Learning and Teaching Materials for Greenings at Schools

<< Background >>For the sake of a decent life on earth, the international community, with the EU as a main driver, is committed to actions that combine forces initiating and conducting a just and green transition. One essential option is education inspiring to set environmentally responsible measures, for example by re- and upskilling the current workforce.The European Green Deal explicitly mentions that schools, training institutions and universities are well placed to engage with students, parents and the wider community about the changes needed for a successful transition to a green economy. However, the teaching of topics related to climate change and potential climate change adaptation measures - especially about the topic of urban greening - is still an additional task for teachers in the school setting. This additional task means a lot of work for the teachers and a discussion of the topic that is based on self-motivation.With this project, the project team aimed to collect their joint experiences in working with schools on greening, sustainability and climate issues to transfer their knowledge to schools internationally through developing hands-on teaching and learning material with free access and translated in various languages. << Objectives >>The project aim was to promote greening of schools by offering teaching and learning material for cross-curricular sustainable teaching. For this purpose, background knowledge and experiments on the subject of climate change and school greening was prepared multilingually in a self-explanatory and digitally accessible way to be immediately applicable in order to minimize the preparation effort for teachers.-Objective 1: Develop multilingual (English, German, Spanish, Basque) digitally accessible hands-on teaching & learning material for greenings at schools consisting of A) background knowledge (plants, soil types, microclimate and climate zones) and B) instructions for hands-on experiments targeting secondary school level 1.-Objective 2: Validate the applicability of the material in workshops and surveys with teachers and other stakeholders. -Objective 3: Develop a multilingual digital guideline for integrating the content of the teaching & learning material into teaching practice at schools.-Objective 4: Increase the application and usage of the material through a website, networking activities, publications, social media and by establishing a plan for future exploitation.See results: https://greencoolschools.eu/ << Implementation >>Activity 1: Learning4GreenSchools Hands-On Teaching and Learning Material: Multilingual teaching and learning material for 8 selected topics and associated experiments was developed for teachers and students from secondary level 1.Activity 2: Validation: The applicability of the material was validated in process-accompanying workshops and surveys with schools. The results of the validation were analysed to shape the final teaching and learning material as well as the website https://greencoolschools.eu/.Activity 3: Guideline for Integrating the Content into Teaching Practice at Secondary School Level 1: A guideline was developed for teachers to show how the developed teaching and learning material can be integrated into teaching practice. Through researching the school curricula for each participating country, grids were developed for matching the material with the appropriate school subjects and the guidelines were prepared for all participating countries and languages accordingly.Activity 4: Project Management, Dissemination and Evaluation: Besides the project management, networks with teachers were set up in each country for the according project communication, informing about the activities by newsletters. << Results >>The main outcome and result of the project is the website https://greencoolschools.eu/, (Objective 4) which provides digital and free access to the developed teaching and learning material in English, German, “Austrian”, Spanish and Basque language (Objective 1). The material was developed for the secondary level 1 as a knowledge base for school greening and to be self-explanatory, to be used by teachers for different teaching units. To support the teachers in using the provided material, guidelines for integrating the content of the teaching & learning material into teaching practice at schools were developed for each participating country and language individually (Objective 3). Through the validation process in the project, the applicability of the material and the website was evaluated, and the results could be shaped to be adapted to the needs of the target group (Objective 2). The validation results are summarized in according to validation reports. All objectives could be fully met. Achievements exceeding the initial expectations.