Back to the roots: Exploring our European heritage and enviroment Erasmus Project

Project Title

Back to the roots: Exploring our European heritage and enviroment

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: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Although we all live in different countries we share some common cultural traits. This common past goes back over many centuries and reminds us of is existence through archaeological ruins, historical suburbs, naturally protected areas but also in our day to day lives through our built environment. In this project we wanted to teach our students the importance of Heritage by listening to the stories that the stones from our heritage can tell us, by understanding what they have heard and seen, by exploring those areas of our natural environment that have given a significant contribution to our traditions and cultures. We strongly believed that knowing the past is the first step to build a better future. This was a transnational need that we thought students would best appreciate in a transnational context.
This project involved four schools: Minervaskolan i Umeå AB from Umea in Sweden, Escola Mestral from Hospitalet de l’Infant in Spain, Whitegate End Primary School from Oldham in the United Kingdom and I.C. 4 Stanziale from San Giorgio a Cremano Italy. Our pupils’ age ranged from 6 to 13 years and they came from a variety of different social and economic backgrounds and, in some cases, from different Nations as first or second-generation migrants. In our schools we all had pupils with special needs including physical disability as well as behavioural, emotional and social development needs.
We wanted our children to understand and remember historical facts that have affected our territory, to be able to recognise Heritage in a built up as well as a natural environment, to appreciate the importance of protecting our treasures so they will be available in the future, along with our traditions, for the generations to come. We engaged our children by offering them a variety of experiences related to our Heritage and environment: site visits, laboratory sessions in a CLIL context, art laboratories, informatics laboratories and cooking laboratories, dancing and performing. Such activities were carried out in each school for the whole duration of the project as well as during the transnational meetings.
We helped our pupils to summarise such experiences and what they have learned from them in final products relying on many different means of communication: videos, comics, recipe books, quiz games, magazine articles, artwork, family trees. Such products are available online on our Twinspace and have been exhibited in our schools for the benefit of the local community and also will be uploaded to the Erasmus result platform.
We believe that by involving children in this project will have helped them to become global citizens and will have helped their families to appreciate the importance and the opportunities available as European citizens.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 71165 Eur

Project Coordinator

Minervaskolan i Umeå AB & Country: SE

Project Partners

• Whitegate End Primrary School
• Escola Mestral
• I.C. 4 Stanziale