esfalp_v_-_web_small.pdf - European schools for a living planet

ACHIEVED OBJECTIVES▪ ▪14 students (6 planned) learned river monitoring techniques(3 months).▪▪5/6 months of river monitoring. 2 students continue toperform the river monitoring after the completion ofthe project for the purpose of writing a research paper.▪▪6/6 monthly workshops on different local pollution topics(one open to the public): International day of forests,active citizenship and WWF, waste separation, smartconsumerism, noise and light pollution, water pollution.RECOMMENDATIONSI would recommend that they include other teachers inthe early stages of the project. Start with smaller teams,work with the students they are better acquainted with.Make sure the students have time for all the projectactivities they planned, and try to plan them in a way thatthe timeline itself helps to keep the students motivated.▪▪Organized or joined 3/6 citizens’ actions (FLASHMOB,Slovenia-wide project “Mladi o okolju / Young peopleon Environment”, initiative “Earth hour”).▪▪Opened a Facebook project group and page and wroteprogress reports on the blog. Made 2/6 project brochuresand posters. Organized a fundraising event to presentthe activities to the local community. Included students’personal reports to classmates during homerooms.▪ ▪Organized 2/4 lectures with guest speakers for thestudents and local community on International day offorests and light pollution.BIGGEST OUTCOMES OF THE PROJECTThe project’s message was “Open your eyes: if you treatthe Nature well, it will do the same for you!”. To raiseawareness of local community we realised that we needto first start with ourselves. Thus we decided to turn ourschool into a good practise case. Our school does notaccept changes likely, that’s way we are pleased to see behaviouralchanges in the students and teachers regardingwaste separation and noise pollution. We still presumebased on team members’ personal experiences, but thesechanges are already penetrating local households.WHAT WENT WELL? WHAT WENT NOT SO WELL?..Engaging more students in research didn’t go as planned.It’s difficult to motivate them until the completion, due totheir extracurricular activities overload. We managed byfocusing on the workshops and citizens’ actions, whichwere success. Apart from motivation we have an openquestion how to achieve better public exposure.IMPACT ON THE SCHOOL’S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMThere were no impacts on our educational system. Rivermonitoring can and will be included only in researchpaper competitions as it’s too time consuming to beadded in the regular curriculum; however we are hopingto integrate raising awareness of local pollution as apermanent topic in different classes.HOW DID YOU CELEBRATE?We are planning a picnic trip. :-)Projects Report 61