Ways Of Improving Student’s Autonomy And Initiative In The Learning Process: November 2007

Thursday 8 November 2007

Sports day in our school

The 'water's day'. One of the activities is swimming competition

The ball dances.

Latvia, Ventspils Secondary Schhol Nr.4

Our moto: A healthy mind in a healthy body

Nowdays when students are used to sit in front of computer for hours it is very important to popularize an active and healthy style of living.

Our school has organized different sport activities and discusions to popularize an active life style. It has helped to make greater awareness of how important is health in one's life.

The students are encouraged to take an active part and exercise not only during PE lessons, but also in their free time.

The students themselves have organized and participated in different sport competitions and hiking trips.

This Year’s Activities:

Our 2nd project year’s topic has been: Achieving a healthier way of life within students’ every-day-habits. Our first project meeting in Latvia focused as a consensus of all partner schools (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey) on eating habits among students and their degree of exercise. Therefore the BMI (Body-Mass-Index) has been calculated in each partner school. The necessary software had been evolved by the Spanish partner school in order to gain results that can be compared quite easily.

The next project meeting in Turkey was to discuss the diagrams considering the BMI, sex and age (see diagrams in details). The results are roughly shown in the table below:

Country	Results
Estonia	There are no real problems with overweight in a country school. Underweight is sometimes found. There is a bit of an overweight problem with little children.
Latvia	Overweight is not a dominating problem. Underweight is a greater problem. One of the reasons may be the free school meals that are bearing the stigma of poverty.
Lithuania	There is no real problem with overweight. It is more the underweight of the 11-14 years-old youths. A lot of sports, dancing and cycling is practised at school. Parents clubs are offered to instruct positive eating habits.
Germany	Younger students have got problems with overweight older students more with underweight.
Poland	There is no overweight problem among the 13-15 years-old youths. 60%-80% of the students have got a normal BMI. 30% of the girls have underweight.
Portugal	The group of the 15-18 year-old youths have quite a normal BMI. There are not many students with overweight problems more with underweight. Boys are slimmer than girls. A lot of students do not visit the canteen. There is a lack of food especially for poor students.
Spain	Until the beginning of adolescence there are some problems overweight among the students. Those students who are extremely overweight are sent to the doctor. By the end of the term the student’s development is inquired by the school. Students of the 8 th form are instructed in positive eating habits.
Turkey	The students have a normal BMI. Some have got problems with overweight and are sent to the doctor.

As the situation differs quite a lot from country to country each partner school will show its measures that will be taken within each school as a consequence of the discussion in Turkey. The Portuguese proposal to set up a blog as a common product in use of all partner schools for publishing and developing the ideas the package of measures the schools are taking trying to improve healthy life habits among students was very much accepted. It is most important for students to find ways in improving their personal initiative for healthy life habits.

Ways Of Improving Student’s Autonomy And Initiative In The Learning Process

Thursday 8 November 2007

Latvia, Ventspils Secondary Schhol Nr.4

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This Year’s Activities: