Living in Harmony!

School education should not only focus on the skills and knowledge that students gain, but also on their character and the kind of person they will become. The activities in this kit focus on helping students explore values such as care and compassion, respect, responsibility, understanding, tolerance, inclusion, peace, unity, love and forgiveness and how to apply them to their everyday lives. Through working collaboratively students will realise that these values can lead to living in harmony if they put them into practice in their daily lives.

Objectives

• To motivate students to explore their personal and social values • To help students build their interpersonal and social skills • To develop students’ responsibility at a local, national and global level • To teach students the meaning of giving back to their communities through working for a cause • To help students create an inclusive school environment

Introduction of partners

Getting to know each other Students introduce themselves by updating their profiles in the Twinspace. In their description they have to include qualities that other people see in them. If their parents, friends, classmates or teachers have identified a positive character trait or strength, they should highlight it in their description. As a profile picture, they do not have to upload a photo of themselves, but a sketch or an image of something that they feel that represents them. Photo dictionaries Students from each partner country create a photo dictionary by translating the following words in their native languages: care, compassion, respect, responsibility, understanding, tolerance, inclusion, peace, unity, love and forgiveness. The students record themselves pronouncing these words in their native language, while they are also asked to walk around their towns and take photos of people, places, sights, monuments etc. that can be matched with these specific words. The photo dictionary is embedded in the TwinSpace of the project so that the project partners can get familiar with the language and life in the villages, towns and cities of their partners. Example tool: Voicethread

Orientation

The Tree of Values Students brainstorm values that would make our world a better place. A world cloud in the shape of a tree is created including all these values. With the support of an art teacher, students could make models of the ‘trees of values’, using materials of their choice and on its branches and leaves they present all the values mentioned during the brainstorming activity. Photos of the trees of all partner schools are displayed in a photo collage and published in the TwinSpace. Example tool: Brainstorming: Answergarden ,Word Cloud: Lapin bleu Photo Collage: FotojetInspirational Quotes Students create posters with inspirational quotes related to each one of the values presented in the previous activity. They use these posters to decorate the walls of their school. Example tool: CanvaPeople who changed the world Students present a well-known personality from their country that inspired the world, someone they admire deeply because they tried to make the world a better place. They should highlight the qualities or values this person has. Students create a timeline displaying the most important events of these people’s lives. They then create an interactive map by pinpointing the birthplaces of all these people and adding all the relevant information (name, a photo of them and the link to the timeline). Example tool: Timeline Knightlab, Zeemaps

Collaboration

COMMUNICATION:Respect and Tolerance: Cultural Similarities/Differences Students work in national groups. They contact their partners through the TwinSpace forum and ask them questions about their everyday lives (who do they live with, what time do they go to school, what do they eat, what do they do after school etc.). They identify the similarities and differences with students from their partner countries and create a presentation with their own drawing/sketches depicting those similarities and differences. They narrate in their own voice and explain to their partners what they have drawn. Example tool: SlidestoryUnderstanding and Inclusion: Is your school building accessible? Students work in national groups and conduct research on what a school building needs to have in order to be accessible to people with disabilities. They present their findings to their partners, comment on each other’s ideas and vote for the most important ones. Based on the answers provided through this discussion, each group creates an infographic on school building accessibility, and, using this as a guide, check how accessible their own school is to people with disabilities. All the national groups present the results to their partners in a live webconference session in TwinSpace. Example tool: Tricider , PiktochartPeace and Unity: Living Life in Peace Students describe the images that come to their minds when they think of times of war and peace. Then they use their five senses to describe what their peaceful, dream world would be like (I see, I hear, I feel, I taste, I smell). They share their descriptions with their partners and vote for the five best ones. Example tool: IdeaboardzCOLLABORATIONResponsibility: Our colourful school garden Students work in national groups and prepare presentations of garden plants that grow in their region. In their presentations they include instructions on how to plant and grow these plants. These presentations are uploaded to the TwinSpace for each partner school to agree on the plants that their school garden will include. If possible, partner countries exchange seeds to grow in their school gardens. With the help of their teachers, parents and/or other experts each partner school creates their own school garden and takes care of it throughout the whole school year. Short video presentations showing the process of creating the school garden from its very beginning is created. Example tool: PhotopeachCare and Compassion: Working for a Cause Students brainstorm ways to help their community and work for a good cause. Each national group chooses one of the ideas and organizes volunteer activities for a month (for example a visit to a nursing home, adopt a town monument and keep it clean, adopt a stray animal, cook meals for the homeless, prepare a welcome pack for newly arrived migrants etc.) A collaborative scrapbook is created, where students add photos and comments of their experience as volunteers. Example Tools: Dotstorming, CanvaLove and Forgiveness: Collaborative Fairy Tales Students are teamed up in transnational groups and collaboratively write a fairy tale about love and forgiveness. Once they finish their story, they illustrate it by selecting the most appropriate images and turn it into an e-book. Example Tools: Meetingwords , Storybird

Evaluation & Assessment

Appreciation Gifts Exchange Students from each partner country exchange small handmade gifts and personal describing the experience of working together. Have I become a better person? Students share their thoughts on the project. Have the activities of the project changed them at all? What is the most important thing that they have learnt while working on the project? Example tool: Yo Teach!My values calendar Students create a personal calendar and dedicate each month to a specific value. Then they set two personal goals related to the values they have selected, in order to improve themselves over the period of a month. They share their personal calendars with their project partners. Example tool: Snappa

Follow up

Documentation: -The initial project plan along with a project task list should be published in a separate activity page created in the TwinSpace. -Separate activity pages should be created for each one of the activities of the project. They should include a short description of the activity and the final products. -Any communication that takes place in the chat room, the forum, or during a live session should be documented. All this material should be displayed in the appropriate activity pages. -Teachers and students should regularly update the Project Journal on the TwinSpace. Dissemination: Project Highlights Students choose the best moments of their project and their achievements and create a video presentation or an interactive poster to present to the school and local community. They publish them on the school website, social media, educational websites and forums to show their work and inspire others to work on similar activities. Example tools: Biteable , ThinglinkLiving in Harmony Open Day Students invite the local community to school to share their work and ‘live in harmony’ through participating in various experiential workshops, planned and coordinated by students. Students will be teamed up in groups and with the help of their teachers run parallel workshops focused on one or more of the values they explored during the project. Workshops could cover the following: Love and forgiveness: Students can read their fairy tales for the workshop attendees who can then dramatize them, illustrate them or turn them into songs etc. Care and Compassion: Students present the activities they took part in during volunteering month and ask attendees to organize their own volunteering campaign or activities in their community. A calendar of volunteerism is created, printed and shared with the local community so that people can participate in the activities. Peace and Unity: Students present their work on peace and unity to the workshop attendees and ask them to collaborate and write sensory poems on the theme. Participants share their work by reciting their poems. Understanding and Inclusion: Students present their work on these specific values to the participants and ask them to collaborate and find ways to make their local community more accessible to people with disabilities. A letter to the local government is written and signed by all of the participants to present their proposals. At the end of each workshop the participants are interviewed by students and asked to reflect on their experience. A video presentation with the highlights of this day is created and published on the TwinSpace and on the schools’ websites. Press releases of the events are shared with local newspapers to share with the wider public.

Additional information

Age from:

10
Age to:

15
Difficulty:

Easy

Additional information

School subjects

Vocational subjects

Key competences