Climate Volunteers

drawing of the earth, people around it planting trees and cleaning it

Global climate change, which is one of the biggest environmental problems of our age, threatens all living things on the planet. This project aims to raise awareness about mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change. In addition, contributions will be made to the development of 21st-century skills such as participation in discussions, taking responsibility, communicating, collaborative work, using digital tools consciously and effectively, cultural understanding and foreign language proficiency. Photo credits: Ansty Art- stock.adobe.com

Objectives

• Developing the skills of discussion, research, questioning and taking responsibility in global problems. • Raising awareness on combating and adapting to climate change. • Developing solutions to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of global climate change. • Ensuring the conscious and effective use of digital tools and the Internet. • Developing 21st century skills such as collaborative, sharing, entrepreneurial, productive, social, communicative, cultural understanding and foreign language proficiency etc.

Introduction of partners

It is a good idea to begin this project with an ice-breaking activity such as a word association game. Students are asked to think of three words that come to mind when they say “climate change”. Using a tool such as , they enter their answers, and the results can then be displayed as a word cloud, for example. At teacher level you can create a list of tasks and ask teachers to choose an area they wish to take responsibility for. This way the work is spread evenly across the teachers involved. Another nice idea is to add the location of your school by placing a marker on an online map. Then involve the students and teachers in an activity to introduce themselves and their cities. This can be done simply by uploading photographs and descriptions, or you can make short video greetings using a tool like Voki or forums. At the end of this the students can divide themselves or be divided by the teachers into transnational teams for various collaborative tasks.

Orientation

A good first activity is to ask students to make a short video showing what issues they are aware of in terms of climate change after they have watched an . In transnational teams they can then respond to the videos and record or write their response. They can also design a logo for the project and vote for the best one with an online tool such as a simple form or you can also propose to students to decide a slogan using . There is also the idea of creating a collaborative story using .

Collaboration

COMMUNICATION Communication is very important in every project, and it is necessary for the teachers involved to meet very regularly to monitor the progress of the project and amend activities should the need arise. For the students some communication ideas are to choose a day such as World Water Day and ask them to compose an acrostic poem using the first letters of the World Water Day using an online spreadsheet or genially . Another activity is to give the students the task of looking up simple online games on the theme of climate change and asking them to post them on a Padlet. Online mind maps are a good way to focus students’ thinking on a topic using tools like or . COLLABORATION There are many opportunities for collaboration in a project like this. Following on from the individual teams mind map activity above you can work on a collaborative mind map or ask them to think critically and find solutions together using a collection of ideas about the topic on boards like . Another idea is work on a where each team concentrates on an aspect of the final product. Yet another idea is to do something special for eTwinning day and create a virtual exhibition of all the teams’ work on climate change using a tool such as or a collage of students` work in . A final idea for a collaborative activity is to produce an online magazine on aspects of the theme using a tool such as . A nice example of such a magazine can .

Evaluation & Assessment

Evaluation: The success of a project such as this is best evaluated by conducting surveys to get feedback from students, teachers and parents to see how much it contributed to understanding climate change, its impact, and the struggle with it. These surveys can be put online using a simple form and the results may be downloaded for analysis. It is important that all the teachers involved work together on the analysis to see the main lessons learned. They can be presented in a meeting with colleagues or parents using a . Assessment: The project works should give positive insight to teachers and help students to use innovative approaches such as project-based learning and critical questioning techniques at school. The outcomes such as the awareness video about climate change, the collaborative story, the acrostic poem, mind maps, the collaborative project magazine, etc., will all give a good idea of students’ development of ideas and grasp of the concepts. Here, for example, is a presentation of the original project.

Follow up

Documentation: The TwinSpace is the perfect place to document all aspects of the project and its outcomes. Starting with an overall plan based on a series of topics it is easy to follow the development of the entire project and its outcomes at each step. Dissemination: Dissemination can be done in many ways, and we have some examples here in this kit, such as the virtual exhibition and the collaborative book, both of which were widely shared in the original project. Another means of dissemination is to create a Web page with a wider description of the project such . Webinars can be organised on eTwinning live and news about the project can be created on social networking sites and school websites to ensure a wider impact of the project.

Additional information

Age from:

16
Age to:

19
Difficulty:

Easy

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Additional information

School subjects

Key competences

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