Cirkevna Spojena Skola, Snina (Catholic Primary School)
September 2018
In September, we introduced the Highway to Health project to our students. The project will directly involve two classes, Tercia and Kvarta, a total of 48 students.
October 2018
In October, students and participating teachers carried out the initial evaluation survey. Having done this, we went through the answers and discussed issues such as healthy lifestyle and local environmental hazards.
November 2018
At the beginning of the month, students from Tercia and their English lecturer, Mr. Jonathan Child, went to a local forest on a class trip to clear up rubbish. Jonathan organized the trip as an awareness exercise for the students in how we should look after our surroundings, a key point in the second ring of our Olympic project. Here is a report on the trip:
Cleaning our forests for our health and Erasmus+
In November 2018, students from Tercia in CSS Snina went to Rybniky in Snina to pick up and clean up the forests areas, particularly around the cooking areas and the fishing lake. This activity is one of the preparation activities for CSS’s newly funded Erasmus+ project: Highway to Health, a project with 5 partner schools. Over the next two years students from Kvarta and Tercia will travel to Spain, Belgium, Germany, and culminating in a meeting of 9 partner schools in Greece.
In Slovakia, students will teach their European friends about the importance of our relationship with nature. In preparation for this, they have been to our local forests to clear up rubbish that has been left by some people. The trip was organized by Jonathan Child, lecturer of English at CSS, who is disappointed that some people are leaving rubbish in the forests as it is not only unsightly, but also environmentally unfriendly.
Students collected 5 large bags of rubbish in less than an hour, including many plastic bottles, cans and tins.
The students want to show our visitors that we care about our forests and send a message to our own residents that whatever we take into the forest, we should also take away.
In November, students were also asked to create videos relating to the country they would like to visit during the project. Students had to create and present their videos in English to the group.
From these videos, we selected eight students to travel to Catalonia.
We also started rehearsing the Highway to Health song!
December 2018
In December, the students travelling to Catalonia were asked to create a video presenting our school with the help of their classmates. The students did an excellent job requiring no assistance from their teachers.
January 2019
Training event in Catalonia – An amazing week in Manlleu with many health related and Olympic activities.
The students who travelled to Catalonia presented a report of the training event to their fellow pupils.
They also completed the evaluation of their time in Catalonia.
February 2019
Time to start preparing for Slovakia!!!!!
Having returned from Manlleu our students have been getting very active on Strava. We encouraged our students to download and use this fitness app. Hopefully we will reach our goal of 5000km in a short time.
March 2019
Our students and students from the other delegations were asked to complete questionnaires regarding environmental issues in their own localities. They were also tasked with making videos to highlight some of the positive and negative aspects of these environmental concerns. We also asked them to make videos about their relationships with nature and how often they get out into the wild.
April 2019
In April, we repeated our forest cleaning operation in the local area. With a group of 50 students we managed to collect a staggering 10 bin bags of rubbish from the streets and forests around the school.
May 2019
In May our teachers and students were busy preparing for the second ring of our Olympic journey in Snina. We arranged for a manager from the local recycling and waste management company to come and assist us with educating the Erasmus+ students in our fun environmental based activities.
The week in Snina
We hugely enjoyed hosting our Erasmus+ friends and sent them home with fresh ideas about looking after ourselves and our planet.
June 2019
Having completed our week in Snina we bought new recycling bins for our school. The students involved in the project then were tasked with educating their fellow schoolmates about the importance of recycling and how to recycle.
With the Summer holidays approaching our delegation for Belgium started working on their preparation activities for Herzele.
September 2019
The delegation for Belgium completed their questionnaires on how our students get to school. They also made a video to show our Erasmus+ friends the ways we get to school.
We completed a fantastic stay in Herzele. Our students learnt how to get to school safely and were encouraged to get on their bikes. They were also given bike safety and maintenance advice.
October 2019
All of the teachers who came to Herzele are either on foot or on their bikes to school every day.
November 2019
December 2019
Our students are continuing to add kms to our Strava total. Having already achieved our first goal of 5000km we are working hard to achieve our 7000km target before or in Kassell!!
Here you can see one students efforts towards the target on New Years Eve...
January 2020
Students have returned from the Christmas festivities so now is a good time to start thinking about healthy food! In preparation for out meeting in Kassel in february students are questionning their classmates about the eating habits and considering our eating habits in school.
February 2020
Before heading to Kassel our delegation spent 2 days seeing the sights in Berlin. The students were informed about the history of the Berlin Wall and why it is important to work together to solve problems.
A great week in Kassel learning about healthy eating. We have also reached our 7000km Strava target, very fittingly on our group walk up to the Hercules statue in Kassel for the passing of the Highway to Health torch!!
March 2020
Our students from Kvarta were asked to create their own recipe videos, making something vegetarian or vegan. They presented their videos in front of their class. The videos were a lot of fun and they inspired each other with some very interesting recipes.
April 2020
Coronavirus has arrived and the schools are going into lockdown. We will be learning from home. Fortunately, unlike our partners in Manlleu, we are still allowed out to exercise. So despite our lockdown we will still be exercising on our Highway to Health. However, we will no longer be able to finish our project in Greece this year.
May 2020
The students and teachers had an online meeting with the headteacher regarding the idea of creating more places for bikes at the school entrance. The headteacher was very enthusiastic and we will start creating plans for adding more bike spaces.
June 2020
Work on the new bike places will be carried out during the Summer. More students will be travelling to school by bike next year. Great news!!
September 2020
An additional 30 places for bikes and scooters have been added.
October 2020
Our school, like most of the world, is going back into lockdown. But, we will make sure we all still keep active. Strava will show us!
December 2020
We are thankful to receive Christmas gifts from our partner schools. Merry Christmas to all and fingers crossed for the New Year.
March 2020
We continue to have online meetings with our partner schools to work on the project and see if our final meeting in Greece will be possible.
May 2020
Students and teachers have arrived back in school! A massive congratulations to all our students who continue to lead the way in adding kms to our total on Strava. We are well on the way to travelling around the world!
June 2020
Great news. It looks like we will be able to meet in Greece!
August 2020
Greek meeting!!! After a long time apart, our 5 partner schools were able to meet in Kalamata. As planned, we also joined the 5 schools from our sister project, with whom we started planning in Pecs all the way back in 2017.
Finally, our Olympic torch arrived in Greece and we had a fantastic week thanks to the Greek delegation. We were lucky to be able to travel with three tecahers and three students as planned.
As the project draws to a close we can finish with a few pieces of good news. Firstly, we have managed, in our Strava Highway to Health group, to travel around the world! Together we have completed more than 40,075km!
Secondly, a new bike rack for 10 bikes is being installed in front of the school. It looks like our school really is on the Highway to Health!!
Thank you to all our partner schools involved in this project. And we are already enjoying working with you on our new Geen.if.i. project!!! Fingers crossed we will see you all again soon!