Avoid Stress. Achieve Purpose. ASAP – Strona 4

Virtual mobility

Because of an epidemic situation in Europe none of the countries is willing to take a risk and organize a mobility. That’s why we decided to set up virtual mobilities. All the details were agreed on during a virtual meeting of all the school coordinators and the Italian team offered to organize the first one. Since it was supposed to concern relationship, emotions and their positive influence on our mental health, we decided to organize it in Christmas spirit just before the Christmas holiday. Before the meeting students uploaded some short information about themselves on the common padlet and they made collages presenting things which make them happy.

During the meeting we took part in the following activities organized by the Italian team:

quizzes about relationships, naming the stages of relationships
discussing reasons for our feeling emotional
making ’emotional alphabets’
brainstorming for qualities which are crucial for being a loyal friend
shortlisting the essential traits of a good friend
considering possible causes of anger issues
checking how well we know our Christmas customs by playing a Kahoot quiz on which we all collaborated

Both the teachers and students were happy to see their friends and listen to them. Technology this time was almost on our side so we were able to participate fully in the planned activities. We finished the two-hour long meeting wishing each other Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Reading is awesome

This year we decided to introduce reading as a long-term stress-relief strategy and a way to increasing vocabulary and comprehension. There are numerous benefits of reading, especially empowering people to empathizing with others, reducing stress, improving communication skills. It also helps to concentrate on one thing at the time and improves your ability to understand other people and see the world from perspectives of our family, friends, classmates and even enemies.

We introduced reading on English lessons on a regular basis. We started from deciding what factors influence our choices. In other words – what makes us choose this book not the other one. Students made posters on which they listed the main reasons for choosing some books while buying or borrowing them. Students read some excerpts from the book chosen by the teacher and after reading it they discuss the content, try to predict what may happen, they characterize protagonists, their personalities and skills. They describe the relationships between characters, their plans and intentions. They are also given various tasks related to the book read:

drawing a comic based on a chosen story
using Lego bricks to present the chosen scene
presenting a character they especially like
making word clouds of the vocabulary they learned from the book
comparing characters
comparing accuracy of the film based on the book with the book itself
role playing
making mind-maps
reconstructing a journey of book characters
using Google maps to count distances and see the places where the story takes place

The activities are enjoyed by the students, they are interested in the stories they read, they are keen to discuss the problems mentioned. Their creativity and general knowledge seem to expand.

World Mental Health Day

We celebrate the World Mental Health Day by organizing lectures for children. All the lectures, delivered by school psychologists, concern the typical problems adolescents deal with, such as managing emotions, prioritizing, rejection, peer pressure. All of them can result in serious mental problems, so school time is a proper time to develop social and emotional strategies which would help them to cope with these problems. These include: adopting a regular schedule of activities, ability to tackle problems and developing interpersonal skills. We also created a padlet with a collection of video clips, articles, lesson plans and other supplementary teaching materials as a resource for class tutors to use during the form time.

The lectures and the resources engaged students in discussing the following topics:

dealing with peer pressure and bullying
exploring one’s own identity
resilience to stressful home and school life,
disparity between a teenager’s lived reality and the pressure to be perfect in social media
symptoms of depression, dealing with psychic inertia
an impact of regular physical activities on the quality of life
other risks to mental health

Meal planning

To show the younger ones how to plan their meals and influence their parents to provide healthy lunches and snacks for them we conducted workshops with a dietician, dr Anna Walentukiewicz, from Academy of Gdansk Universityof Physical Education and Sport. Additionally, they consolidated what they learned during Biology and English classes. The studemts:

Learned the main types of nutrients, such as protein, carbohydrates, fats and vitamins and which products are the vital sources of these nutrients
were taught how to choose foods and beverages with healthier fats, less sodium, and less added sugars
planned their own weekly menu for school lunches
brought their healthy packed lunches from home, they presented them, took photos and made films about their lunches
learned how to assess the nutritional value of the meal and how to read labels
watched school lunches from other countries and discussed their value – how healthy the food is, how much protein, fat and carbohydrates it contains, how many portions of fruit and vegetables it has got
learned how to share information about the benefit of healthy eating
were told which food use to keep their energy up for longer and how to keep themselves fuller for longer and avoid energy drinks as well as to replace ingredients regularly to provide variety
were taught how to identify spices and herbs which can be used instead of salt.
planned their own daily meals

Vegetables and Fruit – the Nutrition Source

No single fruit or vegetable provides all of the nutrients you need to grow up and prosper, but eating some of them every day you will make sure that you bestow your organism with all the elements you need. Meals rich in fruit and vegetables may reduce the risk of heart attack and digestive problems, they prevent some types of cancer, have positive effect on your skin and brain functioning. Their low glycemic index keep sugar peaks in check. Older students prepared the e-publication about vitamins and elements, they younger ones took part in various games and plays during which they learned the English names of the seasonal fruit and vegetables. The activities they performed:

Learning the names of the fruit and vegetables, labelling parts of plants, deciding which parts are edible, prioritizing them in terms of vitamin content
Making pictures from fruit and vegetables and preparing healthy snacks
Engaging students in breakout room games – reviewing material and problem – solving skills in groups working together to solve a series of challenges in order to find subsequent clues before the time limit expires. They are an engaging activity to review content as well as foster collaboration and problem-solving skills.
Making laparellos and lapbooks – the folders in which students in a creative way presented food pyramids, their diet requirements, fruit and vegetables and healthy tips customized to emphasize the subject of the lapbbook. All the resources were collected and presented on the exhibition held in the school hall, as well as other games made by students, such as memory, decide wheels etc. https://animoto.com/play/rjmd3A1goO0Z6P5GlPGVOw

Legality Day

In today’s social environment schools should building awareness and opportunities for civic awareness and action and students should learn the value of civic participation. Giving students some grounds of civic education we teach them how to work within a system. They are also taught prioritization of social values, constraints of the state laws and rules of true democracy. People can thrive and achieve their objectives only in societies where their rights are respected, and the rules established are obeyed. Students from IC Diotti in Casalmaggiore dealth with the most serious fears about the condition of our society: widespread dishonesty, lack of solidarity and empathy, a lost sense of community, carelessness about the weaker. Being aware of the risks helped them face the reality and do whatever it takes to straighten things up.They worked together on the script for a special episode on legality, which was recorded in order to celebrate the National Day in Memory and they presented topics related to legality and presented it on stage on the last day of school year. https://padlet.com/marinabonfatti010/lt20l05jpukwwn75?fbclid=IwAR2VV79Ta0o6WJNoHJs0M_z60fzWcKCqOTIXVDnClaEt49bK40Eg2ALTuv0

Virtual mobility

After agreeing on the date and length of the meeting to suit each of the partner schools, we decided to organize a video conference. Each school gathered a team of 8 – 12 students eager to meet their friends from other countries. Google meet platform was used to get in touch before and set up all the details and for the meeting itself, taking place on 20^thof May 2021. The schedule of the video conference looked as follows:

Schedule of activities

Introducing teams
Taking group photos by the padlet
Healthy habits – brainstorming
What do you know about the country the wheel decide picked for you
Name 5 – a team contest
What have you got for breakfast? Interviewing partners.
Kahoot – a general knowledge quiz (each country prepared the questions)
Draw your lunch and breakfast using Jamboard
Healthy tips – how important are they for you – discussing ideas and uploading them on Mentimeter

Unfortunately, due to technical problems and safety regulations at schools we were unable to let our students interview each other as we had planned before. Nevertheless, students could see each other, take part in games prepared together. They could confront their conceptions of healthy lifestyle, find out what they knew about their partner countries, compete in quizzes. We could compare what we conceive of breakfasts and school lunches as all the participants were expected to draw them and label them on the common virtual board. First of all, however, it was a two-hour distraction from the school routine and a chance to ties bonds between the partners.

Earth Day

What’s the point of taking care of your health if you live in the world on the edge? The last year showed us clearly that our well-being is tightly intertwined with the condition of our planet. We have faced the climate crisis and only changing our attitudes, which requires persistent action on many fronts, can prevent the worst crisis. The number of people, teenagers among them, who consider the environmental issues as stressful and threatening their own survival, is increasing all the time. All the teachers had an opportunity to use resources, such as live talks, presentations, videos, lesson plans or games which our team collected on one common platform. Our activities aimed at raising awareness of human destructive behavior included:

Lessons focused on discussing steps we ourselves can take to protect the Earth resources
Discussing ways of implementing changes in our families
Brainstorming ideas on how to inspire others
Writing down commitments
Contests of knowledge
Calculating our carbon prints
Making recycled toys
Games, quizzes, making posters

‘Every one of us needs a healthy Earth to support our jobs, livelihoods, health & survival, and happiness. A healthy planet is not an option — it is a necessity’ (by EARTHDAY.ORG) https://view.genial.ly/607bfa2d33338f0d2474e48a/presentation-earth-day-4-5 https://view.genial.ly/607b28786dd96a0d4b4b5596/presentation-earth-day-6

You were born to be a player

For people who practice sport on a daily basis, as they do in our school, motivation is the vital element which pushes them forward. It is a key factor which helps them to fulfill their potential. This time we invited a psychologist from Gdansk Universityof Physical Education and Sport, Dominika Wilczyńska, who conducted a lecture for parents of young sportsmen to help them understand the complexity of motivational techniques.

Parents were told how to help their children:

Practice mindfulness

Manage psychological pressure

Set achievable long-term goals

Find a sense in repeating mundane drills

Overcome feelings of incompetence

Come to terms with the failure

Find and establish relation between their behavior and expected outcome

Define challenges which will stretch them a little bit further than they have been stretched previously.

All the parents taking part in the workshops found the tips useful and convenient. They asked many practical questions about positive self-talk, the role of extrinsic prize in a process of shaping motivation and specific problems such asinjury, non-selection or amotivation.

Healthy life education

The main objective of healthy life education developed in our school is promoting the benefits of healthy lifestyle, dangers of obesity, the importance of physical activities and taking responsibility for your decisions. We try to implement healthy rules since the earliest levels of education and we make our students take part in various cross- curricular activities in a series of nutrition and healthy lifestyle education classes presented to children from grade 3 to 7. We focus mainly on benefits of a balanced diet, the importance of staying outdoor and being active, appreciating friendship and being optimistic. All the classes included:

Lots of interaction
Discussing does and don’ts of routine activities
Online games, quizzes, board games,
Creating weekly menus
Presenting different diets, like vegetarian, vegan or gluten free, demonstrating properties of nutrients, macro and microelements

All these activities were performed during Biology, English and Physical Education classes. All the presentations were collected in one publication. https://app.bookcreator.com/read/SqM2qVEjQ86rFhLLFTxdMg