Don’t Throw, Make It Glow! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Don’t Throw, Make It Glow!

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: Environment and climate change; Pedagogy and didactics; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

Disposing of waste has huge environmental impacts and can cause serious problems. It is in our hands to join efforts in order to find more appropriate and sustainable approaches to reduce waste in homes, schools and workplaces and that is why 5 schools from Romania, Greece, Malta, Finland and Italy decided to make a partnership with the title “Don’t Throw, Make It Glow!”, whose main aim is to foster awareness among students, teachers, parents and local communities for being more environmental conscious, by changing waste into useful objects, encouraging creative recycling. All partner schools have developed recycling programmes but the result was not satisfactory. Therefore we needed to learn from other countries through an exchange of good practices.
The project objectives are:
– to prevent generation of waste by learning innovative methods and strategies from partners’ experiences, and sharing them not only to students and teachers, but also to parents;
– to promote sustainable development by turning waste into useful objects on a long term;
– to develop innovative methods to raise awareness among students regarding environment protection;
– to improve vocational, artistic and teamwork skills, as well as creativity and imagination, by organizing workshops to produce crafts from recycling materials, as well as creating and performing the plays with environmental topic;
– to encourage students, teachers and parents to learn foreign languages, using English for main language of communication, as well as the partners’ basic vocabulary;
– to enhance liaison and cooperation in Europe by encouraging students and teachers’ mobility through transnational project meetings.
In the first year teachers created a joint syllabus for an environmental course which was taught all partner schools in the second year. There was made an exchange of good practices and the methods learned from each other were applied in joint workshops for making crafts from recyclable materials, during the learning/teaching/training activities, which took place in each partner country. After the workshops there were organized exhibitions and after the meetings, workshops were carried out in each partner school. A project mascot and a students diary were created. Students took the mascot at home and they wrote in the diary their experiences in environment protection. The mascot was handed in to the other partners and kept until the next meeting together with the diary. In this way students learned from one another in an informal way about their partners’ experiences, this being a good tool for monitoring the impact of the activities during the project period.
A project web page and a blog were created, where partners posted the results of the activities. It was also created a you tube channel where tutorials with the procedures for making the objects were posted.
In the second year of the project the environmental course was taught in each partner school. On the project webpage there were posted assessments and class activities. In this way other schools in the community can make use of them.
On Skype, an interactive lesson was about soil pollution was performed, being evaluated with an online test taken online by students from all partner countries, the exchange of teaching/learning strategies being made openly and with greater impact both on students and teachers.
The students from each partner school wrote a short script with environmental topic which was acted in a joint performance during the last project meeting in Romania
While working on the project, students acquired: better knowledge of environmental issues, improvement of the sense of European citizenship, better ICT and English communication skills , improvement of teamwork skills, by working together in the workshops, improvement of artistic and vocational skills. Teacher got: greater awareness regarding environment protection, development of vocational and pedagogical skills, improvement of communication skills in English and learning vocabulary from partners’ languages, development of teamwork skills, better ICT skills, greater feeling of belongingness to the European Community. The institutions involved in the partnership improved educational systems, managerial skills, they got a better image in the local communities, better relationship with the community and closer school-parents relationship, involving parents in the activities.
Among outcomes and results there were: environmental course syllabus, environmental course taught in all partner countries, handbook with good practices in environment protection, project logo, web page, e-learning platform, workshops for making crafts from recyclable materials, exhibitions with the crafts, play scripts written by students about their environmental experiences, acting show, play scripts booklet.
Through all these activities we helped to make a better environment so that we can all enjoy life in a wonderful and healthy world.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 137180 Eur

Project Coordinator

Scoala Gimnaziala Nr.7 & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Newark School
• Istituto Comprensivo Laura Lanza Baronessa di Carini
• 4o Gymnasio Komotinis
• Klaukkalan koulu