Cultural stew, European citizens Erasmus Project

Project Title

Cultural stew, European citizens

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

Project Summary

The Erasmus+ project “Bouillon de culture, citoyens européens 2019-2021” is a KA229 school exchange project between two schools: the Collège Jean-Félix Orabona in Calvi, Corsica, France and the Instituto de Enseñanza Secundaria Luis Chamizo in Don Benito, Estrémadure, Spain. More than a hundred Spanish and Corsican students, including the “Global Defense and Security Class” from Calvi, participated in this bilingual (French-Spanish) project which lasted 28 months and had 2 mobilities, one in each country, planned.
Because of the global pandemic due to Covid19 and despite the 6-months prolongation of the project, the mobilities abroad had to be canceled and were replaced by two weeks of virtual mobilities at the end of the project, relying on synchronous, cultural, citizenship activities and videoconferences.
The project involved three eTwinning projects, corresponding to the three school years, and allowed the collaborative creation of three digital magazines on the cultural links between Corsica, Extremadura and Europe. Each year enhanced progress and consolidated the participants’ knowledge. These projects have obtained the national and European eTwinning quality labels. Thus, the partners have worked closely together on the historical and cultural heritage of the two regions as well as on European citizenship, developing their social and civic skills through active citizenship activities.
The recognition of the cultural links existing between our regions and Europe allowed the students to be aware of the existence of a common cultural heritage and a European citizenship. Indeed, becoming a European citizen requires knowledge of other people’s culture in order to understand one’s own history, as conflicts are often born out of ignorance of the other.
“Bouillon de culture, citoyens européens” has achieved many goals. On the one hand, the partners gave a good example of interdisciplinary learning in language, intercultural, social, digital, scientific and physical education. On the other hand, the project has highlighted very important transversal learning in regard to the European dimension and collaborative work, which are key elements of the student’s future.
Thanks to the implementation of innovative and creative pedagogical methods, encouraging the exchange of experiences and ideas between the partner teachers and the learners, the latter showed an increase in motivation for the courses investing in the project and beyond. It is worth noting that some of the students were willing to use their cross-curricular skills to help their peers and teachers in the administration of the Twinspaces created for the projects and the creation of the digital magazines. The collaboration between students also became a collaboration between teachers and students.
The Erasmus+ project allowed the organization of many activities between the partners, weekly activities that were integrated into their school schedule.
The pupils were the actors of their learning. They developed the Learning to Learn skill by making decisions. Students were administrators of the Twinspace and digital magazines.
The dissemination of the whole project was ensured thanks to numerous partner networks of the schools.
In conclusion, the two schools collaborated closely which allowed them to exchange virtually, within the given circumstances. The qualitative evaluations carried out with the learners and teachers showed a 100% satisfaction rate of all the activities involving greater autonomy and strong student motivation for the project activities. In addition, the teaching team took real advantage of the dynamic given to the lessons and was extremely satisfied with the progress of the students.
The Collège Jean-Félix Orabona in Calvi and the IES Luis Chamizo in Don Benito wish to perpetuate this European experience in order to be able to carry out the school exchange as soon as the health conditions will allow it.

Project Website

https://twinspace.etwinning.net/122825/home

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 41805 Eur

Project Coordinator

College Jean Félix Orabona & Country: FR

Project Partners

• IES LUIS CHAMIZO