Theme 7 (Dreams and Ambitions) - summary

 

Theme 7: Dreams and Ambitions

Working on Theme 7: Dreams and Ambitions we had to ask ourselves what we dream about, what we want to achieve in life and what our plans for the future are. The results were not that surprising, and we found out that we have a lot of dreams in common. Most people dream about getting a place at university, having their own loving family and travelling (The USA is a very popular destination). A lot of us also want to have their own house in the future, to learn some new languages, just like Bartke whose dream is to learn Spanish, and to have a job that is “close to their hearts”. Ania is interested in writing and she would love to be a writer in the future, Krzysiek and Paweł couldn’t live without music and for that reason Krzysiek would love to be a DJ and Paweł – a drummer in a band.  They both want to be famous and meet a lot of famous people in their life. Also Marcin, Alicja, Agata, Karolina and Kaludia want a job that is connected with their hobbies and interests. 

We also learnt that despite the generation gap between us and our parents, their dreams were similar to ours. They wanted to have a family, to study and to have a job that would enjoy. They seem to have fulfilled their dreams so there is also a chance for us to make our dreams come true in the future.

Theme 7 by Group 1

Theme 7 by Group 3

Theme 7 by Group 4

Theme 7 by Group 5

Comenius Day

On 27 April (during on Open Day event at our school) we organised a Comenius Day. We wanted to make the project more familiar to our school and local community.

We prepared colourful posters so that the people visiting our school could find out something  about our partner countries, the project itself and about the Comenius programme. To make the stand more visible we also decorated it with loads of balloons with the EU flag. Our stand was visited by many people - students and teachers of our school, prospective students and their parents. They all had the chance to watch films from our Norwegian, Spanish and Dutch experiences :-) We also exhibited scrapbook pages and items representing project countries and we prepared some sort of buffet. We had some German sausages and “Haribo bears” , Dutch Gouda cheese and stoopwafels, Norwegian sweets and cinnamon cakes, Spanish olives and rice pudding – a Portuguese dessert. A real “European food festival”! At the end of the day we decided to let most of the EU balloons into the sky. Just a simple thing but it evoked a lot of smiles on our faces – we had great fun!                                                                                                                                                              

We also decided to organize 2 contests: one was a competition about the EU and the VAGAB project and the other was a spelling competition (in English, of course).

Some photos below :-) 

Theme 6 (Healthy Lifestyle) - summary

Theme Six – Healthy Living and Lifestyle

summary

As we know, people all over the world have got different eating or exercising habits. Not all of us live a healthy lifestyle, no matter what age we are. There’s even a proverb ‘Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are’. During preparing theme six we had a chance to check the veracity of the saying and compare our lifestyle with our parents’ or friends’ lifestyles.

What we had to do was carry out some sort of physical experiment… ;) Polish Comenius students (and a teacher!) met one sunny but terribly cold day on the school’s pitch and did the Cooper test. All of them wrote down their results and then they compared them with each other. The scores were also posted on the blogs to be commented by the  students from partner countries. It was the first part of the task. The second thing to do was to note everything they ate during three days. It was called ‘Three day diet history’. It was probably the most demanding task they’ve ever had. All the students and their families were recording the food which was eaten by them during a period of three days! Every breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper, snack… even every single crisp! Nothing was hidden ;) What is more, everything was published on the Internet on their blogs! Students posted their eating habits notes and added a few pictures of (scrumptiously looking ;) )food.

When this part of the task was completed the students were made to fill in a survey. They had to answer a basic general knowledge test on healthy living. It wasn’t a piece of cake because they had to be honest. And some of the questions might have been quite awkward to sweet teeth or couch potatoes… ;)

At the end the Comenius people and their parents prepared their own ‘health reports’. That way they could compare their Cooper test results, their physical condition or their eating habits with their parents, friends and other members of the family. The comparison may have been surprising  for some  and pretty obvious for the rest of them. But one thing is common for everyone. We definitely had lots of fun and expanded our knowledge about ourselves. Even if it required more than just a little effort ;) 

This summary has been written by Ania Nieckarz :-) Thanks a lot, Ania!

Theme 6 by Group 1: fitness test 
Theme 6 by Group 1: diet diary 
Theme 6 by Group 1: healthy lifestyle survey 
Theme 6 by Group 3
Theme 6 by Group 4: fitness test
Theme 6 by Group 4: diet diary
Theme 6 by Group 4: healthy lifestyle survey
Theme 6 by Group 5 

Theme 6 - Healthy lifestyle - Comenius Fitness Test

While working on Theme 6 The Polish Comenius Club decided to meet and do the Cooper test together, as we thought that could be lots of fun (and we were right :-))
We met on Saturday at 7.30, which was actually the only day (and hour) that suited all the people who were brave enough to take part in the test ;-)) I think we all did very well, nobody walked, everybody kept running (well, Alicja even wanted to run home afterwards, she liked it so much and the test seemed not enough). The boys overtook the girls, unfortunately, but that's because their legs are longer ;-))
Here are some photos (thank you, Magda, for taking pics and notes):

Theme 5 (Environment) - summary

And once again Ania prepared a summary of another theme which we talked about in our project. 

 

Theme five – Environment

            Some of us dreamt of becoming a famous TV presenter in childhood. We wanted to be one of the faces who say ‘Hello there’ just like a weather forecaster on BBC ;) Well… Comenius students had a chance to become someone like that lately. They had to make a film about the environment. They could chose any form of making the film. The basic thing which had to be common for every group was to tell us how to protect the environment nowadays. How to do our best! One of the groups decided to make an interview.

At the beginning of the film one of the students made a short introduction. Right after that we could see Aneta talking to Mr Waluga who works in the local wastewater plant. They were talking generously about the protection of the environment but also about the functioning of the plant. The pollution is increasing nowadays so it’s important to know how we can reduce it. The knowledge of how the wastewater plant works is really important, too.

While watching the film we could hear many difficult terms such as: neutralize the municipal waste, use the active sludge method, eliminate the compounds of carbon, phosphorus, and suspension, etc. But don’t worry! Everything was explained later on ;) Mr Waluga also told us something about his own environment protection. Especially when he was our age. He told us about ‘Earth days’ when he and his school friends were cleaning streets from litter, when they were searching for rubbish etc. They did it instead of classes, one day a year.

After he told us about his methods of protecting the environment nowadays and in the past, we were able to compare them with our own methods. We could see some similarities and a few differences. We’re sure that today we are definitely more aware of the problem of pollution and that’s why we want to reduce it more than in the past. We have to take care of the place where we live. Earth is the only one. There’s no other place like this. And that is why we have to put an effort to keep it clean! ;)

Theme 5 by Group 1
Theme 5 by Group 3
Theme 5 by Group 4
Theme 5 by Group 5

Theme 4 (Gender roles / Family life) - summary

And once again, Daria Hałas gave us a hand and wrote the summary of Theme 4.

After talking about media, the time came to talk about family and sharing duties in a typical home in Poland. The most popular model of a family in our country consists of parents and two children, but the number of children is going down, and now more and more people has only one child. 

Usually, household duties are divided between parents, and kids help them to keep the house in a good condition. In an average family the mother raises children, cooks, cleans, washes the dishes or does the ironing while the father does the DIY jobs, takes care of the car and the garden. Parents receive help from their children with small things, like dealing with flowers, cleaning or making dinner, etc. Sometimes teenagers look after their younger siblings, like Agata does.

The distribution of duties mainly comes from the stereotype of a traditional Polish home for the past, where the man was the primary breadwinner and woman's role was to run the house. Women did not work, so they had time to look after children and let men support home.

People in the past had more obligations, mostly because of the fact that they lived in villages so they had to work on the farm, which was a very demanding job for all of them. Our parents and grandparents had a lot of responsibilities apart from going to school, but as Aneta said, today we have more worries.

Nowadays the situation is changing. The majority of women work and both parents raise children (not only mothers) and make decisions (not only fathers - heads of families). We walk away from the patriarchal type of a family.

Theme 4 by Group 1
Theme 4 by Group 3
Theme 4 by Group 4
Theme 4 by Group 5 

Theme 3 (Media and communication) - summary

The summary has been prepared by Daria Hałas, 
who wanted to help her Comenius friends write 
the summaries of themes they worked on :-)

The third theme, which VAGAB people had to do some research on and talk about was "Media and communication". The results were easy to predict. 

Obviously, the most popular media among teenagers is the Internet, similarly like in other countries. Young people find it the easiest way watch movies, help with homework, find information or to communicate with friends (in Poland for example we use an instant  messenger called "Gadu Gadu"). The majority of Polish adolescents has an account in social networks like Facebook, Twitter or Myspace. What is worth noting, almost 95% of teenagers in Poland is online, which is totally impressive news. The Internet is a connector between us and the people we want to be in touch with.

Music is also one of the most important thing in our lives. We are not able to imagine a day without some piece of music by our favourite artist, so we use devices such as mp3 players, Ipods or even mobile phones, which in fact have a lot of various applications and are not used only for talking. 

Less popular media is television, because we find news and information online, but some of us watch films or sporting events there, which in fact is a good way to spend some time with our parents -   they are important media users and they watch more television than teenagers. A popular source of the latest news among them, especially the busiest ones, is the radio. The rate of popularity of this media was the highest after the Second World War, because of the lack of television sets, but what is important, people didn't have a full view of what was going on - the communistic government used to censor information. 

Nowadays even elderly people learn how to use the computer and surf the Net, which makes the World a "global village". The boys from the Polish group number 3 even said: "Nowadays, communication is as easy as cycling".

Theme 3 by Group 1
Theme 3 by Group 3
Theme 3 by Group 4
Theme 3 by Group 5