Thursday 25th February


Today we started fairly early, Meeting at School at 08.30. The first thing we did was to watch a mock debate. Teams from our host school here in Poznan, and another local School, team IILO and team VIII LO, competed in a debate titled "The voting age should be lowered to 16 in order to increase active citizenship among the youth". The teams both had good arguments, and it was a close debate, which for the audience was won by the negative side. However, the judges disagreed, pointing out the moer consistent argumentation of the affirmative side, and awarded this team the victory.

After a short break, we were divided into two groups to participate in workshops about debating techniques and to prepare the affirmative and negative side for our debate tomorrow. We worked together to find ideas and arguments, and then chose the students who would represent the group in the debate tomorrow. For the affirmative team this was Esther, Francisze, Joan, Sindre, Fynn and Lourdes. For the negative team this was Joanna, Sarah, Piotr, Philipp, Pawel, Emma.

After an intense afternoon, we left school at 15.00 to join our host families for the evening.

Wednesday  24th of January.

Our schedule today: A day outside of the school. Poznán city was waiting for us. And the start was literally very sweet. We visited Poznán´s only and true “Croissant museum”- what a treat! We learned not only how to make the most delicious croissants ever, we also got to know a good deal about the city´s history. The guides who at the same time were professional bakers were really amusing and had a lot of interesting stories to tell, not to mention all the advice they gave regarding the stuffed croissants.

Students were able to take part in the baking process, learning how to roll out the dough, cut triangles with a sword and squeeze out the very thick filling.

 

Rain, wind, and cold temperatures – nevertheless, we did not give in and participated in a sightseeing tour in the old town of Poznán. Luckily, we were to meet Marek, the same enjoyable guide who already had made our tram-trip an amusing experience the day before.

And he did not disappoint us this time ether. By choosing students to make his point clear what it meant to live in Poznán in former times his presentation of historical facts became somehow very illustrative and vivid. He put one of the students on the pedestal and let him play a convict in the Middle Ages.

Thus, he taught us how Poznán´s hangman professionally got his job done when chopping off the convict´s heads. We learned about the multicultural history of Poznán four hundred years ago and about the few months when Poznán was the capital of Poland ruled by a man who – untypically for that time – experienced real love and real hate in the relationship with his own wife, and managed to be the King of Poland, even though for only some months.

 

In the afternoon, we were invited to visit the city´s council and had the opportunity to hear about the city council and about the youth council.

One of the students from the school in Poznan, Julia, explained clearly what her role has been, and then we were able to watch the beginning of a session of the youth council. As this was in Polish, it was a little difficult to follow, but we saw that a presentation was made of a proposal about large advertisement boards, and that members of the council were able to comment and ask questions.

 

After this, we returned back to school.

 

Tuesday 23rd January


Today we had an early start, and had to be at school at 8 o'clock. The first point on the programme was a lecture by Bartosz Hordecki, PhD, who is a professor at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. The title of the lecture was "The art of discussion in times of media civilisation" and he told us about how the use of digital media has changed the way we communicate, and how this affects the way we discuss.

This was to provide background for workshops on debating. During these workshops we learned about the rules of debating, self-presentation skills, persuasion and argumentative language.

We had to prepare arguments on an issue in groups and then some students presented the arguments. They were filmed, and given feedback on how effective they presented their arguments.

After lunch, we went out of school to catch a veteran tram, to og on a Bimba guided tour through the city. Our guide, Marek, gave us lots of interesting information about the buildings and areas that we passed, such as Malta, the artificial lake area, the imperial castle and the cathedral. We were all given a bag of envelopes and at regular intervals we opened an envelope. Here there were photos of old buildings, a potato, a fridge magnet with Poznan's goats, and a badge with the colours of Poland. At the terminus, the tram stopped and we were able to sit in the driver's seat and take photographs.

The tram took us back to school for 3pm where we were collected by our host families, and went off to eat dinner and take part in various activities.

Tuesday 23rd January


We will write about today shortly, but here are some pictures.

Project Week in Poznan, Poland

Monday 22nd January


After an evening with the host families, we met at school at 08.00. First we were divided into groups, and played some games to get to know each other, as the groups were made up of students from all the different countries. We made posters with our common interests, and had an activity to learn names. Then Ewelina introduced the project week and explained what we are going to do this week.

All the countries had orked on a task before travelling to Poland. They fuond out about how citizens, and especially young people, can get involved in decision making in their cities. They also took a survey of students and other citizens about areas in their city that could be improved. The results of the surveys and the other information were presented as a film made by each school. We watched all the films, and then worked in groups. We used the information from the surveys we made in our home cities to find common areas for each of the cities. Each Group chose one areas to work on, and we then made posters informing about these issues, for example pollution, public transport and clean energy,

Later in the day we had an international party where every school had brought some Food from their country. There was so much to choose from, for example, salmon, sausage and chocolate from Norway, pancakes, sausage and waffles from the Netherlands, sausage and bread from Germany, pirogs and salads from Poland, and cheese, quiche and cakes from Spain. There was a lot left for us to enjoy later in the week.

The Polish students had some entertainment for us, and they also taught us how to dance the Poloniase.

After the formal part of the evening, the DJ took over, and we all enjoyed an evening of dancing and socialising before heading home about 20.00

October 12 - 14 2017


Teachers' Meeting in Norway


The teachers from all the partner schools met in Norway. On the agenda was an evaluation of year two of the project, and planning the final year of the project.


The German team updated us on Project management issues and then the Dutch team went through the evaluation of the Project weeks in Amersfoort and on Nesodden. It was clear that the two project weeks were very successful in terms of both work completed and satisfaction of students and Teachers.
The Polish team outlined the programme for Poznan in January, and the Spanish team outlined the programme for the final project week on Ibiza in April. Pre-tasks for the Poznan week were also discussed.