Visibility of eTwinning Projects Groups July 2019 Newsletter Newsletter 9 | Page 119

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2019 Newsletter
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The ecological dimension covered the STEAM
oriented activities to improve recycling and
environmental awareness within our children.
Ecological gardens or greenhouses were set up at
schools. Different kinds of plants were selected,
planted and grown.
In this stage the observations were made, some
schools used Arduino to water their greenhouses.
Different kind of recyclable materials were studied
and the ways to reuse them in producing certain
materials to be used in the ecological gardens which
were created. We also created clothes from
recycled materials and participated in a carnival in
our town theatre.
Starting the month of March 2019 we dedicated our
work to the last two dimensions, social (inclusive)
dimension and the STEM festival. For the social
dimension of the project, the students from
“Gheorghe Magheru” School, Caracal, Romania,
created a tactile STEM package. Very colourful,
easy to use and play, it tries to make STEM
subjects more attractive. Target audience of the set
is children and pupils aged 5-8, pupils with special
educational needs, like attention deficits or visual
impairment. The set of activities was completed
with some representations of Braille Alphabet using
different materials. All these were presented during
our final mobility, in Aliaga, Izmir, Turkey, on 14th
-19th April 2019, but also in our national contest,
“Made for Europe”, between 17th and 20th April.
The cultural dimension also involved some
recycling, as we designed and created our own
musical instruments from different materials, from
natural ones to reused ones. After creating our little
“orchestra”, every country composed a song to
promote Science, showing why Science is important
in everyday life. Our younger students recorded a
song about robots, and our oldest students’ song
was about Simona Halep, showing some connection
between Physics notions, like length, speed, force,
strength and playing tennis.
The next step was organizing our own STEM lab.
Thanks to “Active minds, moving hands” project,
our school has now a lot of STEM materials for our
Science lab, as Arduino Uno kits, Lego WeDo sets
and the tablets needed, Beebots and “Code and go”
mouse, interactive games for biology and chemistry
lessons. Our “STEAM club” is meeting weekly in a
new ambient, with new interesting materials for our
students. They love designing, creating, coding and
programming the robots they create.
Cristina Nicolăiță works at “Gh. Magheru” School in
Caracal, Romania. She is a Physics and IT teacher, an
eTwinning & Scientix ambassador, a Microsoft Innovative
Educator Expert, a teacher trainer, an SEG-TA course
facilitator, an INDUCAS community animator and an
Erasmus+ projects coordinator.
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