Water Up! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Water Up!

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions

Project Summary

With our project “Water Up!” we intend to rise public awareness of plastic pollution in waters surrounding us, since we have seen that there is pollution of waters around every school we are working together with.
With the project we plan to activate students aged 13-16 and teachers to develop good practices regarding these issues.

There is an enormous amount a high pollution of local waters with plastics, seen or unseen, consequently we need to tell people that there are activitites that can be done against it.
In order to to so, students of all partner countries will document/report on the way our local waters are polluted, by taking water samples and examining them with the aid of local institutions, by taking photo proof of pollution with plastics, by talking to local experts and institutions, by visiting recycling factories, by visiting institutions working with local drinking water, by visiting local institutions where sea animals are taken care of, by job shadowing activities during every stay in cooporating institutions.
We intend to implement a sense of responsibility relating to environmental policy with all involved people.
Students will point out to the public to start thinking and being active, by turning a motivational stop motion film which will be published, by participating in local clean-up events, by designing leaflets and posters in their own school, and during their job shadowing.

Students will help to make the school and the local community to a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle by replacing plastic items such as plastic water bottles or plastic lunch boxes with environmentally friendlier ones.
They develop ecological consciousness by envolving external institutions such as mass media, scientific associations, museums.
Work experience will be gained by job shadowing in several institutions and companies such as a drinking water treatment stations in Portugal and in Italy, a recycling facility in Germany.
Since the curriculum in all coutries doesn´t focus enough on the topic, we find it extremely necessary to intensify working on it.

We plan to meet regularly with four student mobilities and two teacher meetings.
Expected results will be our own logo, collected water samples and stop-motion videos, and pieces of art of our own art project.
We work on results of a picture contest about polluted waters and its changes after cleaning.
There will be evaluation and reports about job shadowing in different facilities and working opportunities around water, sea life and recycling.
We will have participated in parallel cleanup activities, students and teachers will have replaced lunch boxes and water bottles.
We will set up our own computer game and Kahoot quiz, there will be a list of problematic pollution in the local areas and what can be done.
Motivational videos and records from every participating country will be provided.
Students will learn how to programme a computer game called “Water Up!”.
They will learn with a kahoot game how to separate garbage correctly. This way, students gain ICT competences at the same time.
Students and teachers will aquire language skills, English as well as in the partner countries´languages. Students and teachers language learning competences rise automatically.
We are planning to have a closer look at job opportunities by offering our students job shadowing for a day (once in every country). The students will be able to look behind the scenes at a drinking water facility, with Sea Life company and a seal station with close animal encounters.
As we will also focus on temperature rise and its damage to nature / water habitats, we will visit interactive museums and exhibitions about water pollution and its relationship to climate change.
We will examine if, where and to what amount the garbage is separated in our schools.
There will be photoproof shared on Twinspace, the results be will uploaded on our own website.
We will go to all classes, inform about the project, about the amount of plastic waste and point out that a change has to be made.
Our project includes an art project. Students will find creative ways to reuse recycled plastic bottles for either sculptures or street art.

Teachers especially need tp focus on training in Norway and Germany during teacher meetings. They will aquire teaching skills in MOT, a subject invented in Norway, which is meant to fight bullying, which also forces integration and a positive attiude towards scholl with students and teachers. Additionally, teachers will try out student activities during these stays and gain knowledge in programming with Scratch.

Our Erasmus students are an idol to their peer groups.
They motivate their peer group as well as school staff to participate in regular clean-up activities.
All people involved in the project aquire knowledge about partner countries in various areas, such as cultural aspects, social system, politics, history our the countries´ code of conduct.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 120016 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ludwig-Windthorst-Schule & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Sistranda skole
• Agrupamento de Escolas D. Maria II – Braga
• IT Giulio Cesare Falco