Smart Up and Step Up !

We wanted to share our experiences in international projects and activities aimed at showing the importance of doing sport and being active and to establish the basis for students' future healthy habits and lifestyle. Partner schools came from different areas and carried their own cultural marks and ideas in relation to healthy lifestyle and promoting sport. We wanted to learn about good practices from partner countries, exchange ideas and join efforts to create a common framework of good practice that could be used in our areas, affecting not only current generations of students, but also those who are still coming. We wanted to ensure good use of the project and its long-term impact so we created a teachers’ guide with lesson ideas that we can include in regular teaching. We wanted to provide students who come from different cultures and social backgrounds with a multicultural context, to improve cooperation between students and teachers from European countries and also to help students to become more aware of the role of doing sports and leading a healthy lifestyle. The project work involved both local activities which were practised between exchanges and the project activities that were done during the meetings.

The main aim of the partnership was to provide students who come from different cultures and social backgrounds with a multicultural context, to boost cooperation between learners and teachers from European countries and also to help students to become more aware of the role of sports. Specific goals: O1. Raising awareness regarding the importance of practicing sports on a regular basis; O2. Promoting safe and reasonable practice of sport as a way to improve self-esteem and motivation; O3. Helping students to develop an analysis of different kinds of sport taking into account its positive and negative aspects O4. Increasing critical thinking O5. Developing interactive and communication skills in international environments O6. Developing multicultural skills as well as raising European awareness O7. Boosting students’ creativity and imagination O8. Developing a multinational web of active teenage creators of products related to the subject from different European countries. O9. Developing a web of responsible teachers who will promote the reasonable practice of sport in the teaching process. Objectives 4-7 were related to Priority 1, objectives 1-4, 6, 8 related to Priority 2, objective 9 was related to School Education Priority.

Students practised various physical activities at national and international levels. The activities helped students to develop interpersonal and communication skills as well as exchange different opinions and ideas with peers from various countries. The students developed teamwork, creativity, imagination, decision making skills. We organised student exchanges and virtual meetings: 1RO Physical Education in secondary schools 2PL Sport as an attractive way of spending spare time(virtual) 3PL The importance of practising sport 4TR Sport as an important element of a healthy lifestyle 5RO Dangers connected with practising some sports(virtual) During the meetings students did lots of indoor and outdoor activities intended to improve their physical strength and a number of key skills. There were also workshops organized by experts and people professionally dealing with sport. The purpose of the meetings and local activities, was to show learners advantages of practising sports.The exchanges were intertwined with local activities-questionnaires, discussions about sport and PE lessons, presentations about schools and countries, making videos promoting sport, practising sports games, workshops and meetings with experts.

Final products: calendars designed and managed by students that included interesting, relevant slogans/sentences and photos taken by them, an e-book related to advantages and disadvantages of sport, a film about the importance of sports (showing them practising various indoor and outdoor sports) and a photo-story about a healthy lifestyle where physical activity plays the key role. The extra product was a teachers’ guide on how to implement the project based activities into the educational process. The tangible results of the project were created during the activities organised: - virtual tours, presentations and videos about partner countries, towns and schools - logos of the project - presentations and posters about sport - presentations about educational systems in partner countries - photoalbums promoting sport - short stories about the importance of doing sport - videos promoting sport - album with posters prepared from all the students' works - calendars promoting sport - the teachers’ guide Detailed descriptions of all the activities undertaken, along with the students' work, can be found on the project TwinSpace: https://school-education.ec.europa.eu/en/etwinning/projects/smart-and-step-erasmus/twinspace/pages