Our exchange project associates Lyautey secondary school in Contrexéville (France) as coordinator and Petra Preradović secondary school in Zadar (Croatia) as partner. Our two schools have established contacts since October 2016, carried out some common activities, and programmed the arrival of Croatian students in Contrexéville in April 2018. In September 2018, we agreed to be part of an Erasmus + program in order to benefit from a recognized framework at the European level. The aim of our project is to arouse the students' interest for another European country, based upon the common points and differences of our living environment : Zadar, an urban and maritime city, and Contrexéville, a rural city close to mountains. By involving a large number of participants (including students who have special needs), we also wish to use digital tools and methods and of course develop interdisciplinarity. Over the two-year partnership, the students who are involved in the project are part of the 4th and 3th grades (France), but all the students from both schools are also involved, more occasionally. 20 students in each school will take part in the mobilities/exchange. Our various activities will be mainly carried out in French because the Croatian school wishes to develop the teaching of this language. However, English will also be used in some activities to develop the use of a foreign language in both schools. To reach our goals, many subjects are associated: literature, English, science, history, geography, Citizenship and arts. Over the two years, the students will be working on common topics, then their work will be posted on a blog (articles) and shown during the meetings, and slideshows will be commented by videoconference, using the Twinspace platform. In geography for example, French students will write an article on tourism in the Hautes-Vosges and Croatian students will write an article on tourism in the national parks of Kornati and Plitvice: thus, the articles will be used by the collaborating schools as a corpus of documents, in order to work on the topic in class. During the meetings in May 2019 in Contrexéville and Zadar in September 2019, the activities will be linked to the work done before and after: a visit to the Croatian national parks and the Hautes-Vosges mountains, a presentation of the exhibitions on the traces of Romanity, the discovery of a common place of citizenship, the European Parliament in Strasbourg ... In order to carry out our project, we set a timetable to help us follow up the planned activities regularly. The two steering committees will thus make sure the partnership is going well, thanks to a division of the tasks between their different members. In each school subject, the teachers will be in contact by emails to prepare the activities. With our activities, we aim to develop the use of digital tools for all our students. We especially hope that this project will develop their European identity and that they will have the opportunity to study or work in a foreign country one day. After the Erasmus + project, both schools aim to make the exchange permanent. For example, we would like to develop other educational activities that will not have been discussed during the partnership. Furthermore, we would like to continue this kind of meetings in order to establish a long-term contact between both schools.
Our exchange project associated Lyautey secondary school in Contrexéville (France) as coordinator and Petra Preradović secondary school in Zadar (Croatia) as partner. Our two schools have established contacts since October 2016, carried out some common activities, and programmed the arrival of Croatian students in Contrexéville in April 2018. In September 2018, we agreed to be part of an Erasmus + program in order to benefit from a recognized framework at the European level. The aim of our project was to arouse the students' interest for another European country, based upon the common points and differences of our living environment : Zadar, an urban and maritime city, and Contrexéville, a rural city close to mountains. By involving a large number of participants (including students who have special needs), we also wished to use digital tools and methods and of course develop interdisciplinarity. Over the two-year partnership, the students who were involved in the project were part of the 4th and 3rd grades (France), but more occasionnaly, we endeavoured to involve the students of all grades from both schools. 23 students in Contrexéville and 20 students in Zadar took part in the mobilities/exchange. Our various activities were partly carried out in French because the Croatian school wished to develop the teaching of this language. However, English quickly became the main language used for communication because it was more understood by all the students. To reach our goals, many subjects were associated: literature, English, science, history, geography, Citizenship, musical education and arts. Over the two years, the students worked on common topics, then their work was posted on the Twinspace platform. In history for example, the Croatian students worked on the impact of the Revolution and the Empire in Dalmatia, and the French students worked on the most important revolutionary events (the Bastille Day for example) : thus, the work was used by the collaborating schools as a corpus of documents, in order to work on the topic in class. During the meetings in May 2019 in Contrexéville and in September 2019 in Zadar, the activities were linked to the work done before and after: a visit to the Croatian national parks and the Hautes-Vosges mountains, a presentation of the exhibitions on the traces of Romanity, the discovery of a common place of citizenship, the European Parliament in Strasbourg and so on. Beyond the cultural enrichment, we endeavoured to develop the use of digital tools for all our students, particularly with the creation of slideshows and videos. We especially hope that this project developped their European identity and that they will have more opportunities to study or work in a foreign country one day. After the Erasmus + project, both schools aim to make the exchange permanent. An application for a pairing is in progress. For example, we would like to develop other educational activities that were not discussed during the partnership. Furthermore, we would like to continue this kind of meetings in order to establish a long-term contact between both schools.