Incredible Magnificent Imaginative Nature Erasmus Project

Project Title

Incredible Magnificent Imaginative Nature

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Disabilities – special needs; Environment and climate change; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

Two countries are involved in this project : France and The Republic of North Macedonia. The two partners will collaborate around the theme : « Understanding our Ecosystems » to reconnect with Nature (while disconnecting from technologies).
We observe that a great deal of our students do not embrace the educational project. They lack interest for their studies which sometimes appear too theoretical. Some of them also lack autonomy when it comes to taking charge of a project and they need to be overly guided. The simple means of communication with their close circle are not always acquired. Their ecosystem is little to not at all known. We also notice a deficient level of English among them and a lack of openness towards Europe. A lot of parents feel quite helpless when it comes to course content because it is often out of their reach.

This is why we have selected the following goals to respond to these deficiencies:
Personal goals are sought: increase self confidence through project leading (creation, development, networking); improve extra-curricular abilities (manual skills, concrete activities) by involving all of our students, especially the most disadvantaged in their social circumstances and those with special educative needs; connect to nature.

Collaboration and living together goals are essential: improving teamwork among students from the same school or from different schools, countries, origins, social backgrounds; increasing the students knowledge of their partners’ environment and thus promoting awareness of environment from a global point of view; raising the awareness of the students, their families and the school community to the biodiversity in their environment; creating various quiet times and disconnected times in order to learn how to focus.

Improvement in terms foreign language skills and IT skills are needed: For the students and their teachers, notably in English; improve teachers’ pedagogical and scientific skills; foster interdisciplinary and increase the integration of innovating learning methods by exchanging and collaborating with teacher from other countries through the increased use of European platforms.

Openness goals are prominent in the transmission and setting up of the project:: increase the bonds among school personnel (teachers-technical agents-administrative personnel) to promote exchanges about gardening and the ecosystem; strengthen the feeling of belonging to the European community within the school community (the middle school and its network of tributary elementary schools), towards the parents and the township.

We want to implement a total 48 student mobilities and 17 teacher mobilities for the two countries. The students will be chosen according to their need to travel to foreign countries, to exchange, to collaborate, to improve their self-esteem and their involvement in the project. In each school, in the Erasmus club, these students will organize projects (visit of an ecosystem, reading challenge for the primary schools…). Thus a whole age group will be impacted by these projects: the 12 year old age group. The same applies to the teachers involved in the BEE (Be Entirely European) project by the way of which digital meetings will take place. The students of the middle school network will also participate through “Hands on!” or the “Reading Challenge”, or even through their access to the twin-space for their communications with the partners.

In order to reach our goals, we will implement several projects:
– to observe and understand our ecosystem: several field trips to natural habitats, the making of a leaf book, a fauna photo album, land-art workshops, creation of a “nature playlist”.
– to explain and gain in self esteem: experimentation, peer to peer presentation from the middle school students to primary school students (“Hands On!”), project management through the Erasmus Clubs to involve special need students
– to create a bond with the parents: creation of a “cookbook” introducing wild plants in our cuisine and in the parents garden.
– to create communication space: setting up of a twin-space.
– to enact all our goals, we will be bringing 12 of our students and 12 of their counterparts from the partner school to a total immersion field trip in a natural habitat over a period of 3 days, this, 4 times over the course of the 2 years of the project. This immersion will be rendered possible by the first mobility reserved to the teacher during which they will be trained to the study of ecosystems through the English language.

The rippling effect of this project will be felt first and foremost through a better knowledge of one’s own ecosystem and the one of their counterparts and will give a European and global depth to this theme. The middle school would like to keep the vegetation introduced in the school’s enclosure. Students will have a better understanding of the sustainable development actions and will be more involved because of t

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 65943 Eur

Project Coordinator

Collège Edouard LUCAS & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Opshtinsko osnovno uchilishte Kocho Racin Kumanovo