Loading
Culture in action involved teachers and students from 4 complementary schools from Cyprus, France, the Netherlands and Slovakia and it lasted 3 years. Our students were between 14 and 17 years old and came from 2 vocational schools and 2 general schools. Many of them came from socially disadvantaged families and were issued from immigration. Working together gave them the opportunity to come in contact with people from other countries and discover the culture from their partners. Most of our students lacked confidence in themselves, in autonomy and in self-esteem and we were convinced that the richness of the cultural heritage and diversity highlighted all along our project activities would allow our students to be more tolerant, more open minded and it would stimulate their mutual respect. Teaching with the profile of our students needed to be done in an innovative way to push them to carry on with their studies and to become active European citizens of tomorrow. Our objectives were: To gain a deeper understanding and knowledge of foreign culture and strengthen international relationships in creating an escape game.To confront challenges outside a familiar support network and comfort zone. To give our students the feeling they are European citizensWe had 5 Learning, Teaching and Training Activities. During the first year, 1 called “By understanding”in Slovakia where our students got to know each other, built our project identity, discovered some part of the Slovakian cultural heritage and started to work on the creation of quizzes for our escape game. 1 in France called “By valueing” where our students cooked a fusion meal in international teams, discovered some part of the cultural heritage and continued the creation of the escape game. During the second year, we had 1 in Cyprus called “By caring” where our students sang and danced traditional dances in the amphitheater of Kourion, discovered some part of the Cypriot culture heritage and invented the setting for the escape game and continued the creation of more quizzes for the escape game. Because of the worldwide lockdown we couldn’t have our Learning, Teaching and Training Activity in the Netherlands. So we asked for a one year extension for our project in hope to be able to do our last visit but in vain, because of the pandemic situation we finalised our project with a fifth Learning Teaching and Training activity with one three-day-online meeting. Our students could exchange with a Member of the European Parliament, visited virtually the European Parliament, discovered some part of the Dutch cultural heritage online and had great fun playing online with their escape game in international teams.We worked with the Twinspace of eTwinning. It enabled us to have a secure place where to work in teams, to discuss, to collaborate on the different themes and tasks which involved a much larger number of students between, during and after the Learning, Teaching and Training Activities. Our students worked in national or in international teams to get to know each other, to discover their countries, their gastronomy, their traditional songs and dances. They presented, analysed, synthesized, collaborated, evaluated and created various tasks and activities which improved languages, entrepreneurial and ICT skills. The tangible results are a Twinspace with all our project process and results; a multilingualism dictionary; a website; a netiquette chart; 4 emagazines summarizing our Learning Teaching and Training activities; 4 leaflets; a ecooking recipe book with all our recipe cooked by the students during the fusion meal; 8 films on our various subjects such as Learning Teaching and Training Activities and our students’ opinion on our project; 1 live TV show recorded during our online meeting; our Escape Game. The escape game setting was chosen by our students and it is composed of several quizzes on cultural facts of our four countries and created by our students. The impacts are huge for our participants. Our students were very active during all phases of our project, they were more interested in working to learn by doing and became more motivated in their studies and most of them had wished to pursue their studies. They gained confidence and self esteem. Working in international teams made them realise how important it is. The international part of this project enriched their linguistic skills and pushed them to be more curious and more tolerant toward their neighbours.The teachers reinforced their knowledge in project management and in innovative teaching. This project was highlighly disseminated to the eTwinning community thanks to the coordinators who are ambassadors and who participated in national and international webinars to share their expertise on collaborative activities and informing about our project as a way to implement student centered learning. Our project is visible on the Twinspace and is a source of inspiration for more teachers.
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
document.write('<div id="oa_widget"></div>');
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.openaire.eu/index.php?option=com_openaire&view=widget&format=raw&projectId=erasmusplus_::f83352f6c7e5fb3f7d5007e2ff67965e&type=result"></script>');
-->
</script>