Basketball Opens Our Minds ! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Basketball Opens Our Minds !

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: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

Our project “Basketball Opens Our Minds” (“BOOM”!) has been based on some facts : despite the tarnished image of Denain, strongly affected by unemployment, this town presents many strengths among which basketball : indeed, in Denain, there is a professional basketball team (“pro B”), very good sporting facilities and a basketball section at vocational high school Jurénil.
Our students’ narrow-mindedness, limited professional horizons and considerable social difficulties have an impact on school life and entails learning problems, thus school non attendance and dropouts.
That’s why we have selected the following priority : “fight early school leaving and problems met by disadvantaged pupils”.
The project is aiming at :
– giving the students a strong desire to learn through a more playful and innovative method : sports (basketball) which combine many benefits : (health, hygiene, respect, team work, self-esteem and surpassing oneself).
– transferring learning methods and innovative socio-educative practices,
– improving language skills,
– opening Jurénil High School at an international level (the sense of belonging to Europe and greater open-mindedness),
– experiencing the exchange of teaching practices to foster and increase school attendance.
Our project is based on one of the lines of work of our school project : “give the students the opportunity to become citizens open to the world”. So, a partnership has been built with 3 European countries, where sports, especially basketball, take an important part : Spain, Italy and Lithuania. 8 students and 2 teachers from each country will take part in this project. So, each partner will host 30 people (24 students and 6 adults). The students are aged from about 15 to 18.
In order to achieve the project objectives within 24 months, we are going to work on 6 topics : “basketball and its history and traditions in each country”, “basketball and the language” : these 2 topics will be commonly studied and worked virtually by the 4 partners. The other 4 topics are shared among the 4 partners and each of them will prepare the programme of the learning, teaching, training activities : Spain “basketball and the game”, France “basketball and careers”, Lithuania “basketball and refereeing”, Italy “basketball and health benefits”.
During the mobilities, all the partners will work jointly on each topic prepared by the hosting partner : mixed workshops in english, educational and cultural trips, meetings with different basketball clubs, professionals and European players, sporting events (training sessions, matches). All that in order to carry out common works both through virtual exchange (through etwinning and TwinSpace where the works will be stored), and during the different meetings. The works will be used to feed the schools’ website too for dissemination. Logo, billboards, leaflet, English/partner language glossary on basketball vocabulary, European anthem, an english “rules of conduct” charter, questionnaires for filmed interviews in english, a logbook, a film highlighting the different activities.
The expected results are :
– change habits and the way of life of students to make them aware of the importance of sports and the benefits on everyday life (physical (health), moral, social),
– generate students’ motivation, ambition, self-esteem, pushing their limits, by highlighting their works during dissemination,
– reduce the rate of school absenteeism and foster school attendance,
– open our respective schools at an international level and make students aware of European citizenship and identity for a greater open-mindedness,
– establish professional contacts for future training periods and make our students want to go and work abroad,
– add an undeniable value to the students’ future professional life,
– develop interculturalism by mixing the groups, the nationalities during the workshops and activities,
– adapt to communication situations by practising foreign languages,
– develop initiative and entrepreneurship, a greater self-confidence by communicating, working and exchanging with the different partners,
– use ICT and develop their skills.
Finally, this project will enable us to establish long lasting relationships between the different partners, starting professional mobilities and continue to exchange teaching resources and practices.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 131144 Eur

Project Coordinator

lycée professionnel André Jurénil & Country: FR

Project Partners

• SAN JUAN BOSCO
• IT Giulio Cesare Falco
• Varenos “Azuolo” gimnazija