LEARNING THROUGH LANDSCAPES Erasmus Project

Project Title

LEARNING THROUGH LANDSCAPES

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: Creativity and culture; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

We live in an alert world, full of stress, pollution and lack of humanity and become increasingly more indifferent to everything around us and do not have time to listen to friends, family, strangers, and why not, to the land. Yes, to the land. It has so much to tell or to reproach. So, let’s stop for a while from the fast pace of life and listen to its voice. By means of the project “LEARNING THROUGH LANDSCAPES” we wanted to integrate language and landscape, art and culture. In this respect, the project is an exploration and celebration of oral and written language of science, art, performance and the human imagination. It can be done with people of all ages and abilities, in any landscape, with any language. Our pupils used natural materials to create ephemeral art in an outdoor setting. With bare hands and natural tools, they rearranged leaves, grass, stone, twigs, sand, ice, snow, mud, pine cones and other materials by using color, form, shape, pattern, light, and shadow in order to create art in simple contrast to surroundings. Then they took photographs of their art works with digital cameras. They wrote poetry about their experience while creating the artworks and their feelings about nature. The artworks and the poetry had been collected in a memory book and the pupils in the countries involved in the project sent the books to each other. The project invited partner pupils to discover simple miracles of everyday life, the landscapes that surround us, insisting on the fragile relationship between people, nature, art and the passage of time. We discovered miracles looking the beauties created by nature and had unique feelings when we looked at the ants’ walk or listen to the crickets’ song. The miracle of the European friendship wore the mark of our partnership.

Through workshops, exhibitions, magazines, trips, transnational meetings, the achievement of some outdoor project activities, we managed to achieve all our objectives. Working together as a united team, all the European partners set up their project corner, maintained a permanent contact by e-mail, contributed to the project website achievement, and organized symposiums and conferences in their towns for promoting the project ideas.

1. Through this project we improved the quality and increased the mobility volume involving many pupils and teachers in each partner school. We reduced the early school leaving, the pupils being involved in attractive activities, giving them trust in own skills. The pupils learning with migrant background had been improved and our schools gained prestige in their community. Mobility gave us the chance to develop many teaching and learning approaches, to make new European friends, to share the joy of being in a host family, to make cultural exchanges.
2. Our project promoted gender equality and inclusive learning approaches by the planned activities. It was relevant for the national context of each partner school, taking in account the proposed objectives, carefully chosen by the coordinator and the other partners. The results proved that the pupils’ activities were linked to the work world according to the actual European context.
3. “LEARNING THROUGH LANDSCAPES” encouraged our pupils in learning better English as modern and communication project language. The pupils developed life long friendships in the project throughout Europe, by making pen pals, writing e-mails or postcards, and face to face meetings.
4. Our pupils improved their IT skills becoming creative and innovative to share with their partners, having an active role in creating our project website content, online memory books, the PowerPoint presentations of our schools, towns, countries, project activities and disseminations, and the booklet.
5. This project was a support to literacy and transversal key competencies, all the partner schools contributing to the tasks and final products achievement, to pupils’ acquirement of the basic life skills necessary for the personal development, future employment, and active European citizenship.
6. Aiming a good cooperation between our schools’ headmasters and their management experiences exchange, our project was relevant for the opportunity of our schools development. It integrated pupils from different cultures with a common purpose, developing them a better understanding of the correlation between values in life. Each country organized events covering national identity through activities dedicated to the protection of the environment, to show to our partners how we feed ourselves and the children in need with healthy national food, all the actions developed having the support of our schools leaderships.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 125340 Eur

Project Coordinator

FEVZI CAKMAK ORTAOKULU & Country: TR

Project Partners

• AGIOS SPYRIDONAS SPECIAL SCHOOL
• 5th Primary School of Xanthi
• Srecko Kosovel Primary School Sezana
• SEHIT MEHMET ALI BOZKURT CUMHURIYET ORTAOKULU
• Primary school “Hristo Botev” Brenitsa
• KIRSEHIR MERKEZ CUMHURIYET ORTAOKULU