Practice and professional training for the future

Our students will enhance healthy life skills with the activities done per month through our project. They will also be competent in digital, improve their foreign language skills, use the internet safely and consciously, collaborate with other partners, be entrepreneurial, productive and gain social skills.

'For my health' is a special collaborative vocational eTwinning project, involving the students and led by teachers. It has many partners, and the work was enriching through exchanging our experience and learning with other partners` during the vocational-based activities and learning, during this project. The project had the aim of improving skills that integrated into the curriculum, also with an emphasis on collaborative work in teams and classes involving students and teachers – together.

Pedagogical methods focused on developing the future professional skills in the food domain, searching and studying on their own, awareness about health in general, methods of healthy living, and diseases and effects.

Their work results were presented using various education digital web 2.0 tools; reporting back on their collaborative work-related efforts on the theme of food and health. The project has organised formats and useful pages for the presentation and project such as introduction; web-site of the project; page of IT tools used; presenting schools, partners, student’s teams; exchange for experience and training; plans for announcing monthly themed work.

During thematic activities, the students are improving their knowledge in class. The project has practical activities and events organised alongside celebrations for Tuberculosis Day in January, Safer Internet Day in February, Water-Day in March, Nutrition Day in April, eTwinning-Europe Celebration Day in May, Cancer Day in May, Safety Food Day in June.

The project is integrated into the Food Technology professional profile, in students` specific domain of study – Biochemistry, Food Hygiene, Nutrition and Quality of Food or Sports. But the targets are also about enriching knowledge from other disciplines which are: chemistry, biology, personal hygiene, creativity, English language, IT tools, discipline of life behaviour and counselling. For the project, there is a page listing the disciplines involved.

The main skills for students to develop are practical working and daily knowledge about health and possible threats of diseases. Students have worked in school hours or during technological lab-classes. The project`s work was correlated with theoretical knowledge presented at Food Technology Modules. Some of the work was translated in English at school, or in lab-classes, at the same time with different presentations sessions for projects.

In order to make them interested, the students searched on the internet about components, nutritional quality, main nutrients and components with influence on health, obesity, diseases and other issues and the importance of sports in their life; to understand the positive aspects of good nutrition and active life. Also, to be aware and conscience of the importance of creating and maintaining a well organised daily routine, and teaching students through many sessions on learning recipes and preparing salads – as a practice and professional training for the future.

Alina Popa, Food Technology Vocational Institution teacher, Romania