Our Daily Bread: An English Project
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uriz1Our Daily Bread: An English Project
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uriz1English project summary:
Our daily bread is a man-made natural and cultural product and shaped by its specific cultural and
regional context. It is used as a symbol in numerous customs, traditions and religious rites. Bread as
an everyday food is therefore something that connects us with and distinguishes us from other
Europeans since it identifies us as inhabitants of a specific culture, geography and region. The topic of
this project "Our daily bread" enables students from Germany, Italy, Spain and Romania to work
across school subjects on different aspect of bread, such as its connection to agriculture, jobs and
professions connected with bread production, the science behind its making, its marketing and the
various customs and traditions surrounding it.
The project aims to improve participating students' language skills and their intercultural
competence as well as to allow them participation in an open and tolerant European society. The
actual encounter with young people from various cultural and socio-economic backgrounds is key in
shaping this participation. The selected partners exemplify the heterogeneity of the European
member states. It is this diversity, however, which opens the possibilty to a different kind of learning
experience than what students usually experience in a classroom. The communal work on the project
is meant to provide the students with contact with and understanding of various jobs and
professions connected to bread production in order to improve their mobility in an increasingly
international job market. It also helps them to gain valuable skills in digital communication since the
project requires a regular exchange of ideas, results and materials through digital media and
information systems.
About 60 students will be directly involved in the project and the connected student mobility visits to
partner schools. They will be supported by a team of about 12 coordinating teachers in the different
partner schools. In addition to that, a number of student groups will get to participate in aspects of
the project both in lessons and in extracurricular activities. Various school coaches (teachers) and
external partners (e.g. businesses, farmers, a technical university) will take part in the project as well.
Participating students have various socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, some are from ethnic
minorities. Two participating schools prepare their students for university, while the other two place
an emphasis on vocational training.
The partners are planning a coordinating meeting of involved teachers at the beginning of the project
phase as well as a concluding meeting for its evaluation at the close of the project. For the duration
of the project, teams of students coached by teachers will plan the outlined student mobilities and
visits to partner schools which will give the projects their structure and impetus. Before and after
these meetings each school will prepare their specific sub-topic of the project. The Romanian partner
will particularly focus on the cultural meaning of bread and (religious) traditions around it; Italy will
look at the economics and marketing of the bread product, Spain will focus agriculture and how its
connected to bread as the final product and Germany will look at the science of bread and its
production. The partners will also prepare visits and meetings, keep in touch with partner schools
and partner student teams and produce and publish results and learning materials. Despite the
unique emphasis of each visit, they all share the following criteria:
- visits of non-school partners such as businesses, farms, universities, etc.
- intercultural interviews of people connected to the topic "bread"
- implementation of new methods of learning (e.g. project work, biographical learning, usage of new
media, student to student teaching)
The participants' work on the project is shaped by the use of digital media and a focus on end results,
so that these can be shared with a wider audience. The diverse thematic aspects of bread will be
looked at on the basis of specific examples and come to life when the students meet with, for
example, bakers, food technicians or marketing experts. As a result of these experiences the students
produce multimedia learning materials such as podcasts, videos, articles, worksheets, etc.
At the heart of this project work and its central product is the planned website, on which the learning
materials about jobs, professions, bread ingredients and bread production, bread traditions and
bread marketing strategies will be collected and presented. All results will be available in English and
the various participants' languages so that this digital portfolio can be used by anyone long after the
project has ended. The 'work experience days' with external partners will enable the students of the
involved (vocational) secondary schools to experience various professions and provide them with
guidance and greater mobility on the national and international job market.
