information on to the exchange group abroad via eTwinning. Taking their findings into account the students will ultimately design a colour garden for the two regions around Padova and Dortmund and put their plan into action when visiting the indivdual schools. The students will thereby find out more about their own regions' developments as well as the development of other European regions with regard to their geopgraphical as well as geological conditions starting in the past and giving an outlook to the future. In the last part of the project students will combine all their findings by pointing out cultural processes in which colour plants have been used and by using the letter themselves for their own creative production.
Students often learn from examples and contexts that are especially created and constructed to match general school settings. These constructions are necessary in teaching but often not enough to give students a realistic insight into the numerous topics they learn about. Unfortunately, these learning arrangements often get stuck on a theoretical level. This project of Liceo Eugenio Curiel in Padova and Heinrich-Heine-Gymnasium in Dortmund was meant to react against these common ways of teaching and learning in order to promote interactive processes in school that combined subjects such as Natural Sciences, Geography, the Arts as well as English as a foreign language in intercultural learning arrangements at home and abroad. The project started in the individual schools to form a core basis for further communication and project development. Then the activities spread to museums, important places for the individual regions as well as nature itself as places for intercultural learning in contexts that are not specially constructed for learning in school but to demonstrate a broader, more future-oriented learning environment. In fact, this project focused on the concept of gardening that the students explored with its potentials and limits for their individual cities and regions to then pass the information on to the exchange group abroad via digital meetings. Taking their findings into account the students ultimately designed a colour garden for the two regions around Padova and Dortmund and put their plan into action at HHG. The students thereby found out more about their own regions' developments as well as the development of other European regions with regard to their geographical as well as geological conditions starting in the past and giving an outlook to the future. In the last part of the project students combined all their findings by pointing out cultural processes in which colour plants have been used and by using the letter themselves for their own creative production. The stays abroad in Italy and Germany offered all participants of the project the chance to speak about the project in English as a lingua, gain new cultural insights and form friendships across borders.