Water – the source of our lives (Awareness of the value of the water) Erasmus Project

Project Title

Water – the source of our lives (Awareness of the value of the water)

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: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Environment and climate change; Access for disadvantaged

Project Summary

Life on earth depends on water. Water is not only used as drinking water, for sanitary purposes and for leisure time activities but also for industrial production of all kinds of goods. Clean water is a limited resource. It is our duty to teach our pupils the importance of properly use of this resource. This is the reason why we wanted to work on the topic “Water – the source of our lives”.
In all of our three schools we have lots of pupils with low achievement in basic skills and the risk of leaving school early. Those pupils must be motivated through more effective teaching methods. Pupils need the change between different kind of teaching methods and mostly like to learn with out-of-school-education. In two of our schools there are lots of pupils with a background of parents with less money. These pupils need to get the chance to get to know foreign people and foreign countries.

During the project we wanted our pupils to learn about water, the way of water usage and the importance of clean water for our lives. It was also our aim to teach our pupils more about the different countries, to improve the English language as a common language of all pupils and the chance to learn to respect different ways of living and handling things.
To come together and to identify with the project lots of our pupils participated in a logo-challenge. They designed a common logo for our project. We used it in various stages of the project such as the online magazine, documents and all the giveaways of the project.
We have approximately 1300 pupils all together. All pupils got the chance to participate in the project by various school activities and the middle school pupils also had the possibility of transnational learning activities. All of our schools had activities during the school year in different subjects like Geography, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, German, English, Finnish, Turkish, Physical Education, Home Economics, and Art. In the natural scientific subjects the pupils concentrated on the consistence of water. They examined water samples and found out about qualities and features of water. They learned about the water footprint. In the language lessons the pupils read and wrote about water, they learned vocabulary about water and worked on the myth of the Kalevala. In the Art lessons they talked about water, made creations and drew pictures concerning water. In Geography the pupils learned about what water is used for, how we can save it, how we can use water to generate power and about climate and weather. In the P.E. lessons pupils trained swimming techniques and lifesaving skills and got to know various water sports. The facultative courses concentrated on the historic view of water and local water areas and water sheds.
There were four transnational project meetings. Teachers of all of the three schools came together in one of the countries and planned and evaluated the project and learning activities. There were three short-term learning and teaching activities with our pupils (one in Finland, two in Germany). We wanted to visit all of the three schools. Due to the fact that it was not possible to go to Turkey because of safety reasons we had to change our plans. Some teachers and pupils of all schools met in one of the countries. They did activities together, got to know the surrounding of the school and lived in families of the visited pupils. Our pupils have contact via letters, mail, Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp. They got the chance to get to know their pen pals and develop their ICT skills by writing articles for the online magazine and homepage of the schools, QR-code orienteering, using a 3D-printer and doing html-coding.
In addition, German teachers visited our partner school in Finland. They spent five days in our partner school to visit lessons and to talk about teaching methods.
We used the e-twinning platform for uploading some of our photos. We uploaded our material and results in the Internet magazine which was produced by the Finnish school and homepages. For communication we mainly used Whatsapp and email. The pupils also wrote postcards and used Instagram.
There were exhibitions in all of our schools; the pupils got to know about the results at the pupil’s assemblies.
We hope that all of our pupils and their families have increased their awareness of water as an important resource and the awareness of environmental care in general.
The project results can be used after the project from all of our schools and can be downloaded from the Internet magazine. Our schools will stay in contact and we hope that we will visit each other again. The Finnish school will continue their annual visits. The topic “water – the source of our lives” will stay part of our curricula.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 69475 Eur

Project Coordinator

Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Schule & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Mehmet Ozcan Torunoglu Ortaokulu
• Mäntynummen yhtenäiskoulu