Young Environmentalist kit under Child-Led Environmental Education Initiative (CLEEN) project, funded by UNICEF, Albania

Project goals

Ø  By mid 2010, 1944  participating classes are supplied with child friendly environmental education didactical materials;

Ø   By mid 2010, at least 70% of participating teachers will have enhanced knowledge on organizing environmental education hours;

Ø  Children explore and develop an integrated series of environmental competencies. 

Project activities and implementation

Ø  Project team establishment: The project team consisted on the steering committee and the working group. We aimed to have a multi lateral committee with representatives from: Ministry of Education and Science; Albanian Educational Directory;EDEN Centre’s staff.

Ø  Kick off meeting: The aim of this meeting was to present the project to the team, its expected results, explain everybody’s role in it and raise their commitment on this initiative.

Ø  Young environmentalist kit: Here, the working group and the steering committee carefully studied the schools guide prepared in the frame of CLEEN project and accordingly, design, organized and purchase the didactical materials for grades 1-5. The materials will also be used as inputs for training and tested as they are developed during the EE courses. In total 1950 kit with user friendly didactical materials prepared and till are preparing on name “Young Environmentalist kit YE Kit”. The kit has didactical materials such as: loupes, insects net, hygrometer, memory cards, and identification keys, transparency meter, Triangle to measure the height of a tree, rain gauge, magnet, balance, stopwatch, compass, etc. Both of EE kit materials and the user guide are putted in a specifically designed bag with a dedicated logo and motto.

Ø  EE courses
The provision of the YE kit and the users’ guide(potential structure of UG name of the assignment; Aim of the assignment; Target group; Time-length; Group size; Didactical materials; Tips on How to act ),was followed by the organization of EE courses that will continued in the future.  EDEN Nature Guides and the project coordinator are in charge for the organizing of such courses.  This will create the possibility for teachers to see in practice how an attractive and interactive EE session can be done with children.  In the same time it will contribute in the continuity of offering such courses by teachers themselves instead of excursion hours they have in the working plan throughout the school year. During the EE courses the Educators are focused in not only on the assignments, but they also made the direct thinking link with the topic.  For this before giving the assignment, children are asked about the topic (i.e.  for air quality – nature guides ask children what they know about lichens, their live, and as a result of the group discussion they come into conclusion that the lichens are indicators of the air pollution) and then later on they perform the assignment . In this way they build the knowledge upon their basic knowledge’s and learns by doing. At least 36 EE courses are organized until now and are planning to organize for the next year.

Ø  School competition
In the project implementation is planning to organize competitions between different schools, where the working group will be responsible for establishment of the jury, topics to be focused, questions, methodology to be followed etc. The questions will be focused on all 5 elements of the schools guide, namely water, air, earth, nature and pollution in both knowledge and attitude level.

Ø  YE Kit revision
The project coordinator worked on the revision of the YE Kit materials, surveyed in at least 10 of the schools already provided with the YE Kit.

Ø  Open classes
To see how trained teachers do apply the child to child method in their classes we intend to organize open classes to at least 10 schools involved already in the project. Until now are organized 6 open classes in the nature. It is meant that these classes will be organized in each of the regions involved in this project.  By these classes teachers will have the opportunity to firstly apply what they have learned  in the provided curriculum as well as create links with community representatives or other classes pupils (that might be invited in the open class) and make use of the kits they are provided with.