The contemporary classroom – a nature protectors` laboratory Erasmus Project

Project Title

The contemporary classroom – a nature protectors` laboratory

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 2020

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

FourEuropean countries are involved in our project BG, IT, GR, NL. According the previous contacts among the partners came clear that they all face the same problems- bored students, teachers working in the same way for years, parents slightly involved in the school life. Schools as a basic educational and upbringing institution that creates and shapes the knowledge, skills, culture and ideology of future generations, it requires active and positive interaction between dedicated teachers and self-confident students.
In order for students to develop a multitude of skills and to make them active European citizens and even more active environmentalists, teachers must constantly improve their skills and professional qualifications. Social and economic disparities, migration, unemployment and the rapidly changing system of values, natural and climate change in European societies are a challenge for students and teachers. To cope with them and turn the 21st century into a century of knowing and able, we need high quality education.
Our project “CLASSROOM – LABORATORY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION” between four partner schools from Bulgaria, Greece, the Netherlands and Italy aims at these priorities and focuses on three main areas:

Project goals: The first main goal for us is to return the interest and confidence of the students to the educational process and to make the school a place for their practical and creative training. This will ignore the main reasons for dropping out of school and further social exclusion. We want to focus our attention on the natural sciences in the context of contemporary environmental problems. Intensive teacher training will help us improve our own skills, adopt new perspectives, methods and tools to be able to meet the complex reality of the contemporary classroom, which is often a mirror of society. The COVID 19 pandemic, to some extent, surprised the teachers who had to go into the completely unknown distance learning. After a few day wanderings, they intuitively built their paths for interaction with the students. We would like to present to them methods that would improve not only classroom but also distance learning. We envisage that each school will involve 9 students in international visits and 60 in the project activities from each country.

A second major goal for us is for teachers- they to become acquainted with and begin to incorporate in their pedagogical practice not enough familiar teaching methods that we will test in science subjects. Which we consider to be key in our time. This will increase the quality of the education and training process. They will gain confidence and have more tools to deal with emergencies like the current one caused by a pandemic. Teachers will know a new innovative teaching methodologies such as CLIL, Flipped classrooms, ICT based learning. The introduction of the most successful and advanced teaching strategies in four European countries is to make teaching more attractive, effective and creative and to share the project’s achievements and experiences with other teachers from different countries using the e Twining platform. In our project we will involve directly ten teachers from each school and indirectly the entire pedagogical teams and teachers using the e Twining platform as users of the future ebook.

A third main objective is to make parents involved in school life, and in particular in the project developed, because we believe that they and teachers together in a team will more effectively educate and up bring successfully the future European citizens.

The main activities envisaged are:

1. Development and approbation of lessons in Nature science , which will use the above methods and e-book collection.
2. Preparing and conducting student round tables on environmental topics
3. Gathering of students’ impressions after each visit in “Small reports”, which will be summarized in an e-book
4. Creating and implementing questionnaires and checklists to measure project progress and attitude to methods used
The Coordinator and partners will be in continuous communication with each other to ensure the smooth running of all project activities and its successful completion. If difficulties arise, a common decision will be made on how to overcome them.

Expected results:

– An e-book with developed lessons to help colleagues from European countries
– An e-book with collected “Small reports” from the visits
– Round tables on environmental topics that will focus students’ attention on nature issues
– Parents will become more involved in school life and out-of-school activities
Long-term benefits:
– The lesson plans can be used for inspiring teachers from all over Europe
– Round tables will remain a tradition in partner schools, to mark Earth Day, nature day, etc.

The experiences gained by teachers, students and parents will enrich and broaden their knowledge, skills and their outlook.
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EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 77118 Eur

Project Coordinator

120 Primary School “G.S.Rakovski” & Country: BG

Project Partners

• OBS Jan Harmenshof
• Istituto Comprensivo San Giovanni Bosco
• DES Primary private Company