WAY – Water Around You Erasmus Project

Project Title

WAY – Water Around You

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

The theme of our project was the bodies of water nearby the participating schools. The aims of the project were that the pupils would 1) understand the importance and different cultural meanings of the bodies of water, 2) learn how to research the features of water and the bodies of water, 3) become interested in protecting bodies of water, 4) through active participating enhance their agency on learning. We also aimed at teachers’ professional growth by gaining expertise in planning and teaching in phenomenon based learning environments. One of our goals was to create teaching material for phenomenon based learning to be re-used and developed further. The descriptions about all of the workshops are uploaded on Erasmus+ Project Results Platform as “Toolkits”. During the project we created pedagogical structures that enable phenomenon based learning, focusing for example on media education, multidisciplinary collaboration and presenting the learning results. These pedagogical structures are uploaded on Erasmus+ Project Results Platform as “New methodologies and techniques”.

Pupils were active participants in several multidisciplinary learning activities, which gave them chances to discover the body of water from various points of views: through music, media, arts and sciences. The activities included 1) exploring cultural meanings of water by composing and presenting music, photographing, shooting videos and visiting culturally meaningful places, 2) enhancing media skills by making videos, writing texts and analyzing and making advertisements, 3) learning how to do scientific research on water and the fauna of the body of water and 4) becoming acquainted with water preserving and environmental aspects of bodies of water. These activities aimed at developing pupils’ transversal skills in collaboration, multiliteracies and becoming experts in their own learning trajectories. During the project pupils learnt about reflecting, evaluating and documenting their learning processes and presenting and disseminating the results in the symposiums that were organized in the participating schools and various media (newspapers, radio, tv, internet). Furthermore, teachers developed their skills in teaching in phenomenon based and multidisicplinary learning environments. The project inspired the teachers also to create new multidisciplinary projects that were not in the actual plan. Most of the activities utilized ICT tools which both the teachers and the pupils learnt to use and evaluated their suitability in pedagogical context.

We organized four learning/teaching/training activities (LTT weeks) in four countries (Finland, Spain, Poland and Portugal) during the course of the project. Between these activities the pupils from all the participating schools prepared smaller scale projects which were presented during the LTT weeks. The whole project involved about 2000 participants both directly (teachers and pupils in the partner schools) and indirectly (parents, local stakeholders, companies, students and staff of the cooperating universities, other schools nearby). Around 200 persons were active participants in four LTT weeks. Moreover, to enable a larger group to benefit from the project the smaller scale projects between the LTT weeks were done by the whole classes, not only by the traveling pupils. We also organized two transnational meetings; one at the beginning of the project and the other at the end of the project. In the first transnational meeting we agreed on the common principles of the project, made the dissemination plan and defined the responsibilities. In the last transnational meeting we collected information from all the partner schools for the final report, evaluated the whole project and discussed its impacts. 16 teachers participated actively in the transnational meetings and all the teachers of the Greek and Finnish schools participated them indirectly.

The cultural exchange enriched and developed learning and teaching practices in our schools. The shared good practices developed our schools for example in organizing phenomenon based learning in the future. The pupils learnt about the multilayered meanings of the bodies of water and valuable transversal skills such as collaboration, language skills, expressing themselves through various arts-based methods, using valid scientific research methods, utilizing ICT tools and becoming aware of different kinds of learning processes. The feedback from the parents has been encouraging and show that they appreciate possibilities to study in international context.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 132985 Eur

Project Coordinator

Järvenpään Yhteiskoulu & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Agrupamento de Escolas Professor Paula Nogueira
• IES El Parador
• Zespol Szkolno – Przedszkolny Nr 9
• GYMNASIO NEAS MADYTOY