NOT ONLY A PROJECT, BUT ALSO AN ADVENTURE!

This is my students' and my first project, so we were really excited from the beginning. Environmental issuues are very important for us, so wanted to do something about it. When we found this project, we thought it was perfect for us. When we started the project we saw that everything was better than we thought because we had very hardworking project partners and it was also very motivating for us.

We started with introducing ourselves. We cretated students' profiles on twinspaces and they introduced themselves. Twinspaces was something new for them, so we spent some time on the computer to learn how it works. 

After the profiles, we gathered information on related topics such as  climate change, global warming and recycling. We read and watched something. We shared the information we gathered with our friends with the picture we draw on the school board.

                      

Our first task on the project is preparing a pre-survey with Simonetta and we prepared one called 'how green you are?' We used google docs. Students filled out the survey and we posted the results on the twinspace. I think it was a good start for the project.

After the survey, it was time to design logos and posters for the project. For this, we first learned how to use postermywall.com. Then created our logos and posters for the competition. What an excitement! :) My student, Aleyna became the winner of the competition and her logo represented our project. This made all of us really happy.

And new year came! We prepared wordarts to show our new year wishes to our partners. Of course, wordart is also new for us, so we had to learn again. This project was always like teacher for us. We learned new things for every stage.

My students were using twinspace at their home beyond my control, so 'Safer Internet Day' was a great opportunity for us. We studied on the rules about using the internet more safely. This was not just about being more safe, it was also about being more polite.

                 

At the same time, we updated our school board about our project. Our school board was a great opportunity to show our works to our friends. We both showed our works and informed our friends with the help of these boards.

All the researches showed the importance of the trees for protecting the environment. Planting trees was also one of the tasks we had to do in the project. We learned the best time for planting trees for the environment we live in. We talked to the authorities of the city and told them we wanted to plant trees in the garden of our newly built school building. They became very happy, gave us saplings and made the necessary preparations for our planting. We wanted it to be a special day for our school. We also organized our teachers and students who were not in the project team. We went to our new school building and planted our trees. I think we are lucky to do this before the pandemi.

               

After this organisation, my students prepared a presentation to their friends. It was really a great one. They did it in two languages; Turkish and English. I was proud of my students. They talked about the global warming, recycling and climate changes. They found a cartoon related to these topics and add it to the end of their presentation. In this way, they not only fulfilled a task of the project, but also gained self-confidence.

                 

Environment friendly ideas and products were also very important for us and for our project, so we learned 'ECOSIA', an environment friendly search engine. We watched some videos about it and learned the advantages of using this search engine.
Learning and drawing attention to the endangered animals was an important phase of the project. First, we read and watched something about them. Then, we created masks of these animals.

And the slogans!... If you are doing something to be remembered, you should have a slogan. For the slogans Nazife teacher used Edupad.ch and we wrote our slogans there. We tried to produce impressive sentences that can explain the whole project. Each of my students wrote one.

Unfortunately, pandemic process started after this stage. We had to stay at home, away from each other and we had to adapt our project to the new situation. As teachers, we arranged an online meeting and determined new tasks that our students can do from home.

Our first task was drawing rainbows and hanging them on the windows. This was a movement launched all over the country with the pandemic. With the help of this, children wouldn't feel alone.

In the second stage of 'staying home process' we wrote an acrostic poem. We gave one letter to each school. First, we illustrated our letter, then wrote a line starting with that letter for the poem. C is ours and we worked with it.


     

We thought what we can do for the nature inside our houses and we recycled things, planted vegetables and fuits and took care of them. We always sent photos to each other about what we do at home.

                                             

We slowly came towards the end of the project. We joined a contest about our project, fulfilled the evaluation forms. We preapred an album and a virtual exhibition for the project. As a common work we used storyjumper and wrote about aour feelings about the project.
It was a great experience both for me and for my students. We have learnt a lot, we had fun al lot :)