Climate Change - teachers

The introduction has the objective of introducing the project and motivating students.

Students will learn about the project, the main objectives and the goals they have to achieve (creating a short documentary about their perspective on certain historical issues).

• Presentation videoclip →
• Assessment grid (annex 1)
• Organise the communication with the partner school (Skype, video, email, etc.) 
• Analyse and if necessary, adapt the assessment criteria to give to students. 

Introduction of the project:

a) Students will watch a video clip that presents the objective of the project —  creating a short 10-15 minute documentary and exchanging it with other European schools. This video is the same for all topics. 

If necessary, give more explanation to the students, addressing the objective of the lesson, the steps, timing, characteristics of the video clip students have to create, etc.

b) Set up a brief communication with the partner students, if possible via Skype: 

i. Students from each class should introduce themselves: Hello, this is our class. We are looking forward to this project, we are very excited. I am Michael, I’m 16 years old, Delphine: Hello..." 

ii. If a Skype meeting is not possible, prepare a short presentation video to send them or write an email with the presentation and add a picture of the class. 
- This activity does not have to take longer than 15-20 minutes but has a significant effect on student motivation and the success of the project. 
- If the students’ English level is poor, you can communicate via email, so they have time to prepare the communication and translate the answers. 

c) Explain the assessment criteria to the students.

The introduction has the objective of introducing the project and motivating students.

• Students will watch a video based on an individual strategy for fighting climate change.

• Students will start reflecting on the topic ‘climate change’, their own knowledge of it, and their opinion of its importance. 

• Students will learn more about the significance of climate change, also learning to distinguish between fake news and scientific news. 

• Students will make relations between the causes and effects of climate change. 

• Students will start thinking about the research question - how should we deal with climate change - as actors who can deal with the climate crisis in different ways. This will stimulate their interest in the topic and it will get them started in identifying the different options for dealing with it. 

1) Motivation to the lesson 

a) Watch the starter clip and comment on it as a whole class. If necessary, briefly explain the topic and the different options for fighting against it, and focus on the topic of the question.
b) Some possible questions you could ask your students:

1. Comprehension 
   - What is shown in the clip?
   - Who are the people in the clip?
   - How are the protagonists dealing with climate change?

2. Discussion
   - Why do some people try to fight against climate change as individuals? Do you think this has any positive consequence?
   - What is your own perspective on this theme? How do you think we should deal with climate change?
   - Do you know some examples in your family, town or country of dealing with climate change? 

2. Introduction of the topic

a) Students should reflect on the following:
- What perspective(s) might different people have about it?
- Do you think this topic is important? Why?
- What are the consequences of climate change?
- What are the causes of climate change? 
- What is climate change?

b) To learn more about the topic, the contemporary situation and causes and effects, tell students to do the following activities in pairs:

1. Tell students to work with this list of fake news and scientist news about climate change. They should recognise the scientific news in order to realise the characteristic of Climate Change. (handout 1: climate change news) 

2. Students have to create Climate Change cause-effect chains using the given statements (handout 2: climate change cause-effect). Here are some examples of the chains students can write:

c) Students could then discuss in small groups and draw some conclusions about the real situation of Climate Change, using these questions as a guideline:

1. Do you think climate change is real? Why?
2. What do you think are the main causes for it?

*If you find yourself stretched for time, or if you think your students have enough knowledge about Climate Change, you could skip activity B (where they learn more about the topic).

3) Introduction of the research question: how do you think we should deal with climate change?

Ask students to individually write down their reflections on the research question. 

*At the end of the project students will come back to the enquiry question and write down reflections on it for the second time, comparing their responses to see if they have modified/developed ideas on the topic. It would be a good idea to take a picture of the ideas written on the blackboard.

*More information about birth strike (for teachers) in this article in The Guardian

During this lesson, students will learn about historical examples of climate change and identify different types of effects that climate change has had in history. They will then look at conferences and weather events from the last decades in order to draw some conclusions about how political decisions have or have not been implemented, and what the contemporary consequences of those decisions are.

• Students will have group discussions about climate change as an all time, worldwide phenomenon, using texts on different types of climate change events throughout history. 

• Students will draw some conclusions about similarities and differences between these events throughout history.

• Students will analyse the climate change timeline that includes conferences, treaties and the extreme weather events of the last decades in order to be aware of the intentions and real actions taken by governments, and the real effects on the weather.

In these lessons we provide you with a lot of materials. You are free to make choices in the historical assignments; use some texts instead of all or divide the assignments between the students.

• Factsheets with information about Climate change in history. There are three documents about this topic.

• Climate change in history (annex 1) with explanations for teachers. This information can be used to explain the historical context to students before they start analysing the examples of climate change events in history. 

• Climate change events in history (annex 2). Various events related to different historical periods are explained briefly. 

• Climate change deeper explanations (annex 3) . There are three examples of climate change events in history with deeper explanations for higher level students.

• Depending on the level of your students, choose which of the documents you want to use with your students. Give a copy of the document to each group of 3-4 students and tell students to share the events among them. 

• Timeline with information about climate change. This timeline gives information about important worldwide conferences and treaties concerning climate change during the last decades, and the annual summary of the most recent extreme weather events. (Climate change digital timeline)

• A handout with different extreme weather newspaper headlines. The overview includes a “?” mark in order to motivate students to think about local/national examples. (annex 4)

• Graphs and tables about climate effects and climate change  development created by the UN Climate Change Secretariat and WMO. (annex 5 and annex 6)

1) Analysing climate change in history 

a) Students should read the short text about climate change in history in small groups and discuss the main differences in causes and effects between different events. How did people cope with climate change in the past?

b) Come to a short conclusion in a whole class procedure. Students might conclude that climate change has happened throughout history worldwide, and that the effects were very important. The main difference is that nowadays, the main cause of change is human action, and the number of effects will multiply in a short time. 

2) Analysis of agreements, facts and weather events

a) Organise the class in three groups and tell students to analyse the information in the sources using the given questions as their guideline (model: experts). 

1. Some students will analyse the conferences and treaties that appear in the climate change timeline. They can find some recent examples of agreements and disagreements and analyse them:
   
   - What countries are involved: which countries have signed or agreed with it? Which countries have not? 
   - Have the agreements already been implemented? 
   - Is it possible to notice the effects of these agreements?

2. Some students will analyse the weather events that appear in the climate change timeline, including the handout with weather events headlines. They can find some recent examples of different events and analyse them:
   
   - Which are the main weather events?
   - What countries or regions are involved? 
   - What are the consequences (social, economic, …) of these events? 
   - What will happen in a few years if things do not change? 
   - Add one or two headlines about extreme weather events that have happened recently in your city or country.

3. Some students will analyse the climate change developments that appear in graphs and tables. They can choose some graphs or tables and analyse them:
   
   - What are the main consequences of climate change?
   - What countries and/or regions are involved? 
   - Which economic sectors are involved?
   - What are the consequences (social, economic, …) of climate change? 
   - What will happen in a few years if things do not change? 

b) Reorganise the class in groups of three or six, with one or two experts on each topic in each group. Tell them to inform each other about the main ideas that have appeared in each group and reflect on the consequences that climate change will bring if we do not take actions to mitigate them.  

3) Final discussion 

Put the whole class together and discuss the solutions that politicians have or want to implement. Discuss with the students whether they think that the way politicians are dealing with climate change will make a real difference, and if not, what should be done.

The climate is always changing. There were ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitsbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a 100,000-year cycle for the last 700,000 years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age.

Greenhouse gases, mainly CO2 but also methane, were involved in most of the climate changes in the past. When they were reduced, the global climate became cooler. When they were increased, the global climate became warmer. Volcanic eruptions have caused strong cooling following a period of unusually heavy activity. 

When CO2 levels jumped rapidly, the global warming that resulted was highly disruptive and sometimes caused mass extinctions. Symptoms from those events include big, rapid jumps in global temperatures, rising sea levels and ocean acidification. Humans today are emitting prodigious quantities of CO2 at a rate faster than even the most destructive climate changes in the planet’s past. 

The concentration of carbon dioxide has been increasing since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. From 289 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 1750, to 380 ppm by 2005 and to 407 ppm in 2018. Most of the increase has occurred since 1959, as world energy usage has expanded dramatically.
(Source: Skeptical science)

Maps: Raphael Neukom1, Nathan Steiger2, Juan José Gómez-Navarro3, Jianghao Wang4 & Johannes P. Werner,  No evidence for globally coherent warm and cold periods over the preindustrial Common Era , Nature July 2019, page 3

* Early Bronze Age. The climate was warm in Europe at altitudes now beyond cultivation, such as Dartmoor, Exmoor, the Lake district and the Pennines in Great Britain. The climate appears to have deteriorated towards the Late Bronze Age, with a period of unusually cold climate in the North Atlantic region 1800-1500 BC.

Source: BROWN Tony, The Bronze Age climate and environment of Britain, 2008

* Prehistoric Central North Africa. Climate cooler and wetter, some parts of the present Saharan desert may have been populated, judging by cave art and other signs of settlement in the area.

Source: Historical climatology, Wikipedia 

* Roman Warm Empire. The first known global pandemic struck in 451 AD and recurred until 750 AD leading to the premature death of up to a quarter of the human population in the Eastern Mediterranean region. The plague of Justinian (536-750 AD) coincided with a period of major climate change in the Eastern Mediterranean. The largest dry to wet climatic shift of the last 11,000 years occurred in the 6th century AD. This was briefly interrupted (535-536) by a climatic reversal and failure of harvests which may have been caused by a major volcanic eruption. The climatic instability created the environmental condition to allow the plague to spread exceptionally quickly with devastating consequences for human mortality. 

The Justinian plague era came to an end when the climate became drier once again. The wetter climate would have increased the number of rats and other rodents which carry fleas, which in turn carry the plague bacterium.

Source: Climate change and the Plague of Justinian, University of Plymouth 

* Warm Period in Middle Ages. There was a warm period between about 800-1300 AD. During this period some parts of the globe may have been warmer than they are today, such as the North Atlantic. The effects of the warm period were particularly evident in Europe, where grain crops flourished, many new cities arose, and the population more than doubled. During this period, the Vikings colonised southern Greenland because the milder climates allowed favourable open-ocean conditions for navigating. The Greenland settlement lasted until 1300 AD when the little Ice Age ended the possibility of farming. 

Source: Why Greenland Viking vanished, Smithsonian, 2019, Medieval warm period, Skeptical Science 

* 1046 Cold winter in the middle of the Warm Period. As it appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1046): “And in this same year after the 2nd of February came the severe winter with frost and snow and with all kinds of bad weather, so that there was no man alive who could remember so severe winter as that, both through mortality of men and disease of cattle; both birds and fishes perished through the great cold and hunger.” 

Source: The Little Ice Age Was Not So Little, Alternate history, ASB-Environmental

* Medieval Little Ice Age. In 1300, temperatures dropped dramatically in parts of Europe and North America. The Little Ice Age was not a time of continuous cold climate, but rather repeated periods of cooling and warming, each of which occurred during times of solar minima, that lasted until 1800. 

With the colder climate, early snows, violent storms, and recurrent flooding massive crop failures occurred, resulting in famine and disease. Glaciers began advancing and pack ice extended southward in the North Atlantic, blocking ports and affecting fishing. 

The change from the warm to the cold period was abrupt and devastating, leading to the Great Famine from 1310 to 1322. Continuous rain impeded the sowing of grain crops, and harvests failed once and again. Diseases increased, people died of starvation, and many farms were abandoned. 1316 was the worst year for cereal crops in the entire Middle Ages. Cattle could not be fed, hay wouldn’t dry and couldn’t be moved so it just rotted. 

Sources: Medieval Warm Period, Science direct, EASTERBROOK, D, Evidence Based Climate Science, HUHTAMAA, H, Climate and the Crises of the Early Fourteenth Century in Northeastern Europe 

* Europe’s ‘bleak midwinter’ of 1430-1440 made dramatic changes in response to food shortages and famine caused by exceptional cold. Crops failed, food and fuel prices rose. Malnutrition and famine struck many parts of Europe. Weakened populations fell prey to disease and pestilence, worsened by environmental and living conditions. Authorities responded by changing trade policy, banning food exports and introducing new approaches to protect people from hunger, such as communal granaries for storage. Norse colonies in Greenland starved and vanished as crops failed and livestock could not be maintained through increasingly harsh winters.

Source: What can a Medieval Climate crisis teach us about Modern day warming, The Guardian, 2016

During this lesson, students will learn more about climate change by analysing how some people take action to deal with it, in order to be aware of the different ways of answering to the issue.

• Students will analyse and make inferences about how different people, amongst others the characters of the clip, deal with climate change in order to draw conclusions about their own perspectives.

• Students will experience that exploring different perspectives, gathering more facts and analysing those, is basic to the development of a well-considered personal view.

• Students will brainstorm to find possible answers to the research question.

   

Feel free to pick and choose or divide the materials between the students

• Character cards with some protagonists from the videoclip, and other characters that have different perspectives on climate change.
• The characters that appear in the video clip are Blythe Pepino and Margaret Thatcher. The other characters are: Wangari Maathai, Sebastian and Leila Salgado, Wibjorn Karlen, Greta Thunberg, Jason Warner, Boyan Slat, Blanca Bernal, Werner Baumann, Li Yongan and Skeena Rathor. The characters all have unique perspectives on climate change and act upon those in different ways (Annex 1)

• There are twelve different characters, so divide the class in 12 groups. Depending on the number of students in your class, you will have groups of 1-3 students. Each group will study a different character. Make enough copies of the character cards for each group. If you prefer to have less characters, you can make a selection. Try to maintain as many different perspectives as possible. Here you is some additional information about the characters to help you do so.
  a. People dealing with climate change:
  - Scientists: Blanca Bernal 
  - Companies: Jason Warner (Budweiser)
  - NGOs: Blythe Pepino, Wangari Maathai, Greta Thunberg 
  - Individuals: Sebastian and Leila Salgado, Boyan Slat
  - Politicians: Margaret Thatcher
  b. Anti-climate change/sceptical people: 
  - Wibjörn Karlén
  c. Initiatives by people or companies that both aim to contribute to dealing with climate change, but whose impact is simultaneously controversial:
  - Companies: Werner Baumann (Monsanto)
  - Great constructions: Li Yongan (Three Gorges Dam)
  - Movements: Skeena Rathor 

• In order to better understand the different perspectives on the topic, students will analyse the character cards to decide what perspective each of them has. Students will realise that motives and ideas of people involved often are based on feelings, hopes, fears and political ideologies.

1. Introduction and analysis of different characters 

   a) Give a copy of a different character card to each group. Before they start their analysis, start a the classroom discussion to remind the students who the characters from the video clip are (Blythe Pepino and Margaret Thatcher). Tell them that most of the other characters are not in the video clip. 

   b) Tell students to analyse the information that appears in the cards individually or in pairs/groups (depending on the number of students you have in class). Ask them to identify the perspective of those involved in climate change, as well as how their character has dealt with it (researching, responding with an action, denying it, etc.). 

   c) Next, they will explain to the whole class what their conclusions are. Let students discuss the different perspectives.

   d) Another option is to give each group all the character cards and ask students to rank them from most positive perspective to least positive perspective in dealing with climate change. Then, they can try to figure why each character has that perspective, how these characters deal with climate change, and what their solutions are.

2. Reflecting on the research question
   
   a) To finish, ask students to reflect on why people act differently on climate change. What caused some people think differently than others? Why do they deal with the issue in such different ways? What reasons could they have for doing so? 
   b) Students can finish this part individually by writing about some ways of fighting climate change.

3. Homework
   
   Ask the students to look at news media for local, regional or national examples of how climate change is fought. Ask them to bring the example to school for the next lesson. This will help them to focus on the topic they will choose for the documentary.

During this part, students will choose the topic of the documentary they will create, taking ideas from the video clip, characters, news and the examples about climate change provided to them.

• Students will organise themselves in groups of 4-6 .

• Students will choose a topic for their research.

• Groups of 4-6 students

• Information about climate change that students have to bring to class (newspaper articles, …)

• Handout with information about Change Makers to help students choosing their protagonist (annex 1) 

1. Introduction

   1. Tell students they will create the documentary in groups of 4-6. Make the groups or tell them to organise themselves into groups.

2. Choosing the topic

   1. Before they start choosing the topic, remind them that the issue of climate change is very complex. 

   2. Students can take ideas from the character cards and the news. 

   3. They can also read the Change Makers handout with different examples of personal choices and change makers to decide who they want to choose for their documentary (annex 1)

Be sure that each group has chosen the topic for the documentary by the end of this part, so that they can start doing research in the next step.

Before you start off with the research for your documentary and watching the tutorials, we want you to take in consideration these two starting points:

1. A PERSONAL CHOICE

After getting all the background information and the different responses and initiatives on climate change, we want you to write down what you think would be the most urgent matter to change.

2. CHANGE MAKERS

For the documentary, try to connect your personal choice to a local change maker: someone who is trying to make a difference today or who has done so in the past. These are just some examples, if you look around you will find a lot of initiatives yourself:

• Cleaning up the beaches

In many countries there are initiatives where people unite to clean up plastics and other garbage from beaches, or forests. Who are they? And does their hard work make a change? Interview a cleaner, or the person who took up the initiative. Take into account the results as well as the problems. Film them in action while they clean together.

• More wind more sun

A local farmer who works on wind or solar energy.

• Cleaner industry

Do you live in the city? What climate change do you see? What problems do you have to cope with and what can be done? For instance, in Amsterdam we recently closed the Hemwegcentrale: a coal-fired power station, placed almost inside the city, that polluted the air heavily. Interview people who provide different perspectives: the neighbours, the workers from the coal-fired power station, someone from the municipality. Film at the factory.

• Working together

In many cities and villages, people create local initiatives in small communities to improve their circumstances and the local climate.

• No plastic/ no meat / veggie

Film a personal story of someone that tries to live without using plastics in any form, someone who stopped eating meat, or someone who became a vegan. Try to show both the upside and downside of their story.

• Green politics

What did your local politicians do, or what should they do? Get an interview with a member of the municipality and with locals in the neighbourhood that are either happy or angry.

• Green shops

No smart shops, but shops that embrace a new way of thinking and producing. For instance, a jeans label that rents out jeans instead of selling them. Less jeans will be made and less water and chemicals will be spilled in the production process.

• Pollution everywhere

Is your hometown the most polluted in Europe? Film it and tell us what you think can be done. Try to interview a local responsible.

• No one to be found

Is there no one to be found, and does it look like there is no initiative at all? Create your own research film. Pass by all the houses in your street and ask the people what they do to make a change. Film it all, take notes, put the best and/or the worst stories in your film. How is your street doing on a scale from 1 to 10: are they big polluters or change makers?

During this step students will create a historical documentary in groups, after researching the topic in their own environment.

• To learn how to create a documentary 

• To make a documentary of 10 minutes in groups of 4 to 6 students after being assigned different roles

• Groups of 4-6 students

• Tutorials for documentary

• Steps for each function (annex 2). The steps follow the information given in the tutorials and as they are connected to certain roles, the information is also linked in the role cards.  

  • Researching  

  • Interviewing 

  • Filming 

  • Editing 

• Assessment grid for the documentary (annex 3). 

• Statement of consent (annex 4)

• Specifications for filming on mobile phones (annex 5)

• Make copies of the roles and their functions. All the students will be researchers so make copies for each of them. The other functions will be assigned to one/two students in each group depending on the number of students. 

• Give the assessment grid to the students before starting the creation of the documentary in case you want to use it as a frame for assessing the students.

• As the teacher, watch all the tutorials in advance so that you know what the students are going to be doing and understand how the various functions fit together. The tutorial upload and refind is specific for teachers to upload to the European server.

1. Introduction 

   1. Tell students they will create the documentary in groups of 4-6 and that  they will have different roles whilst creating it. There are four roles:

      1. Researcher: done by the whole group. Research is a key part of making a documentary. Make sure your teams have 2 researchers to keep working on this research, finding background information and the right materials during the process.

      2. Interviewer: in charge of preparing the questions and doing the interview.

      3. Cameraman/woman: will record the interview and images needed.

      4. Editor: will edit the film with the help of his/her colleagues.

2. Organising roles and watching tutorials 

   1. Divide the roles among the groups or let the students choose a role and give them their role cards. For groups of 6, some functions can be duplicated.

   2. Give each student his/her role card. Ask them to carefully read their role cards and watch the tutorials. As the research will be done by all the students, you can watch this tutorial as a class. The other tutorials can be watched individually as homework. 

3. Researching 

   1. Students will do the main part of the research on the topic in class. Before starting, remind them that they started finding a local example in Step 2 Part 2 in the conclusion of the lesson and their homework. Be sure all the groups have a topic/subtopic to start the research. 

   2. It may be difficult for students to identify an appropriate person to interview in their own environment. Tell the students that this person does not have to be someone who has direct experience, but can also be someone who is an expert, or whose family experienced the topic students are researching. This increases the range of topics that can be addressed. 

   3. Explain students that the videos have to be in English, because otherwise, your partner school will not be able to watch your videos in the last exchange lesson. 

If the interview partner is not able (or willing) to do the interview in English, they can do the interview in any other language but then they would have to add English subtitles to their video for the interview parts. The tutorial upload explains how to add subtitles after editing

4. 4. The last step of the research is to plan the creation of the movie. Let students do it themselves based on the information provided in their role/steps documents, but check the planning as they will do the following activities out of school. 

5. Out of school activities 

   1. Students will do the interviewing/filming and editing out of school. 

   2. During the filming phase, organise an opportunity for the students to have contact with you for questions and support (mail contact, a walk-in consultation hour, etc.).

   3. Remind students that, as it appears in the interview/filming tutorial, they have to ask for the written permission of the people they interview. In the case your students interview a person under 18, they have to ask for written permission from their parent via the Quitclaim or statement of constent (annex 4).

6. Uploading

   1. As a teacher, watch the tutorial Upload and refind The tutorial will lead you through the uploading process step by step.

   2. Make sure the uploading is done at least one day before the meeting with your partner class. 

   3. Allocate 10 minutes of uploading time for 1 video, depending on the speed of your internet. For a whole class with low speed internet this could take up an hour and a half.

Try to create a stable environment by using a tripod or a chair to lean on.

If possible, use an additional microphone. If you do not have one, avoid filming too far away from your sound object or person.

You could also use an extra phone to record the sound but then you have to synchronise both phones using a clap:

• Start the audio on one phone and the camera on the other. Now synchronise by clapping your hands slowly. Make sure you record and film the hands and sound.

• Do not stop your phone after this point. If you stop, you will have to sync again.

• When editing, you can synchronise the clap with the image of the clap and then the sound and image will run at the same speed.

And last but not least, watch the filming tutorial before you start shooting.

Good luck !

This step is the most interesting and important part of the project, as students will watch others’ videos and exchange their opinions about the topic. 

Students will compare and discuss their conclusions about the topic and enquiry question within the school and with the partner school after watching the documentaries they have all produced.

• The videos of your class correctly uploaded to the web

• The links to the videos made by the students of the partner school

• Assessment grid for co-assessing the videos (annex 1) if you haven't given them to students before.

• Agree on exchange and discussion with the teacher from the partner school (  platform, timing, etc). This could be done in a asynchronous (Skype, hangout, etc.) or a-synchronous way like by email or in a Q&A-forum as it is not always possible to arrange for two classes in two different schools to synchronise schedules.

• To prepare for this session, students could send questions to the other school to discuss during the screening of each other’s documentaries. This would also help to structure the exchanges. If the students list their possible questions first, the teacher can select the ones that are most interesting. 

2. 1. Explain to students that they will watch the documentaries they created along with those created by their European colleagues, and then afterwards, they will have a discussion session with the partner school.

3. Sharing and commenting activities  

   1. Sharing and commenting on the videos within schools   

      1. Share the videos with the whole class. 

      2. Organise a discussion and feedback session afterwards. 

      3. Remind your students to:

         1. be respectful commenting

         2. appreciate the work done by the other students

         3. give constructive feedback

         4. compare the similarities and differences of the local/regional cases

         5. discuss the ethical dimension of different attitudes and behaviours in relation to "a difficult past".

      4. Students can fill in the assessment grid for co-assessing the videos of their colleagues, now or at the end of the project. 

4. 2. Sharing of the videos between schools and preparing for discussion  

      1. Share and watch the videos from the partner class. Give background to the regional or national history reflected in the videos. 

      2. Prepare the students for discussion with the partner class: 

         1. What are you  going to talk about?

         2. How will students organise themselves to participate?

5. 3. Discussion between schools 

      1. Understand, compare and discuss the videos with the other group via Skype, chat, etc.

      2. Questions about the videos can relate to specific details, background or aspects the students may not be familiar with or fully understand.

      3. The idea would be to analyse the different perspectives shown through the videos (outcomes: differences/similarities ) with questions like:

         1. Compare the case studies, what similarities can you find?

         2. What are the differences? Do you think these differences are specific for this town/region/country or dependent on other factors? 

         3. Does the partner class have the same viewpoint on the issue?  

         4. Did they provide information or viewpoints that were previously unknown to you?

6. Conclusion 

   1. If time allows, take a moment to draw conclusions from the discussion session in a whole class setting.

This lesson will close the project, providing opportunities for individual/group reflection and assessment focused on the topics covered throughout the lesson, the documentary-making process and the project as a whole.

Students will reflect on the development of their opinions on the topic and self-assess/co-assess their documentaries, the projects and their experience of sharing their perspectives with other European students.

• The picture you took in the first step, where students provided their initial opinions on the research question. This will be a useful tool for contextualising the development of their ideas throughout the project. 

• Examples/suggestions for individual/group reflection, including the European dimension

• Assessment grid for co-assessing the videos and assessment grid for the teacher to assess the documentary if it was not given to students previously (annex 1)  

1. Introduction

   1. Explain to students that they will reflect on and assess the whole project.

2. Reflection activity 

   1. Discuss the research question by using the students’ answers from the first lesson to incite discussion and to see if and how they changed their opinions on the question.

   2. Write group/individual reflections on the topic and the enquiry question.

      1. Reflection can focus on student feelings, reactions and drawing comparisons between the ideas they had at the beginning of the lesson and the ones they developed after having learnt about the topic. 

      2. Points of discussion could include: the video and its context, global and local examples, knowledge of other students’ opinions, etc.

      3. You can also ask students to write down whether or not they have changed their mind/developed new thoughts and why. 

         1. This can be first be done at an individual level, so that students reflect on their own development. Afterwards, reflection can be expanded to a whole class discussion. If you have a picture of their opinions from the beginning of the project, you can project it and let students make comparisons.

3. Assessment

   1.  Assessment has multiple parts:

      1. Assessing the topic and quality of the videos the students have created. 

         1. This can be done as co-assessment and/or completed by the teacher, using the assessment grid. 

      2. Assessing the complete project. 

         1. Prepare some questions to discuss individually/in small groups:

            1. How did you feel about group work? (roles, timing, responsibilities, etc.) 

            2. Do you think it is important to research and discuss controversial topics like these?

            3. Did the exchange with other students help open your mind to new ideas about the topic? 

         2. Have students write down two of the best aspects of the project and two things to improve. 

4. Conclusion 

   1. Evaluate the project: 

      1. What was it like making a film? 

      2. What was it like working with a class from another country? 

      3. For both questions: What was especially difficult? What would you/ what should we do differently if organising a similar project in the future?

* Please fill this short questionnaire with your class after you have closed the project