Les ptites bees Erasmus Project

General information for the Les ptites bees Erasmus Project

Les ptites bees Erasmus Project
July 7, 2020 12:00 am
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Project Title

Les ptites bees

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; Open and distance learning; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

«Les p’tites Bees» is a one-year project, which has associated two schools whose pupils mostly come from deprived social backgrounds: the french college Michel Bégon (REP+), in Blois, and the 12th College of Acharnes situated in the Oolympic village of Athens.
The title of our project refers to the main theme around which the pupils of both schools have worked: «beeking, honey and bees;» however our title also wanted to illustrate the activity of our pupils: our main aim was to fight against school dropout and we wanted to see our pupils involved in the project like lots of little bees working in a busy hive, where no one was left out and everone had an important role and worked for a group cohesion and success.

The project involved numerous teachers from varied disciplines (7 teachers at the College Begon: french, classics: latin and greek, english, life science, technology, specialised teaching and the school librarian; 4 teachers at the College of Acharnes: greek, french, english and technology). Three of these teachers are also fully trained beekeepers. The approach was interdisciplinary and through the theme of bees, the pupils
-have discovered beekeeping (building of the hives, collecting of the honey)
-have worked on the representation of honey and bees in the ancient mythology
– have studied bees as a social organisation and have compared it with our human organisation (more specifically democracy invented by the Greek.)
-have worked on environmental issues (the essential role of pollinating insects)
-have created honey-based recipes.

A film around the trip to Greece was shot. Thanks to the film, pupils have been able to express themselves before, during and after the trip and it helps to measure how much work has actually been achieved (openness to the others, tolerance, overcoming the fear of being wrong, intellectual curiosity, development of a feeling of belonging to Europe)
(http://clg-begon-blois.tice.ac-orleans-tours.fr/eva/spip.php?article581).
The project helped the pupils to develop their team spirit, to overcome their fear of writing. We have definitely managed to fight efficiently against dropout (no absents).

To communicate, the pupils used the E-twinning platform and Twinspace. (https://twinspace.etwinning.net/24829/home.) In the french school, a 4e segpa class (14 pupils) and the 14 hellenistic pupils of 3e, as well as two latin pupils of 4e were all involved in working on a webradio. They prepared reports on both trips. (https://audioblog.arteradio.com/blog/98387); in the greek college, their correspondents were a group of 10 pupils from 5e and 14 pupils from 3e, all french-learners. The correspondence was mostly in french: for the greek pupils, it helped them develop their written and oral skills in a foreign language; for the french Segpa pupils (pupils who have significant learning difficulties) the correspondence was a different approach to the language and it gave it a real meaning: the priority was to reconcile those very fragile pupils with writing. The hellenistic pupils of the college also corresponded in english with the greek pupils answering in both languages depending on the context, correspondents and activities. These pupils took part in all the stages of our project but others were involved when needed ( for example workshops such as «eco-committee» or «cinema»)
The use of digital technology (via the twinspace or applications like learning aps or calaméo…) has helped the pupils to improve their use of digital communication technologies and it has also helped the teachers to integrate digital tools into their teaching practise more often.

In each school, there was a project coordinator but the management remained participatory so that everyone could get involved.

In April and May, the pupils of both countries met twice for a week each time: the french pupils went to Acharnes in April and the greek pupils went to Blois in May. All activities were led together. The pupils of the welcoming country guided the pupils from the partner country. Beekeeping held a major role during all activities, but it was also an important time to learn more about the culture of the welcoming country.

Through this european project, our wish was to develop cooperation, team spirit, openness to others and to Europe but also to make the pupils share the values of socially-responsible commitment. The hives built in both schools will remain and will perpetuate the already-established relationship between the 2 schools and between the young ones and nature.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 57670 Eur

Project Coordinator

Collège Michel Bégon & Country: FR

Project Partners

  • 12th Gymnasium Acharnon