The name of the project is ‘’Responsable and active citizens of Europe’’ (RACE).The partners of the project are six schools of six different countries of Europe. The schools have different sizes, geographical situations (city, countryside) and socilogic backrounds.1. Rödebyskolan, Rodeby, Sweden2. Ecole élémentaire Jean Macé, Besancon, France3. Osnovno U4ilishte 'Geo Milev", Grohotno, Bulgaria4. Direzione Didattica Statale "Piazza Quattro Novembre", San Nicardo Garganico, Italy5. 26th PRIMARY SCHOOL PANAYIAS TRICHEROUSA, Limassol, Cyprus6. St Ignatius Secondary girls school, Qormi, Malta.This project is designed to encourage pupils to be active citizens of Europe. We aim to give our pupils the knowledge and skills to be able to cooperate with each other, communicate with each other, respect each other, value each other and develop a bond of trust and friendship across the borders of Europe.Objectives:1. To develop a European Identity through developing a better knowledge of ourselves, sharing it with others and recognizing our common values and interests. 2. To understand our rules and rights are common amongst us all.3. To develop pupils that want to care of our world, making them ECO-citizens. 4. To understand that the other countries within Europe are able to work together without prejudice. 5. To understand that the staff of each school feels empowered to deliver a broader curriculum to their pupils.6. To discover other countries, languages and cultures that both pupils and adults knew little or nothing about and this is vital for the unity of Europe.7. To give our pupils the opportunity to work in a different way, to make learnings, which are registered on their curriculum, more attractive.- Coordinator´s School (France) will ensure that the project runs smoothly, prepare the visits with the host and ensure all information is disseminated to all the partner schools.- Partners from Sweden will take responsibility of the blog, ensuring it is set up and accessible to all partners and maintain any technical issues through the life of the project. They will be responsible for the activity "knowing me, knowing you".- Partners from Bulgaria will prepare a questionnaire that measures the feelings of the participants before and after the project. They will be responsible for the activity "debates in the classroom".- Partners from Cyprus will prepare a program of skills and competencies concerning the European Bicylce Licence. Moreover, they will organize the litter picking and battery activities and collect the data and pictures to share with other schools on the blog.- Partners from Malta will prepare a common piece of music to enable all the schools to produce a CD (European anthem). They will organise the greetings cards exchange.- Partners from Italy will be responsible for the activity "what is in your plate" and for the evaluation of each meeting.Every partner will be also responsible for the organization of the meeting in his country.
The project, which brought together six schools with different contexts, situations and characteristics, aimed to help our students become responsible and active citizens. All the activities proposed to them during the three years of the project included a theoretical and a practical component. The strong idea is always to bring knowledge and propose actions, in order to praise this knowledge in a lived reality. The language of communication, for both students and teachers, being English, the development of language skills in English was also one of the objectives. As well as skills development on new communication tools (use of skype for video conferencing between students, videos, power point, word processing, etc.) We proposed 2 activities for each year: What’s in your plate (2nd year), Climat heroes (1st year), Rules and rights (3rd year), Knowing me, knowing you (3rd year), Debats in the class room (2nd year), The European anthem (1st year). These activities have already been described and commented on in the last interim reports. Other activities were also carried out: exchanges of mascot and a booklet on school life for the youngest, exchanges of cortes of wishes each year, creation and posting of a European glossary containing daily expressions in all partner languages, knowledge assessments of Europe and partner countries (at the beginning and end of the project), creation of a dedicated website and Etwinning page for the collection and exchange of results and productions, simultaneous celebrations of an “Erasmus day” each year. Theoretical/practical component: Each of the 6 activities proposed during the three had as objectives to bring knowledge to our students, but also to give them the opportunity to act. For example, the rules and rights activity offered students the opportunity to take a bike licence. To obtain this permit, they had to pass a theoretical component dealing with the rules of the road and the knowledge of signs and the names of the different parts of a bike (in English and mother tongue). But you also had to do the practical part. There, after training, the students had to complete a course in the school yard (the same for all the partners). In most of the partner schools, this has been achieved with the help of the local police. In the same vein, the activity "Climat heroes" proposed to the students to organize and carry out the cleaning of their neighborhood or the surroundings of the school, to sort and recycle the collections. But the classrooms also visited the sorting centre of their municipality and had interventions on sorting and recycling. This activity has been renewed in most of the partner schools this year and this sustainability makes us think about the long-term benefits of our project. Through the work carried out during these three years, we think that we have increased the amount of knowledge our students have in various fields (Geography, English, TICE, science, EMC, etc.) but we have also given them the opportunity to act to build their citizenship sustainably, so that it is both responsible and active. This long-term benefit of our project is difficult to measure, but the changes we can already observe in our schoolyards, in our classrooms and in our neighbourhoods already show us the impact of this project on our students.