Online music poll

Music is an international language that everyone will understand. It offers an opportunity to present different artists from the participating countries and together with this can show your own imagination of how and what "good music" can be.
During our project the pupils had the task to introduce different musicians of their country and nominate them for an online poll. Around 80 pupils then took a look at the proposals (mainly shown on the Youtube platform) and then voted for their favourites.

The project still appears on the net so everyone can take a look on it:

• Online Music Poll and links to the artists
• Results of the voting

Ecological oven - reconstruction in Germany

With the support of the Belgian school HDS succeeded in reconstruction of the clay oven. This had been nescessary because the older version of the oven was too small for the schools purposes (e.g. feeding bigger groups of pupils and teachers) and the composition of the ground material contained too much sand so that construction faults occured.
The German school therefor was very glad to get expertise from the Belgian colleagues who not only gave functional advice but also organized a working visit to Germany.

FAITH - German pupils dancing

We came up with the idea to develop a dancing choreography for the song "Faith". The base of this thought was that the students from our "Hauptschule" aren't so well trained in the foreign language so that they can take textes, switch them around and create new text. This was better to be done by the other partners like shown in the blogs before.
But getting closer to that piece of music by moving and dancing seemed to be a more obvious thing to do for pupils from HDS Lemgo. And here you can see what they came up with. Enjoy!

The German dance choreography>>>>>

Ecological oven project

In both the German and the Belgian school we are lucky to have an ecological garden. We decided to use this garden also in our Comenius project. Since one of our main themes was ecology, we decided to create an ecological clay oven. Both schools worked together and exchanged helpers and ideas to come up with two similar ovens. The teachers worked during the technological class in Belgium. They learned how to prepare the clay to use for the oven and made the whole construction together with our youngest pupils as the pictures show you …

This is not where the story ends of course. In later lessons pupils learned how to use this oven and how to make delicious food such as pizza in an ecological way. Great to eat and good for the environment. We are always proud to use the oven whevenver we can, so we did also make our ecological pizzas together with our German friends when they visited us during our open day.

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Ecological artwork from Belgium

Our youngest pupils also worked on our ecological theme in their arts classes.
They had to make some sort of visual artwork using only ecological and recycled material to come to the understanding that in nature and even in our dustbin, there is plenty of natural material to make some simple yet beautiful creations.
The inspiration was the story of the American author and illustrator Erik Carle and his series The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in which he also uses trash to illustrate.
Our pupils used materials such as little flowers, hazelnuts, pages from old books, paper napkins, … Even the background cardboard was found in wastebins to be thrown away.

FAITH song - the Belgian version

One of the challenges for our pupils in the equality and inclusion part of our project was to rewrite the famous 80’s song from George Michael Faith. They had to try and change the lyrics and have them fit into our theme of inclusion.

Although we do not have the technical means and the musical expertise in the Belgian school, our pupils from the English class went to work enthusiatically on this assignment and here is what they came up with …

Image: Rossina Bossio Boss
http://piqs.de/fotos/3642.html

Well I guess it would be strange

If you don’t like somebody 

Because that person’s body

Is different from yours  
 

Well here is my advice

Try to keep your heart in

The right place, in the end

We’re all the same  
 

Oh but I  know that you know

That everybody

Has something that everyone adores  
For instance black and white just

Shine together

Two reflections into one

It’s like ying and yang

 
So you gotta have faith

Yeah you gotta have faith …

  
Baby  Can I ask you a favour

Just please please please don’t discriminate

Listen to my view  
Hey there

I mean every word I say

I hope you’ll think about my way

Of how to handle thetype of things

I talked you about

  
Oh but I  know that you know

That everybody

Has something that everyone adores  
Ethnicity, class  or gender

Nobody is dumb or weak

Everyone’s unique

  
So you gotta have faith

Yeah you gotta have faith …

Land art - German ideas

A group of young girls from HDS decided to take over the work to create objects with natural materials. It was interesting to see that they followed the idea of symbolism and the idea of creating objects that would be recognized to be "fine and beautiful". This is an obvious difference to artworks from the older students.

Here you can find a little "vernissage":

It all starts with hiding...	Smile please!	Give peace a chance!
The maze	The flower snake	Yeah...!

FAITH - videos from the workshop in Germany

Both, the groups from Belgium and from Germany, produced a video to keep record of the one week of common work in Lemgo. You can watch it here:

Watch the workshop films...

• ...from Germany
• ...from Belgium 
  • ...and the Swedish video!
     
  All of them are awesome! Thanks for these good pieces of work!
  

FAITH - the song

In our project we should come up with an own version of the George Michael song "Faith". The Swedish school took the opportunity and recorded an own version with an own text at their school's recording studio.

Here you can listen to their song!

Great work benn done!

Land art - artwork with Mother Nature

In our project we negotiated to try out specific artwork with the help of natural materials. Several ways to do this are shown by the Skvadern school. If you feel curious about more information take a look at the examples given in this little Prezi!
Hopefully the other project partners will follow!

Invitation to the German Bundestag

In May 2014 the coordinators of the COMENIUS project "FAITH" were guests of the German parliament (Bundestag). They had been invited by Dirk Becker (SPD), deputy of the region (Lippe) where Lemgo is situated.
After passing the security check the visitors took part in the audience of a debate concerning the upcoming law of "Renewable Energy". It was quite interesting to follow this discussion and also challenging for the delegations because most parts of the content had to be translated by the German group.

After the plenary session a discussion with deputy Becker had been planned but unfortunately he had to deliver a speech as a contribution in the ongoing discussion.
Therefore the delegation talked to Ms. Friederike Linke as one of Mr. Becker's assistants. Beneath showing the delegation around in the historical Reichstag building discussion was made about topics like European education policy and national support possibilities.
A visit to the Reichstag cupola with its amazing sights over Berlin and a meal at the deputies cantina the "political" part of the Berlin visit had passed. A sightseeing tour by bike that led through the Berlin city centre connected to that event.
The next two days then were used to start with the preparations for the final report on the FAITH project.

German partners in Belgium

Visiting Antwerp and the partner school on "Open Day"

Our big pupil meeting was held in Germany and we were very fortunate to have our fantastic German hosts! We had a very instructive and also fun week together with delegations from Sweden, Germany and Belgium.
So it was only fitting that whenever we had an opportunity, we needed to invite our German friends over to Belgium as well. Because working in a Comenius project involves the whole school, this meant that we hosted both teachers, staff, principals and pupils. We found the perfect opportunity at our open day weekend.

On Friday afternoon the German delegation arrived in Sunparks, in the middle of the green forests surrounding Mol. We had a nice afternoon in the sunshine and an evening to get to know all the colleagues and to start talking about our project.
On Saturday we invited our German friends to Antwerp, the biggest city in Flanders. We tried to have a cultural (we visited the MAS museum – Antwerp’s newest museum next to the river Schelde where you have a fantastic view from the rooftop you can climb), local (we visited the international fresh market with typical specialities in food and drink) and ecological (we went together with only one bus and in Antwerp did everything on foot or by bike) excursion, perfectly in tune with our project.

On Sunday we invited the whole group at our school. We have an open day weekend every year and try to present all the aspects of our school. An ideal moment for our German friends to join us. Our visit started in our Comenius class in wahich you can find all sorts of information about our project and partners, we then went to our ecological garden where we made our own pizza’s in our own constructed Comenius clay oven, and finally the pupils from the 6th year involved in Comenius and the ones that also went to Germany made a tour in English and German with our guests around the school to present all aspects of it.

In short, this was a great experience and the bonds between the partner schools have only become even tighter with this great exchange!

Geocaching

On Thursday morning we had the opportunity to do some geocaching. This is some kind of treasure hunt in the woods where the only thing you need is good shoes and a GPS.

First we were brought to a wood nearby to start our game. We got our first coordinates and took off. On the GPS you could see what direction you had to go and how many meters you still had to do. When you got to the first spot, you had to look for an indication to go to the next one. At every indication you had to look for the coordinates for the next one. The last coordinates indicated where the treasure was hidden. In the last treasure you could write your name and the date.
It was a very fun and adventurous game!

Written by: Ditte Van Beers

Differences!?

During our week in Germany, we noticed there are not only similarities but also differences between the three participating countries. Not only language but also the school systems, climates, food habits etc. are different. We did some research about the main differences between our cultures.

Language
The most obvious difference is language. During our project we have to use English as common language because all three groups speak another language. The Swedes speak Swedish, the Belgians speak Dutch and the Germans speak German. Although these are three different languages you hear they are related. Sometimes we use the same words but with other meanings and written differently. An example is the word ´Spring´, in Swedish it means ´run´, in English it is a season and in Dutch and German it means ´jump´.

Read more >>>>>