1. Introduction: what is Discovering World?

Discovering the world is a project based on a progressive and dynamic methodology

which main goal is to give children the basics of different educational fields (sciences,
maths, languages, social sciences, geography, and history) in a more practical and
appealing way.
It consists in focusing each week on a specific country, and from this, we enlarge upon
subtopics that characterize a country: language, history, music, gastronomy, religion,
social class and traditions. All these aspects will be introduced studied through dynamic
activities such as cooking, dancing, debating, role playing, singing traditional songs, etc.
The countries we will be working are the following: Spain, Catalonia, Greece, India,
China, Africa, Mexico, Australia, Morocco, Japan and Russia.

2. How come children will find this project unforgettable and unique?

With our project, students will be learning in a very dynamic and progressive method
doing activities such as cooking or dancing traditional dances from different countries in
order to assimilate knowledge about culture, religion, history of different civilizations and
how different societies around the world work.

Since teaching about culture, religion, ethics and history of civilizations is a very
complex task and often children arent very interested in these types of issues, we think
that through games, debates and dynamic activities children can assimilate more easily
about these issues and in the same time, they will find the subject worthwhile and
enjoyable.

Our education (in Catalonia) is still based on a very traditional method of teaching,
where the teacher is the person who regulates and organizes everything in a class.
Therefore students have only one simple task to do: listen and note what the teacher
says. This is why, our project its more student-centered.
The main leading characters in class are not the teachers, but the students, who will be
given more freedom to do the tasks using their own method and style and they will have

to be responsible of their own work. Teachers role in our project is mainly to support
and supervise studentswork and process.

3. Context in which our project is focused on

3.1 To which grades is our project addressed to?
Discovering the World is adjusted to children who are coursing 5th and 6th grade.
We think these ages are the appropriate ones to put in practice this project because in
5th and 6th grade students are older and more responsible. Therefore, they will be more
capable to manipulate the utensils and all the material needed appropriately, and it will
become less dangerous when using equipment such as ovens, kitchen stoves, cutlery,
microwaves, etc.
Added to this, if we carried out this project with younger students, they would not be
able to understand or reason certain issues such as religion and ethics, because their
mind isnt very mature and developed yet.

3.2 Which subjects will we work on?

Putting in practice Discovering World we can focus not only in one but many subjects:
social sciences, geography, history, maths, and culture (religion, ethics, traditions,
society).
This way, while students have fun cooking, and doing dynamic activities, they also learn
and gain the general and basic knowledge of almost each subject. In addition, they can
see how these different subjects are linked and related, because almost every science
and knowledge are related to other fields.

3.3 What goals do we want to achieve with our project?

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To teach and educate them through a more dynamic, practical and interesting
method.

To give students the chance to learn and having fun at the same time by cooking
gastronomies such as Indian, Chinese, Greek, Hungarian, Marrakesh, Russian,
etc.

To teach and help how to search and extract the appropriate information.

To improve their socialization with the others and be more organized and
capable of working in groups.

To overcome with their own faults and problems and learn not only about the
subject but also themselves.

To make them see how different societies work and to be able to debate and give
mature reasoning when exposing their point of view on something. Ex: equal
human rights for men and women, bullfighting in Spain, young children
marriages

To became more autonomous, responsible and open-minded.