My roots, my country, Our Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

My roots, my country, Our Europe

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Integration of refugees; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage

Project Summary

The project ‘My roots, my country, our Europe’ was developed and led by 5 schools (Portugal, Greece, Poland, Bulgaria and France). Project initially planned for 2 years and expanded to 3 years due to the pandemic to carry out this project as originally planned.
The objective was to fight against school dropout by establishing throughout the 3 years a collaboration between families and the school and to share together our cultural wealth.
We opened the school to those who came the least (allophone families, those with a painful school history, refugees, disadvantaged) so that families could discover the educational issue that takes place in the school from a very young age. Developing co-education projects have made it possible to strengthen the relationship of trust between parents/children so that the school issue is truly perceptible.

We carried out 5 eTwinning projects where parents were invited to participate in the project by providing their know-how or their help to properly run the project in the classrooms.

Approximately 1,100 families were involved in this project and our activities focused on discovering our origins, our country and our cultural heritage.
We completed 5 eTwinning projects:

– mascot+ : Traditional dances and costumes. Each school has made a traditional outfit for its mascot (democratically elected mascot by students and parents). The students learned and then taught a traditional dance of their country and a bookcreator of the dances of the 5 countries was realized. In addition, a project logo was also created by each school and elected by all school students.
– European rest@urant: Our culinary richesness. We created a European cookbook and cooked the dishes of other partners. The students of the 5 schools also created a digital picture book of vegetables and a clip of a collaborative song (in English).
– fairit@les Traditional storytelling. We made 2 board games: a “memory game” with the characters of tales) and a European fairytale box (a game to invent tales from images drawn at random)
– @rts+ Our artistic wealth. Students worked with artists, musicians and monuments from the 5 countries. We have presented works and performances in our schools and created a European e-
-European herb@rium + Our environmental wealth . We created a European herbarium with the plants, flowers and trees found around our schools and created a «Happy tree» collaborative clip with the 5 schools.
In parallel with these 5 eTwinning projects conducted in our schools with our students, 5 training meetings were conducted in the 5 partner schools. Thus, teachers were able to develop their skills in different areas:

– Pedagogical adaptation for the reception of families and migrant students (C1 France)
– fight against dropping out of school and improve skills for the inclusion of all (C2 Portugal)
– Innovative ICT tools to improve student learning (C3 Poland)
– Art therapy for the student (C6 and C7 Bulgaria)
– learning by project to develop students’ skills (C8 Greece)
During the 5 meetings, the mascots (5 identical rabbits in their traditional dress) “wrote” a travel diary to share their trips with the students.
This way, our young students could discover the partner schools and follow the travel experience of our rabbits.
During these 3 years, the students learned English and the teachers shared their “tools” on a blog to work more effectively with young children. English was the language of communication for videoconferences with other schools. Thanks to the 5 eTwinning projects, the students worked collaboratively with their European friends and the families followed the progress of the project . In each of our schools, the projects were also presented on the school blog.
We noted an improvement in the involvement of families in school for this project but also for other activities in our schools. Collectively, this project has improved the school climate and reduced school/family conflict. Work habits have also been established for both teaching teams and families, and this will allow co-education to continue in schools.
Through this Erasmus+ project, the cultural richness of our students has been shared and valued. This project also enabled students, families and teachers to be valued (press articles, awards, professional recognition) and enabled teachers involved in this project to develop their professional skills.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 82156,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ecole maternelle Vauthier-Sircoulon & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Sixth secondary school “Bratya Miladinovi”
• 5 nipiagogio kilkis
• Agrupamento de Escolas General Serpa Pinto de Cinfães
• Zespol Szkolno-Przedszkolny nr 2 w Brodnicy