CineMaths Paradise Erasmus Project

Project Title

CineMaths Paradise

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

“Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the Universe.” At the beginning of our project, with this quote from Galileo Galilei, we wanted to emphasize the importance of Mathematical principles and concepts, which have become a part of almost every area of world.
Unfortunately, students tend to consider that mathematics is a difficult and boring subject with no connection with real life. This lack of interest leads often to struggle and failure.

“CINEMATHS PARADISE”, by providing a fun and enjoyable way to learn mathematics through movies, focused on enhancing motivation of students in learning mathematics and making them conscious of the presence of mathematics in real life. Besides, as the project dealt with European movies, it promoted European culture through the seventh art: the cinema and gave the students a feeling of being a European citizen. Moreover as the whole project was carried out in English, it improved the English skills of students.

In this project, students and teachers developed a new methodology and provided educational techniques that enabled an effective use of movies in maths classes. The aim of the project was the creation of two main tools that can be used by teachers: a bank of activities and teaching resources based on the movies studied during the project and a guide with a methodology to help teachers teaching maths through movies. These two tools are available on our website and we have used educational websites, social medias, etc. to make it known.

“CINEMATHS PARADISE” involved four schools: IES Alcantara (Spain: coordinator of the project), Lycée Carriat (France), Agerbæk School (Denmark) and Evangeliki School of Smyrna (Greece). The four schools were complementary: by their size, their previous involvement in Erasmus projects, the scope of their national cinema and in the organisation of the project as the work was shared between the four partners.

This project was based on a collaborative methodology that ensured the quality of the resources. Each activity was coordinated by one partner who prepared collaborative activities which took different forms: games, quizzes, webquests, maths races, creation of maths problems, realization of videos, production of mindmaps, debates, cooperative productions, remake of the scenes, video presentations, street interviews, etc. The collaborative activities were carried out in multinational groups during the meetings, reproduced in each school after the meetings and improved according to the feedbacks given.
In each organisation, a group of students and teachers coordinated the project but many students were involved when activities were reproduced.

The objectives of the project were:
OBJECTIVE 1: “Make the students conscious of the presence of Mathematics in real life”.
OBJECTIVE 2: “Enhance motivation of our students in Mathematics learning”.
OBJECTIVE 3: “Provide educational techniques that enable an effective use of movies in Maths classes”
OBJECTIVE 4: “Promote European Culture through the seventh Art: the cinema”
OBJECTIVE 5: “Improve the English skills of our students”
OBJECTIVE 6: “Give the students a feeling of being a European citizen”.

There were four meetings, which were the core of Cinemaths Paradise project.
Each meeting was organised in 4 main activities: Working Title, Maths&Movies, Meeting European Cinema and Educational Visit. Each of these activities was prepared and coordinated by a different partner each time, so at the end of the project all schools had organized once the 4 activities. A brief overview on them:

MATHS & MOVIES ACTIVITY: students and teachers collected ideas of scenes from different movies connected to a specific maths topic (for instance, finance maths) preparing collaborative activities about them.

MEETING EUROPEAN CINEMA ACTIVITY: students and teachers prepared a presentation about their national cinema, representing and recording scenes of national movies in multinational groups of students.

EDUCATIONAL VISIT ACTIVITY: Student and teachers did educational visits connected to cinema and maths. They also prepared collaborative activities linked with those visits.

WORKING TITLE ACTIVITY: students and teachers prepared collaborative activities related to all the Maths content present in one specific film.

The collaborative activities of each of these 4 categories took different forms: presentations, games, quizzes, webquests, maths races, creation of maths problems, realizations of videos, production of mindmaps, making of drawings, making of films, etc.
Some of these activities were reproduced in each school after the meetings and feedbacks were given to improve them.

We expected that “CINEMATHS PARADISE” would not only increase maths motivation and European dimension in the four partners school but would also motivate other teachers to use movies to teach mathematics in an enjoyable way, and we think we have fulfilled these expectations.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 92280 Eur

Project Coordinator

Instituto de Educación Secundaria Alcántara & Country: ES

Project Partners

• LYCEE GENERAL TECHNOLOGIQUE J.M.CARRIAT
• Evangeliki Model School of Smyrna
• Agerbæk skole