Posters 1 and 2 + Stop motion and name for the project: EUROSCOLA 2015-SMILING STARS

 General look of the 4 posters finished. Today we explain the first and second ones. Here you can see the boxes to collect the materials for our solidarity program with Senegal: SMILING STARS! Do you want to know a nice story? Follow this post! And the green star!

We start working together making the posters. We have four cork boards in a row at the hall of the school so everybody will see our campaign. We divide it into the fours sections we had in mind. Each section will have a background color:
1) Blue background: European Union, cooperation, information we learnt with Euroscolos...
2) Orange: 8 Goals of the Millennium
3) Green: Education (and Happiness): what can we do to help
4) Pink: Senegal: information about the country and the projects we contact

Among all of us we decide to fins a name for the whole project. Since both the EU flag and the Senegal flag have stars and we want  to reach happiness through the goals, we call our Euroscola project: SMILING STARS. We wanted to create something original so we started a stop-motion video.

We practised with a little video. Then we created a story.

Video

Pre-production 
After watching the videos of the chronology of the EU, the effects of Second World War, etc. we imagine a universe were there is a chaos (post-war), and all the stars are scattered in the sky. Then, they decide to gather together, 6 at the beginning (they represent the founding states of the EU), then, the rest of the 12 stars of the flag, which will represent the rest of the following countries up to 28 now. The yellow stars join forces and keep peace. They grow institutions (Council, Parliament, Commission...) and projects (like 112, European Security Card...) represented by the QR codes. One day a green star from another galaxy comes to visit them it is the green star of the flag of Senegal), it explains about the same rights for everybody, but not the same opportunities... and asks for cooperation. The yellow stars decide to help. And the green star is happy (smiling).
Production
Draw and cut the stars, take the pictures, keep continuity.
Look for copyleft music
Check programs to edit stop-motion and train
Post-production
Edit the pictures, join them. Adjust speed. Create titles. Add music. Export and publish. It's amazing we are creating like cartoons! We hope you like it! We will post it to engage people to our project.

Poster 1: European Union (blue)
Poster 1 is the result of our stop-motion story. The middle of the European Flag was very empty so we decide to create a QUIZ that is useful to train for the 1st Stage but it is open to all our school.

GAME 1: QR Codes Quiz
They are 12 questions about the EU. They can find the answers by accessing the QR codes in each of the stars. The green star (representing the Senegal star) guides us to the next poster: the (Goals of the Millennium. There is another EU game below yet!

GAME 2: Logo Quiz. In the part below there is another game created with the help of other groups: a logo quiz. There are 12 logos of the EU institutions and projects and they have to answer questions related to them.


There will be prizes for the winners (9 May is the Day of Europe and our teachers says he will have present for those who answer correctly... out of 3rd of ESO of course!). It's useful for us to prepare the contest.

Difficulty is middle-high... so it is for 2nd to 4th of ESO students.

Poster 2: Eight Goals of the Millenium (orange)
The Narnians group created a hand-made poster with the Goals of the Millenium. We proposed to make a cards game with the 8 goals. We printed them and created threes sets of memory games. We asked in the primary school Alexandre Gali (near our high school) to play the game with the little kids of "Infantil" during their lunch break (after their lunch they play games). The time coincides with our last class on Tuesdays. We played the game with them and explained what was the meaning of each card... for their level. We enjoyed a lot playing with them!

Nadia Ghulam helped us in this activity. She is an Afghan who spent two years posing as her dead brother to evade the Taliban's strictures against women: she explains us that she wanted to study! She is a great example for us and we are glad she is working with us in class regularly. Goals 2 and 3 are perfectly represented in her. She makes us aware of how lucky we are and not to waste the opportunities we have. She is now engaged in a theater play and some of us have had the opportunity of seeing her. More info on her: http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/para-todos-la-2/para-todos-2-nadia-ghulam/944882/


 We also talked about not wasting food. We showed the card number 1 (Goal number 1: the dish with hot food) and asked if they had eaaten all in their dish before the games that day. We learnt from the video we watched the first day of Euroscola that we waste TOO MUCH: we DEBATED about food waste and decided to do something about it so we tried to EDUCATE them like this (Goal 2).
http://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/food_waste/index_en.htm

After we played the game with the kids, we thanked the teachers in charge of the primary schools and gave some "feedback" on the experience: those kids were not quiet, that was great!

Then added our small black and white cards and created a game for the younger students of our school (1st-2nd ESO): we glued all the cards pairs representing the 8 Goals around the big poster of our colleagues except two cards... students have to guess which two cards are missing (and at the same time are paying attention to what the cards stand for).

 

In the part below another group (The Incredibles) put the signs they created for the materials we wanted to collect. The other group created a QR code for having more information about the 8 Goals of the Millenium (upper right corner).

We have put two desks and the decorated boxes (picture at the beginning). Students, teachers, parents etc. can now put their donations: school materials, sport materials, toys and clothes. We need to spread the word as much as possible! Two of us have talked to all the head of departments of each subject to collaborate with materials too. For the boxes we got the help of Aula Oberta next door, and their teacher or Arts, Cristina Fons: they are very crafty and generous! THANKS!!