Our project aims to reconnect urban spaces with nature, to generate an ecosystem where it is easy to participate in physical activity, inclusion and autonomy. From a sustainable approach, we aim to transform and beautify (inside and outside) the educational centres. Through a chessboard and its squares (Zafra chess city), we will work on learning situations in an interdisciplinary way, where students become messengers, responsible for the change. A collaborative proposal.
Local
Spain
Zafra, Badajoz
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): Centro de Profesores y Recursos de Zafra Type of organisation: Public authority (European/national/regional/local) First name of representative: Almudena Last name of representative: Jiménez Romera Gender: Female Nationality: Spain Function: Language Advisor Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: C/ Travesía del almendro Town: Zafra Postal code: 06300 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 924 02 99 57 E-mail:cprzafra.pluri@educarex.es Website:http://cprzafra.juntaextremadura.net/
Name of the organisation(s): GERMÁN CID PRIMARY SCHOOL Type of organisation: Public authority (European/national/regional/local) First name of representative: ALFONSO Last name of representative: MOLERO MOYANO Gender: Male Nationality: Spain Function: HEAD TEACHER Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: 11, CONSTITUTION AVENUE Town: ZAFRA Postal code: 06300 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 924 02 99 12 E-mail:alfonsomolero@educarex.es Website:https://sites.google.com/educarex.es/atencion-a-la-diversidad/p%C3%A1gina-principal?authuser=0
Name of the organisation(s): Agrupación de ajedrez Ruy López Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Daniel Last name of representative: Gragera Gender: Male Nationality: Spain Function: President Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Spain square 8 Town: Zafra Postal code: 06300 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 924 02 99 55 E-mail:clubajedrezruylopez@gmail.com Website:https://clubdeajedrezruylopez.wordpress.com/
Our Project, framed in favouring a GREEN ECOSYSTEM, which allows to bring all the good things of the natural environment to the city, aims to raise awareness of the educational community in terms of sustainability, beauty and inclusion. To make it attractive to students, we connect the project with the game of chess (Zafra chess city), with the ability of the chess player to read his environment and anticipate the moves, bold, resilient. To survive in an environment that changes with every move. It develops skills related to attention and concentration, analysis and synthesis, memory, problem solving and decision making under pressure, creativity and imagination. It develops logical reasoning and skills for the development of emotional intelligence: emotional control, adaptability, sense of achievement and self-esteem, initiative and empathy.
There is no doubt that the 21st century school must play its cards with a similar mindset. "Anticipate risk", "read the environment", "think ahead".
This green ecosystem... aims to intervene in the context (both spatial and temporal) of the exits and entrances to schools, as well as raising awareness of the possibilities offered by spaces redesigned for the purposes of coexistence and autonomy.
To this end, a systemic intervention (interdisciplinary-sustainable) is proposed to create an experiential ecosystem that interconnects the locality through the educational centres that represent ECO-Escaques... (the emerging part of our green chessboard). From gamification as an educational methodology, an environmental didactic will be developed for an educational community, connecting "green squares" with the aim of creating a positive impact on environmental knowledge and thus on environmental education.
Empowerment/Inclusion
Health
Nature
Sustainability/recycling
Physical exercise
Multilevel commitment: Transversality and sustainable interdisciplinarity for the Learning Situations (SA) from the transversality of the environment, health, mobility, social services, urban planning, participation, through the following axes:
- Health Promotion and Emotional Education.
- Environmental Education and Sustainability.
- Equality and Affective, Sexual and Gender Education.
- Social, Cultural and Historical Heritage of the town (Zafra).
- Cooperation for Development and Solidarity.
- Family and Educational Participation.
This transversality aims at the relationship between the figure of chess and the elements of the environment: Pawn (Biotic), Bishop (Water), Knight (Fire), Queen (Earth), King (Climate), Rook (Air) For each of the areas developed at any educational level.
Therefore we will achieve the following objectives:
- Reconnect with nature by encouraging inclusive physical activity and autonomy.
- Transform and beautify our city by being more accessible to the whole society.
- Adopt sustainable and fair lifestyles.
- Propose intergenerational proposals.
- Promote the circular economy.
- Gamify training actions and tasks aimed at developing environmental education.
- Connect "green squares" with the aim of creating a positive impact on the community.
- Apply the game of chess to contribute to the increase of environmental knowledge and thus to environmental education.
- To develop cognitive-motor processes.
- Recognise healthy lifestyle habits and disease prevention.
- School of citizenship.
We consider that our initiative aims to improve our city project, and the citizens who live in it, from an innovative, open and flexible perspective, communicating assertively with our context to preserve our heritage by promoting knowledge and respect for cultural, historical, geographical, natural, ecological, social and linguistic aspects, only in this way can we change beliefs or patterns of behaviour that do not favour our relationships with our environment. From an autonomous perspective, the educational community will be able to contribute to the achievement of the objectives of sustainable development, for an improvement in citizenship that will have repercussions on a healthy, aesthetic, dynamic and beautiful life:
- Transform and beautify our city by being more accessible to the whole society.
- To adopt sustainable and fair lifestyles.
- Propose intergenerational proposals.
- Promote the circular economy.
- Gamify training actions and tasks aimed at developing environmental education.
- Connecting "green squares" with the aim of creating a positive impact on the community.
- Gamify training actions and tasks aimed at developing environmental didactics.
We believe that it is important to deal from an early age with aspects related to health, nutrition, communication, respect for our immediate environment and equality among the educational community, starting from the emotions of the human being so that the pupils get to know themselves through gender equality, family diversity, acceptance, empathy, diversity, communication, self-respect and positive attitude. It is from this framework that we intend to address the care of our environment, how to improve our health and nutrition with small actions and/or how to contribute to the improvement of communication between all of us in an assertive way, aspects that will favour the emotional development and autonomy of the pupils in later ages.
For this we believe it is essential to achieve the following objectives:
- Reconnect with nature by promoting inclusive physical activity and autonomy.
- To apply the game of chess to contribute to the increase of environmental knowledge and thus to environmental education.
- To develop cognitive-motor processes.
- Recognise healthy lifestyle habits and disease prevention.
- School of citizenship.
Co-development & Self-governance: By focusing on education as a tool for local transformation, mobilising and articulating the maximum possible number of educational agents, a strategy has been designed that links joint, flexible and coordinated actions.
Incorporating the educational perspective into municipal planning involves becoming aware of those municipal programmes or proposals and identifying to what extent there is room for improvement, involving new actors, as well as developing new initiatives aligned with our Project.
develop new initiatives in line with our Project.
In principle, the agents involved in the participatory work process are:
TEACHERS AND RESOURCES CENTRE.
EDUCATIONAL CENTRE: (Pilot project) simultaneously, participation of the remaining centres that wish to take part.
FEDERATION OF AMPAS of the locality.
TOWN COUNCIL.
PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT.
ASSOCIATIONS: Chess grpup Ruy López, Sports, Zafra Athletics Club, RunnerUni2, Abuelino, Climbing Association, Club del caminante....
In a systematic, realistic and innovative process, different phases are structured in the Project: EXPLORE, WALK, PEDALLI, FEEL, where the different agents participate with a design of actions:
EDUCATIONAL CENTRE: Study of black spots. Awareness-raising on autonomy and health. Plants in the environment. Chess as a community-building agent. Film production. Routes around Zafra, routes in the surrounding area and hiking through gamification; use of environmental facilities and road education.identification of urban birds: census of lesser kestrels. Weekly step-counting challenge and use of bicycles. Recovery of composting. School vegetable garden. Research, documentation of the life of Ruy López and his chess tournaments. Cultural week, online chess tournament with American students and with twinned cities in Italy and Portugal. Community chess and inter-school tournaments. Occasional activities, in the European Mobility Week establish Friday by bike. Reducing the weight of pupils' backpacks to facilitate transport on foot or by bicycle. Adding up steps as a team through classroom group challenges.
TEACHERS AND RESOURCES CENTRE: Working together and training: teachers/families: importance of autonomy/spaces. Autism and noise. Importance of physical exercise. Physical space as a learning agent. Elaboration of the Learning Situation.metro by metro Signposting/ inclusion. Strava App. Course: The urban birds of Zafra.Bike parking. Workshop: Composting schools: teachersforfuturespain.org/compostaje/
PARENTS' ASSOCIATION: Organisation of volunteer parents for collection areas.
TOWN COUNCIL: Resume the Road Safety Education course. Use of the environmental facilities (classroom) for training, implementation of the project, etc. Transfer of municipal facilities, painting of pavements, metre-by-metre signposting. Improvement of hiking routes/trails in the area. Spring Fair: workshops on native animals and plants. Cyclist's card.
DIPUTACIÓN DE BADAJOZ: Protected
This project improves and develops knowledge, skills and attitudes to live, work and act in a sustainable way. It aims from the different planned phases (EXPLORE, WALK, PEDAL, FEEL) to work interdisciplinary processes to obtain benefits:
From a higher level, where we mainly place the organisers and representatives of the institutions, proposals will be planned for the design of work strategies that enhance the joint definition of objectives, creation of alliances, increase of co-responsibility and shared learning. We focus on planning and achieving the different CHALLENGES and the needs of the Centres, the municipality and the citizens, establishing priorities for intervention.
At a lower level: This experiential ecosystem (cognitive, emotional, physical...) will be developed through the implementation of different Learning Situations (LS), some of them common that will help to constitute the ecosystem (coordinated from the Teachers' Centre) accompanied from the institutional ones and other specific ones that may vary depending on the reality of the contexts of each Educational Centre (promoted from each one). All of them, at the implementation level, will address work proposals for students and awareness-raising with the educational community, including families.
The design of these new SA relate the curricular areas (Knowledge of the Natural, Social and Cultural Environment, Artistic Education and Physical Education, Languages, Mathematics,
Education in Civic and Ethical Values) with the cross-cutting areas (environment, health, mobility, social services, urban planning) and their aforementioned axes (Health Promotion and Emotional Education, Environmental Education and Sustainability, Equality and Affective and Sexual Education) and their aforementioned axes (Health Promotion and Emotional Education, Environmental Education and Sustainability. Equality and Affective, Sexual and Gender Education. Social, Cultural and Historical Heritage of the town,Zafra.
Construction of school paths and the transversal work of "reconnection" with nature, in a multidisciplinary approach to learning responsibility for the new generations, focuses on the combination of proposals for sustainable mobility, autonomy and inclusion in beautiful spaces, framed in a process of transformation of the urban ecosystem by green islands. These are managed by the interconnected Educational Centres offering an integrated environment in the locality, natural spaces and living and green ecosystems. Within the framework of the teaching-learning processes of the students, each of the actions, challenges and proposals is understood as the result of a plurality of factors, in turn, composed of different capacities that, as a result of the formative processes, the students, in a self-regulated learning, can manifest in observable behaviours (learning achievements) and some elaborated products or evidences (proposal, open and versatile, can be adapted to different contexts and circumstances). From this Project design, as a centre of interest and with a methodology based on gamification, the teaching processes are presented from the game of chess and the chess player, where the game board, the locality framed in the squares of the chess board, are presented as white and green squares. The actions designed on the white squares will allow the development of actions related to justice, responsibility and ethics, tolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty, critical thinking and analysis, communication and use of media. While on the green boxes (closely related to the context and the centre itself) we propose proposals that are based on interdisciplinary work, personal relationships and inter-collaboration, empathy and change of perspective, strategies, anticipatory thinking and action and personal involvement. This Innovation Project aims from its design, that students understand that their actions and decisions affec the environment, the current society and future.
It is a fully replicable project, when the connection established by the educational centres serves to improve their environment and plan educational actions related to the environment, health, sustainability, autonomy and inclusion, we have no doubt that these are values that help citizens to address challenges that involve physical changes and changes in social organisation and planning, awareness and collaboration of bodies and institutions with the capacity to manage resources. It is clear to us that the potential offered by the educational field serves as a lever to design new cities, with new spaces in a transformation and improvements in their urban ecosystem, being able to involve the educational community and municipal institutions.
Proof of its replicability is the coexistence of the Project and the proposal of joint work with cross-border partnerships: Centro de Formação de Professores. Escola Secundária André de Gouveia in Évora and Centro de Formação de Professores Sesimbra, both in Portugal.
From a process based on systemic thinking, we intend to structure a methodology that adapts to the new planning models and strategies in the face of the continuous change of the environment, accessibility, inclusion and autonomy, advocating the development of a comprehensive and integrated plan that allows aligning all the elements in an attractive strategy for the members and participants of the Project. We therefore propose cooperative work and gamification as methodologies of innovation, which promote the development of multiple social skills, essential today, to establish networks, allow alliances and face challenges from the critical spirit and the ability to act to increase the motivation of students in front of their own learning, in which they feel as protagonist citizens.
We set off with the design of a Project where activities have been designed and with a timetable of 4 phases. The activities proposed in all the sessions have focused on cooperative work and on adding elements of gamification in order to obtain results of motivation and involvement on the part of all the students and thus help to increase interest in the environment and sustainability from a viable perspective.
We relate our educational proposal directly to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) by enabling citizens, collectives belonging to Educational Communities and students themselves to become agents of change who have the knowledge, the means, the will and the courage to take transformative action for sustainable development, educational institutions must transform themselves. Institutions as a whole need to align themselves with the principles of sustainable development, so that the content of learning and its pedagogies are reinforced by the way educational spaces are managed, the contexts close to the schools and internal decision-making. This holistic institutional approach to ESD calls for learning environments in which students, teachers, families... learn what they live and live what they learn.
Education for Sustainable Development Handbook(link is external)
As communities develop sustainability goals, local education systems and programmes can modify existing curricula or create new programmes to reinforce those goals. The ESD Handbook has proven effective for many audiences, including national and provincial ministries, non-profit organisations, universities and colleges, teacher educators, school administrators, teachers, municipalities and government officials.
1st STAGE: explores
Study of black spots.Raising awareness of the importance of autonomy and health. Scientific method. Debate, reporters. Brainstorming (Transversality) Plants in our environment. Dissemination Training for teachers/families: importance of autonomy/spaces. Autism and noise. Importance of physical exercise.
Physical space as a learning agent.Elaboration of the learning situation.Dissemination.October 2023 Erasmus accreditation.Training and awareness
Resume the Road Safety Education course.Use the environmental facilities (classroom) for training, implementation of the project, etc.
2nd STAGE: walk
Routes around Zafra: history of the streets, statues, road safety education, active routes in the surrounding area through gamification; use of the environmental education facilities, including walking to the site, where various workshops are held. Census of lesser kestrels, identification of urban birds.
Meter by meter Signposting/ inclusion Strava App Course: Urban birds of Zafra. Organisation of parent volunteers for collection areas.
Meter by meter pavement painting. Protected school environments. Improvement of hiking routes/trails in the area. Spring Fair: workshops on native animals and plants.
3rd STAGE: Pedal
During the European Mobility Week (16-22 September), a one-off activity can be carried out and can be moved to one Friday a month to promote the use of bikes.
Bike racks.
Workshop: Composting schools
https://teachersforfuturespain.org/compostaje/ Volunteering Cycle lanes, space without traffic. Street furniture (bollards, benches, etc.). Cycling card.
Clean point as a resource for the creation of recycled materials: flowerpots.
4th PHASE:feels
School garden, establish natural environments for active reading inside the school (natural corners),... Green roofs. Transformation of garden produce, importance of a healthy diet and consumption of local products. Zero waste playgrounds Reconnection with nature; Castellar (forest school)
The GreenComp framework provides common ground for learners and guidance for educators, promoting an agreed definition of sustainability as a competence. This project is designed to support education and training programmes for lifelong learning.
We have no doubt that we are proposing a range of intentions as Ecosystem Lived:
Inclusive lifelong education
Broad education policy
Diversity and non-discrimination
Access to culture
Intergenerational dialogue
For a proposal for an INTEGRAL SERVICE OF PEOPLE:
Health promotion
Training of educational agents
Orientation.
Inclusion and social cohesion
Co-responsibility against inequalities
Promotion of associations and voluntary work
Education for a democratic and global citizenship
Based on a COMMITMENT:
Knowledge of the territory
Access to information
Governance and citizen participation
Monitoring and continuous improvement
Identity of the city
Liveable public space
Adequacy of municipal facilities and services
Sustainability
Therefore, we aim to achieve these sustainable competences based on the challenge of fostering critical analysis, systemic reflection, collaborative decision-making and a sense of responsibility towards present and future generations.
