Tales of our cities Erasmus Project

Project Title

Tales of our cities

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Rural development and urbanisation; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

The project “Tales of our cities” is a project in which the students worked on the link between urban planning and social well-being as these two aspects of city life are linked. The teachers of history, geography, languages, and art history helped the students with their research. This allowed them to develop knowledge about their city, history, culture, traditions as well as an approach to quality of life and protection of the environment. Two mobilities were carried out: one in Brussels and the other in Vasto. The idea was also to allow students to discover the culture of the language they are studying.

This project had several objectives:
• The modernization and strategic development of the teaching/learning system of soft and transversal skills and of the specific ones related to history, geography, citizenship education, art history
• knowledge and understanding of the partners’ historical and cultural background
• strengthening of motivation and the continuous updating (lifelong learning)
• development of social cohesion, intercultural dialogue and awareness of European citizenship
• development of ICT skills
• raising awareness on issues related to “sustainable urban development”
• the inclusion of the educating community in a European context that fosters quality, innovation, modernization and internationalization of education
• the development of awareness of the multicultural nature of contemporary society and of the school
• the development of interest in multilingualism in school staff and a different openness to comparison with new teaching methods and cooperation

The results are manifold. The first major result of this project is to have managed to bring together and work together two groups of students of different languages and cultures. They spent a week in a host family in Italy for Belgian students and in Belgium for Italian students. In addition, thanks to these mobilities, the students improved their knowledge of the foreign language and widened their competence in terms of communication in the target language. Thirdly, the subject of the project made them aware of the importance of European citizenship and its values. Then, the work carried out throughout the project allowed the students to develop ICT skills. They feel more comfortable and confident with innovation and new technologies. Last but not least, the students learned about the urban planning of their own city as well as the city of the host country thanks to research and visits carried out on the subject.

Regarding the achievements, this project allowed the students to feel valued as the actions to be carried out were so varied:
1) video presenting their own school and their own city,
2) preparation and realization of interviews (micro-pavement) on the pedestrian,
3) videos presenting the important monuments of the cities,
4) discovery and production of Belgian pastries,
5) creation by each student, using computer software, of an “art nouveau building” having the characteristics of the architect Victor Horta,
6) realization of a tale after having discovered Belgian-French words.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 32817 Eur

Project Coordinator

Athénée royal de Ganshoren & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Istituto di Istruzione Superiore Statale “Pantini-Pudente”