Enjoy and learn in a healthy way Erasmus Project

Project Title

Enjoy and learn in a healthy way

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: Health and wellbeing; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage

Project Summary

“Enjoy and learn in a healthy way” was a project between Estonia and Spain, which had the experience of working together in eTwinning projects, and which realized that young people, despite their knowledge of contents related to health, they were not really conscious about the importance of having a healthy life, both in terms of food and leisure time. According to the impact of media and new technology devices on their daily life, we felt we had to help them to fight against stereotypes and unhealthy habits by promoting learning and leisure activities which make them feel confident and positive in their way of living. At the same time, we wanted to reinforce the European values by knowing and working with people from other countries and boost their interest in knowing other cultures, which, in turn, leads to enhance their motivation for learning.
Agree with this, our goals were:
– Promote healthy habits in young people, both in food and leisure, enhancing physical exercise and active life as an essential aspect of a healthy life.
– Share good and innovating practices for learning, including gamification, to promote safe and useful use of technological devices.
– Know other cultures and bring Europe and their values closer to our students so that the possibilities of training abroad could be seen as a reality in their future.

Thus, the project was targeted to students between 14 and 16 years old from both Schools, who worked online in the Twinspace platform during the school year. Fifteen students for each School were selected for the mobilities according to different criteria, among which the priority was to guarantee this possibility to those students with a more disadvantaged social and family environment.

The project covered a wide range of activities:
– Activities in the Twinspace: Presentation of students and schools, interaction among students, logo proposals, games, polls, workshops… The main areas for working were: “Ready to eat”, “Keep moving”, “Enjoy healthily” and “How media influence us”. In each area, different topics related to health, leisure activities and the use of technology were investigated.
– Activities in host Schools: Only the programmed activities in Spain were done due to the pandemic: Mediterranean healthy food workshop, class attendance, “sharing our learning” workshop, reception of local authorities, dynamic dance workshop, healthy diet workshop, visit Valencia with gymkhana and online questionnaires, attendance at “mascletà” (traditional festival), healthy free time activities outside school hours, visit the natural environment: the Albufera de Valencia, visit the City of Science and Oceanography Aquarium, visit the exhibition of the “ninot” (traditional festival),Dice game workshop, European gymkhana, evaluation and final workshop, delivery of attendance certificates and farewell snack with families.
– Activities after the mobilities: They were a little bit different as programmed due to the pandemic, but some activities realted to COVID were made. We also compiled a magazine showing the experience, the activities, the work done by the students, the evaluation and the conclusions as a final product of the project.
The methodology in the activities involved teamwork, gamification, and an active role of the students in discussions and activities.

After the evaluation of the project, the benefits of the experience should be grouped at different levels:
Students:
– Activities and workshops made them reflect on the importance of a healthy life preventing future illnesses, as well as to cope with the pressure of stereotypes created by media. They can analize their diet and create a healthy daily menu. They understand the need of the training.
– Enjoying leisure activities enhanced active life avoiding other young unhealthy tendencies for leisure.
– Knowing about the cultural heritage of other European countries have strengthened their feelings as European citizens, and their interest to know more about Europe.
– Linguistic English skills were significantly improved.

Staff:
– Teachers from different subjects and countries worked cooperatively improving our capacity for teamwork as well as our motivation.
– Sharing good practices improved our daily teaching practices, applying new methodologies and didactic resources.
– Thanks to the experience, new proposals for interaction and cooperation between partners have been proposed.

Schools:
– Greater internationalization of our Schools
– Enhanced satisfaction from families, students and staff members
– Greater participation of families in the life School.
– Extend the teaching and learning process beyond the school environment.
– Improvement of the quality of teaching.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 21420 Eur

Project Coordinator

IES RIU TÚRIA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Kuressaare Vanalinna Kool