Our school, the comprehensive Institute “Virgilio” , is located in Santa Cecilia, the coastal area of the municipality of Eboli, in the province of Salerno, Italy. There are 629 students, aged 3 to 14 years old and 78 teachers. The school population is very heterogeneous, in fact the students come from many different districts in the area and we have integrated in our classes students who were born in other countries, such as Romania, Morocco, India or refugees. Our school welcomes and creates a positive atmosphere for students, families and all those who work within the school. We partecipate to the national project " SPORT DI CLASSE" (Classroom Sport) organised by MIUR, and the national sports association "CONI" , and to the national project "RACCHETTE DI CLASSE" (Classroom Rackets) . For this reason we have thought to prepare a project on sport to implement the positive results we have had by the partecipation to these two national projects. We strongly believe in the role of sport as an aggregation tool and means of inclusion for the disadvantaged children and with this project we want to achieve manifold objectives: To encourage students and their families to participate in regular physical activity in order to improve their physical, mental and social well being. To develop a wide variety of sports in the area, to ensure that leisure and sports facilities of the school are accessible to all. To create opportunites for socialization between the different layers of society. To focus the attention on the positive values of sport: Loyalty, Temperance, Resilience, Strenght of character, Acceptance of weaknesses, of defeat, Generosity, and so on. Furthermore , our school adheres to the community program “Fruits and Vegetables in schools” created by ”Create Food and Nutrition Research Center “ ,which includes the “Olympics of the Fruit”. And we have included in the project the theme of healthy eating habits connected with the sport activity. Each nation will partecipate with a maximum of 6 students aged between 11/14 so that in the sport activities there will be a good balance. Sport will be the starting point of a series of activities, focusing on all the educational aspects that derive from this discipline: the respect of the rules, the overcoming of prejudices, stereotypes, to fight bullying, to learn to establish objectives and to act in order to realize them. These and many other ideas will be developed during the project through activities to do in the classroom and to share on the etwinning platform. Each country has decided which sport tournament to organise and which theme, connected to sport, to deal. So We have: Olympic Games in Greece with Theme "Olympic Games Values and History Handball tournament in Romania, with Theme :"The values connected to sport practice" Datchball tournament in Spain , with Theme: "Sport :Past and Present. What differences?" Badminton and Football in Bulgaria, with Theme : " Best Sportsmanship Examples" Street Basketball in Portugal with Theme: " Health and Sport" Mini Tennis Cup in Italy with Theme: " Healthy Eating Habits" Through the various mobilities , the students will enter into contact with a great variety of students from so many different parts of Europe. Talking with them, playing their games the students will enrich themselves, will become more open-minded, will be more tolerant and will learn that all the cultures are respectable and have the right to exist , that the diversity is a treasure to preserve and foster, not to combat and annihilate. They will also sthrenghten or improve the linguistic skills in English. Finally , but not less important, the sport activities are perfect also to avoid early school leaving, in fact students who experience a positive perception of oneself as a learner, even in sport, increase the probability of educational success. This project will help the partecipating schools to create a net of relationships in order to establish productive collaborations among the students and the teachers, to go on with their collaboration on the etwinning platform with new and captivating projects, to spread the benefits of what they have learnt to other schools on the territory and to the social communt less important, the sport activities are perfect also to avoid early school leaving, in fact students who experience a positive perception of oneself as a learner, even in sport, increase the probability of educational success. This project will help the partecipating schools to create a net of relationships in order to establish productive collaborations among the students and the teachers, to go on with their collaboration on the territory around the school. It wil be an example to show that even a village school like ours, can achieve big ideas if supported by the work of everybody.
The principal purpose of Our project “ Sport to educate, to integrate, to become citizens of the world” has been to use sport as the main vehicle of communication integration and inclusion among students, but above all it has been an indirect way to make them acquire the 8 key competences of European citizenship. Our school “ Istituto Compernsivo Virgilio” di Eboli(SA) is situated in a suburban area characterised by heterogeneous population, with people coming from different nations, above all Morocco, Algeria, Romania India, therefore it easy to understand why integration, inclusion,the values connected to sport practice and the learning of the European competences of citizenships have been chosen as the main objectives of our project and whose expected longer-term benefits are extremely important, not only for our school and our students but for the whole surrounding community. SPORT has got a universal language, understandable by everybody, so it overcomes barriers of every kind. It favors a climate of collaboration and socialisation in which the students, above all those disadvantaged, economically, culturally or socially, have the opportunity to express themselves, to become protagonists or to interact with the others in a simple way, and acquire a sense of belonging to the social and scholastic community. Thanks to this project our school wants to spread among the young learners such values, as loyalty, altruism, respect for the rules,perseverance, commitment, sacrifice, spirit of collaboration and so on, which are the base for a good “education” and adulthood and for future good citizens. Some of the immediate results of this project, we have seen that many pupils have become more motivated and have experienced school as an environment that welcomes and creates new opportunities, strengthening interpersonal relationships, creating that feeling of belonging that will help to contrast the problem of early school leaving. The activities carried out during the project have been based on the practice of six different sports: Olympic Games, Handball, Badminton, Datchball, Basketball, Tennis. Competitions have been organised, one for each mobility, during which the students fielded the skills acquired, in an atmosphere of play and healthy competition. At the end of each competition the participating teams were awarded with medals, on the notes of their National Anthem. Each mobility has been preceded by many activities that have been held in each school of the partnership. The pupils have prepared PowerPoint presentations on sports-related issues: health, physical and mental well-being, proper nutrition, values related to sport, differences between sport in the past and in the present, main sports protagonists athletes that inspire adolescents, discussing on line or in presence about these issues with their European friends illustrating their works. Other activities have been held in the gyms where the students first had to learn the rules of the different sports and then put them into practice in view of the competitions. The partner schools have not always physically participated in the mobilities, for the well known reasons related to the pandemic, in fact as soon as the first mobility was carried on in Greece, the lockdown all over Europe made it impossible to go on with the other mobilities for various months.Anyway through the online connection, the pupils have carried out activities of presentation of themselves and their passions, presentation in English of the works in Powerpoint, participation in online quizzes on the topic of sport. For the sports competitions that were not physically held, individual schools made sports simulation videos (Handball) which were viewed during online mobility. Each nation has participated with a maximum of 6 students aged between 11/14 so that in the sport activities there has been a good balance. As explained before, sport has been the starting point of a series of other activities, (creating posters with some prejudices linked to sport, listing the fair play rules, designing the pictures of bullying scenes to avoid etc.) focused on all the educational aspects that derive from this discipline: the respect of the rules, the overcoming of prejudices or stereotypes, the fight against bullying, the ability to establish objectives and to act in order to realise them, just to quote some. These and many other ideas have been developed during the project through activities done in the classrooms and shared with the partners on the etwinning platform. For as regards the organisation each country has decided which sport tournament to organise and which theme, connected to sport, to deal with. So this has been the choice of each nation: Greece: Olympic Games with theme "Olympic Games Values and History; Romania: Handball tournament with theme "The values connected to sport practice" ;Spain: Datchball tournament with theme "Sport :Past and Present. What differences?" ; Bulgaria: Badminton and Football with theme " Best Sportsmanship Examples"; Portugal: Street Basketball with theme " Health and Sport"; Italy : Mini Tennis Cup with theme " Healthy Eating Habits" .Other intermediate activities were organised during the project, such as participation in the days dedicated to Erasmus (Erasmus days 2020-2021). For the occasion, the pupils of the partner schools created products such as portfolios, bookmarks, flashmob videos, posters, Erasmus + corners, to promote the project both inside and outside each school. Activities were also organised for the Christmas and Easter holidays; the pupils exchanged greeting cards in paper format or connected from school on virtual platforms. Videos have been made on local traditions and on sweets and dishes typical of each nationality. The results achieved by the project were positive for the entire school communities of the partner schools, as sport first of all favoured the integration of pupils of various nationalities, helped inclusion of the weaker ones, improved the communication in different languages, eliminated the social and cultural barriers etc.. Thanks to the sports activities, the students have interacted easily, overcoming the language barrier. Following the competitions, the comparison and integration between the students has become easier and the pupils have begun to interact in English and in local languages. Internationalisation was a strong point of the project as parents and pupils understood the importance of travelling as an opportunity for enrichment and cultural exchange. The teachers were able to share good practices at European level, such as digitization, use of IT tools, sharing of increasingly innovative teaching methodologies. The school community, especially the parents component, has actively participated in the project and has become more open and ready to participate in future projects. For the teaching staff, Erasmus + was the stimulus to improve their English and some of them have studied to obtain certification. Many teachers have signed up to the Etwinning platform to start collaboration with other european teachers and become familiar with Twinspace.This project has widened our horizons letting us make friends with most of the teacher partners with whom we hope to collaborate in future projects which we intend to start thanks to the Erasmus accreditation tha we have received..