journey of a tree

By implementing the project, we wanted to achieve the following goals: increasing environment problems awareness, learning strategies to avoid wastes and saving money (also by reusing objects with...

By implementing the project, we wanted to achieve the following goals: increasing environment problems awareness, learning strategies to avoid wastes and saving money (also by reusing objects with different functions), teaching our students to follow a sustainable and healthy diet and producing by themselves, if it is possible, bio-fruits and vegetables. Transversal objectives were also improving our teachers skills, such as: public speaking in official and institutional contexts by presenting multimedia issues prepared by themselves, their oral and written English, having chance to observe their colleagues from other countries, learning to integrate environmental issues to different subjects. With regard to the students, we wanted to achieve the improvement of their creativity and manual abilities, learning the importance of the environment, learning the risks of climate change, learning to work in groups (cooperative learning), learning to reuse different materials, discovering the importance of saving energy and water as benefits for their parents and economic goal for their future. As it concerns our institute, it wanted to achieve the increase of its fame and visibility in the territory of belonging and in a european scale.

In our project we implemented the following activities, with the active help of pupils guided by their teachers: the creation of bio-products such as fruits and vegetables (particularly, cauliflowers) and compost made of household (food scraps) and vegetal (leaves) organic waste. These activities were carried out in our kindergartens and primary school, along with our european partners, that made the same with their pupils. The compost so produced, was used in the different mobilities to plant trees. Children attended educational activities about drawing pictures, reading and creating stories with the participation of all partners, as well as workshops on recycling and reusing waste for classroom purposes. With regard to teachers, we all were prompted to implement the usage of social networks and platforms meant for remote communication and online videoconference (such as Google Meet, Webex, Teams, etc.). We also urged participant teachers to improve their oral and written English skills along with their competences in cooperative working also with the european colleagues.

Some of the achieved goals can be described as following: increased awareness of the participants about the environmental problems, learning of simple ways to recycle and reuse appearently useless and dismissed objects, easy ways to produce compost by using vegetal wastes and home made scraps, improving English language skills with regard to written and oral texts, development of the abilities to work in team (cooperative learning and working) even with foreign colleagues, learning of new educational strategies and methodologies by comparing the own ones with the european partners' ones. Teachers had the chance to observe their colleagues abroad and to get informed on local educational systems, on the current state of the traditional energy sources consumption, on the exploitation of the new ones, on the materials recycling percentage and compost making figures. They were also able to improve their English and digital skills thanks to the continue relations held between all the participants involved in the project during meetings and on social networks and platforms. Pupils who participated in on line activities organized by schools had the chance to improve their relational and manual skills and learning more about nature.