How do we develop our school gardens to become a more inclusive tool for learning outside the classroom in order to improve our pupils’ basic skills and future competences? Erasmus Project

Project Title

How do we develop our school gardens to become a more inclusive tool for learning outside the classroom in order to improve our pupils’ basic skills and future competences?

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: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Our Erasmus+ project ‘Let Us Grow Our Own Green Future’ was formulated to provide the effective and inclusive objective of giving our school gardens a high profile and to become the setting for purposeful learning experiences. It has enabled us to develop a range of learning activities, innovative methodologies and schemes of learning across the curriculum, that have raised the pupils’ attainment in the foundation skills of STEM, Literacy, Numeracy, Languages and the Arts, as well as key competences. It also has had a huge impact on their confidence, tolerance, health, self-esteem, well-being, and academically, it has opened them towards much wider sustainable and future opportunities.

This partnership comprised two rural middle schools (who are actively involved in environmental issues and the Sustainable Development Goals), has changed our pedagogical approaches permanently by focusing on three clear strands that have permitted us to achieve our priorities towards social inclusion and promoting the acquisitions of key skills and competences:
– In year 1: the schools gardens and STEM, promoting numeracy, literacy and digital skills as well as practical skills
– In year 2: ‘From the Soil to the Plate’ promoting food production, cooking and the healthy food agenda,
– In year 3: the gardens, the arts and traditional and modern technologies in a natural environment, as well as the celebration of this inclusive European collaboration.

By effectively collaborating with our European partner school, and with a clear drive on sharing best practices with our local communities and national environmental organisations, the number of lessons and range of subjects learning outside has hugely increased, and all teachers and pupils now enjoy and value our gardens and wild spaces. We have truly embedded green activity into our curriculum and made it a subject to be proud of.

Sustainable outcomes such as our project website: www.2gardens 4learning.eu, the development of new gardens and outdoor learning spaces, the pupils’ collaborations on eTwinning, and the implementation of new approaches to learning through outdoor experiences in our respective school’s curriculum have and will continue to have a significant impact on the life of our school communities. Well-planned and effective learning experiences, pupils exchanges and visits to each other’s schools, team-teaching, workshops and challenges linked with the curriculum, the outside classrooms and the real world, have provided our schools with an enriched, deeper and meaningful learning, towards building bridges between theory and reality.

Through this amazing Erasmus+ European project, we were able to give our school communities the opportunity to experience the world beyond the classroom as an essential part of learning and personal development, whatever their age, ability or circumstances.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 44146,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Bredon Hill Academy & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Mittelschule St. Michael