MY TEACHER: NATURE

We aime to ensure that children meet the nature, to make sure that materials used in education are not artificial materials and support education with natural materials.

My teacher: Nature

6 Participating countries: Spain, North Macedonia, Turkey, Estonia, Latvia, Portugal

Start: 01-10-2020 - End: 30-03-2022

Project Reference: 2020-1-ES01-KA229-081955

EU Grant: 132.090 EUR

Programme: Erasmus+

Key Action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Action Type: School Exchange Partnerships

With our My Teacher: Nature project, we aimed to ensure that children meet the nature, make sure that materials used in education are not ready and artificial materials and support education with natural materials.In line with our common objectives, 1.053 students and 116 teachers from 6 different countries (Spain, Portugal, Latvia, North Macedonia, Estonia, Turkey) will participate to the project.
Innovative methods as Stem, Constructive, Coding, Orienteering and nature based approaches as Montessori, Waldorf, Reggio Emilia, Forest schools will be utilized to ensure that the children learn by doing and experiencing. Throughout the project, activities will be held with natural materials in the class and in the nature in the fields of Science, Art, Maths and Music with the children. With the arts activities to be made, the children will examine the art of the nature and using objects from the nature will improve children’s creativity and aesthetic thinking skills. Language education given through music will create foreign language awareness with the children and the children will have the opportunity to get to know local/national/universal child music and instruments through various activities.Science education will be given by association with daily life and nature and the children’s, observation, research, examination, scientific method development skills will be improved. The children will be given environment education and awareness will be created on recycling and saving, protecting natural resources and climate change. Maths will be covered by associating with real life and thus making meaningful, children will gain map reading and three-dimensional perception skills with orienteering activities and they will be supported on establishing relations between situations, problem solving and producing new ideas with coding activities. All activities will improve children’s cooperation and group work and socialization skills.

At the end of the project and afterwards, as children learn by doing and experiencing in the nature and in the class and by associating with real life, they will use this learning method in future years in their education lives. They will be able to create their own learning materials without need for ready materials.The teachers will guide the children and participants in the implementation of the project and get training on new education-instruction models of Europe.Sharing of experiences will increase teachers’ professional and personal development and at the same time, they will have the opportunity to widen their opinions beyond cultural and national borders. Administrators and other staff of the school will be included in the activities. Schools will increase their popularity with best education practices and they will be more attractive for today’s and future students. When necessary, cooperation will be made with the families.
Apart from this, education institutions, universities, museums, local administrations, civil society organisations and media outlets will take part in project implementation at different stages. At local and national level, citizens will participate to the project through social media, school and project websites. Thanks to the project, all participants and those influenced by the project will achieve environment objectives and go on their lives with environmental awareness. Partners will come together on LTT meetings. They will obtain information about the countries’ nature, culture, traditions, education system and life styles. Thanks to this, their foreign language communication skills will be improved and they will have a European vision.When evaluating our project, we will use internal and external evaluation approaches. Surveys, nature observation forms, anecdote records, checklists and interviews with children will be made, children’s development will be observed with portfolios. According to these results, we will be able to evaluate the level of achievement of the objectives. As regards external evaluation and feedback, project website’s number of clicks, downloading of instruction materials, Twinspace and social media account opinions will help us measure impacts. Project results will be disseminated as much as possible and will be openly shared for everyone in mother tongues of the countries and in English at schools’ websites, web blog of the project, social media pages of the schools, eTwinning platform and Erasmus+ Project Results Platform. Partner schools will work together on the eTwinning platform and Twinspace, develop activities and create new duties even after the end of EU financing.Information and communication technologies will be used and eTwinning platform will facilitate us.We will improve ourselves with School Education Gateway’s online education activities, classroom resources and different ideas that can be adopted. With our project, we believe that we will offer participants a broader future with a European a concept.