Becoming an European City-Zen Erasmus Project

Project Title

Becoming an European City-Zen

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 : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Inclusion – equity; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

This Erasmus + project “Becoming an European City-ZEn” was born from an observation shared by the five partners of the project: students, according to their social origin, do not use the resources of a territory in the same way and if traveling or discovering new cultures and spaces is self-evident for some, others do not feel empowered to do so. This project has been designed to answer this common problem : how to make our students free and active citizens despite the particularities and the social and educational difficulties that ‘a lot of them meet ? How to bring them together around common values, and especially European values ? The answer was to make entities “school”, “district”, “city”, “country”, “Europe” known territories that they appropriate through their geographical, ecological and cultural study. To make each student feel free and legitimate to invest all the places that make up these territories, those where he lives, but also those where the student partners live, drawing little by little the territory of the European Union. This study was therefore focused on the discovery of the five participating cities: Athens, Belfast, Paris, Rome and Tallin. Common theme of the project, the values, the anthem and the motto of the European Union : United in diversity.
This study was divided into several thematic actions : the first activities began with the rediscovery of a well-known environment, that of the school and its neighborhood : students were encouraged to rediscover their environment to transmit it to students partners. Then the students went to discover their city through the discovery of its iconic monuments, its modes of transport, the vision of the artists of their city. Finally, they wondered how, through simple ecological gestures, they could participate actively in the conservation and beautification of their environment. All the activities initially planned were realized by all the partners and were declined for students aged 3 to 12 years. It is in particular through the exchange of the productions of each school that the students discovered the geographic and cultural territory of the partner cities.
The educational teams, thanks to the exchange of practices, especially during transnational meetings, strengthened their professional skills to better help all the students. At each transnational meeting, productions were exchanged. But there was also a visit to the school, the observation of complete learning sessions, a presentation of the national school system, as well as the study of a particular pedagogical point chosen and presented by the host country, which allowed exchanges and debates on the different ways to implement this axis in each country.
Another major objective of this project, that of motivating students and making them actors of their learning through the study of “concrete” subjects and close to them has been achieved unanimously in schools : thanks to the manipulation of memoys realized at each action and allowing everyone to be involved despite sometimes the language barrier on the one hand, and the use of the Twinspace to monitor the progress of the project during the actions on, the other hand.
The public pages of the Twinspace were a powerful engine for disseminating the project and enabled the entire educational community to follow the work done as the project progress. This greatly contributed to the unifying and European dimension of the project.
From this project, new partnerships appeared on Etwinning between teachers who exchanged throughout the project.
The presentation and part of the project’s achievements are available on the project’s Twinspace : https://twinspace.etwinning.net/27646/pages/page/423226

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 80320 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ecole maternelle Boy Zelenski & Country: FR

Project Partners

• istituto comprensivo via F. Laparelli 60
• 5th Primary School of Chaidari
• St Oliver Plunkett Primary School
• Tallinna Rõõmupesa Lasteaed