Climate changes Vs today’s lifestyles: A new challenge for European youths Erasmus Project

Project Title

Climate changes Vs today’s lifestyles: A new challenge for European youths

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 : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

In spite of being an up-to-date subject in schools around Europe nowadays, climate change was not something pupils were aware of in their everyday lives, nor the social changes they entailed. Children needed to be taught about it – and that’s what science teachers – geography teachers, biology teachers and history teachers – all around Europe were trying to do and that was what our project was aiming at.
The activities connected with this project created an awareness of climate change with the students as the topic was much more relevant to pupils if they could measure climate change, compare results from all over Europe, identify real impacts of climate change on their day-to-day activities, and come up with ways to cope with it.
To be able to do that, our pupils dealt with climate labs or meteorological stations in a scientific way and teachers were prepared for the challenges of science teaching. That meant that curriculum knowledge about climate change was relevant to our students. Teachers were able to convey this relevancy through experimental activities that both appealed to the students and fostered their scientific attitudes towards the world and their future experience.
A project around these subjects increased students’ awareness of the importance of respecting the environment and reducing their carbon footprint.
The project focused on collecting weather data with homemade weather stations with the objective of raising pupils’ awareness of actual climate changes and their effects on everyday life in the participating countries. In addition to the scientific study of data the project aimed to appeal to the creativity of the students through art. The students illustrated the abstract data and drew conclusions. These conclusions were displayed in creative work to inform the larger public of the problem. The students worked together to create a leaflet which could be distributed in all member countries to inform the public about the reasons for climate change and what young adults could do to fight global climate change. The leaflet also described what the students would do in their own schools to reduce their carbon footprint. The International Environment Day (5th June) fitted perfectly to present the project to the public.
The project involved many different subjects, i.e. physics, geography, social studies, art and music, to appeal to the students in various ways and also to show the complexity of the topic. The instructions for building weather stations, how to analyse statistic data and the research material, results and documented material were either displayed at the participating schools or could be found on the projects’ webpage.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 137745 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gymnasium Neue Oberschule & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Collège Edgar Quinet
• EBI Francisco Ferreira Drummond
• Scuola Secondaria di primo grado “Ettore Romagnoli”
• Prienu ,,Azuolo” progimnazija
• Publiczne Gimnazjum