Racines communes Erasmus Project

Project Title

Racines communes

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Name of the project : Common Roots (Radices)

The project context : Exchanges during a 24 month period between a French secondary school (Collège la Fontaine in Montlieu la Garde, in the South of the Charente Maritime district) and an Italian secondary school (in Chioggia, near Venice) around the themes of our common ancient roots on a linguistic level (latin languages) as well as on a cultural level (painting, theater).

Main goals :
1. To create a feeling of European belonging for the students and leading them to realize that Europeans have a common heritage. 2. To value culture to rather underprivileged pupils making them spectators and actors of artistic projects.3. Increase language skills of the students, including in French with their own language, by enrich the vocabulary and by understanding the history of words.
4. Work on initiative taking of the students and on their team spirit.

Number of profile of participants ;
– The French school (with about 300 pupils) is located in a rural area, about 60 kilometers from large cities such as Bordeaux ; the students are rather underprivileged (a lot of them being grant holders) ; the project for the school and the teaching team have the goal of helping students by in their studies by valeing culture and the opening to the outside world.
– The Italian School (300 students in the school but 900 in the school complex) is located not far from Venice, in the city of Chioggia ; the children belong to the middle class ; this school is leading numerous citizenship linguistic and cultural projects in order to open the school to the world and its realities.

Activities :
1. Antiquity is everywhere in art ! From September 2019 to February 2020 : work around French and Italian paintings dealing with patterns of Greek and Roman mythology, with a physical meeting in February 2020 to present the virtual exhibition.
2. Antiquity is everywhere in words ! From March 2020 to May 2020 : creation of a small linguistic guide-book in French, Italian and Latin with a physical meeting in France in may 2020 around a linguistic quizz and ”Italian week” organised by the school in partnership with the city council.
3. La commedia dell’arte in theory ! From September 2020 to February 2021 : oral presentations around the Commedia dell’arte and theater workshops during a physical meeting in Italy in February 2021.
4. La commedia dell’arte in practise ! From March 2021 to May 2021 : reading aloud and adaptation of the play Aulularia by Plaute, then a performance of the play during a physical meeting in France in May 2021.

Methodology : Use the eTwinning platform to facilitate the exchange of wrtitten, audio and video documents at the time of preparation of the various activities and to allow a weekly virtual meeting, at least once a month, between both schools.

Results and expectations : We hope, during and after the project to see the students more active in their learning specially in languages, more confident in themselves and in their cultural skills, more aware of the common heritage of European people, more open-minded and looking toward the world outside school and at last more ambitious in their future projects (choose European curriculums in High school, Italian or Latin, university studies in a European countries).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 65111 Eur

Project Coordinator

COLLEGE LA FONTAINE & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Istituto Comprensivo Chioggia 3