NATURAL EDUCATION FOR DIGITAL STUDENTS Erasmus Project

Project Title

NATURAL EDUCATION FOR DIGITAL STUDENTS

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; Creativity and culture; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

Context
Nowadays children and teenagers mostly live in their flats, houses and schools. Because of that, children are less acquainted with nature and responsible for the environment. Richard Louv wrote: “Time in nature is not leisure time; it’s an essential investment in our children’s health.”
The teachers of the involved countries carefully thought about these ideas and implemented the project working on the lessons and on detailed studies.

Objectives
1 Improve teachers’ competences in designing outdoor activities and integrating them in regular school life
2 Enable teachers from the EU countries to cooperate together and produce common results which could be further used in their schools, and also in other schools
3 Promote nature as an effective learning environment
4 Improve skills and competences acquisition by students
5 Make parents aware that time spent by children outdoors is very important
6. Develop students’ and teachers’ critical thinking and intercultural competences
7 Develop communication and interpersonal skills among the participants of the project.

Activity:
All the partners equally shared the duties of the Project. Duties were divided among partners according to their role, expertise, and possibilities in the project.
Each partner developed activities according to the topic. After returning from the meeting, each partner disseminated the results and activities across their schools and outside to the local community.
C1 Teachers talked about current tendencies in different systems of education in terms of outdoor activities. Each team prepared presentations of their educational systems, provided information and examples of regularly performed outdoor activities, carried out small-scale school-based surveys with the aim of finding out how much time students actually spend outdoors in a week. C1 enabled the teams to compose the information together, compare and analyze them, and draw conclusions about the current tendencies in our schools.
C2 The aim of the meeting was to meet to carry out activities with students and notice the impact/satisfaction and compare the activities with others in terms of appropriateness, efficacy. The activities’ objective was to develop students’ numeracy skills and were carried out outside, in the fresh air.
C3. The activities’ objective was to teach LITERACY through outdoor activities.
C4 The activities’ objective was to teach science through outdoor activities
In C5 due to the problems related to the COVID pandemic, the National Agency granted an extension of 6 months. The activities’ objective was to teach Arts and Crafts. Due to organizational problems related to COVID it was not possible to make pupils interact and make them move easily so asynchronous lessons were organized with students.

Results:
Cooperation among teachers has always been characterized by support, understanding and sharing of every aspect of the project. Probably the greatest challenge that we faced was the spread of the COVID19 and how to cope with its problems.

We used a variety of evaluation tools during the whole duration of the project in order to determine whether or not the objectives were met. The impact was checked by means of conversation, observation, questionnaires and surveys given to teachers, students, parents, and other participants. These tools gave us a clear idea of whether or not the project was successful and whether or not it had any impact on any of the target groups

Long term benefits
As an outcome of this project, partner schools strengthened their relationship with parents, students and teachers. For sure there is a better relationship among all the mentioned groups because all groups were directly involved in the project. This will be surely beneficial for all schools in the long run. The project also made school cooperation with parents better. The better atmosphere at schools led to more students wanting to join the schools as the schools are now more attractive in the local communities. The teachers brushed up their skills, which translated into more qualitative teaching at schools. In the same way, students’ motivation increased, they enjoyed learning better, which is yet another benefit for every school. There was a tightening of bonds between the school and its local community. By implementing Erasmus+ projects, schools got an international dimension in their daily activity – Don Milani School, for example, got the title of “Unesco School “.

Today, as never before, we are facing the need to mitigate the risks of Covid-19 transmission. Our project is more relevant than ever. To reopen the schools after strict Covid-19 lockdown, teaching outside is one of the solutions being suggested to help kids return safely to class. The need to work in contact with nature appears increasingly urgent and necessary. This project has opened the way to qualitatively better use of the possibilities of outdoor teaching.

Project Website

http://www.naturallearn.wixsite.com/home

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 115445 Eur

Project Coordinator

Istituto Comprensivo Don L. Milani & Country: IT

Project Partners

• Sabedin Türker Ilkokulu
• Szkola Podstawowa nr 32 im. Armii Krajowej
• Zakladni skola Mecholupy, okres Louny
• COLEGIO CALASANZ