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Passeurs de Loire - Passeurs d'Europe
Start date: Jul 1, 2014, End date: Jun 30, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The Tigy “La Sologne” junior school is a countryside, average size school of 450 pupils, located at about 30 km from Orléans. Most of our pupils come from a rather privileged social background. However, for a few years we have noticed a growing discrepancy between the most privileged of our pupils who have a cultural and linguistic outlook as well as good knowledge, and some pupils who remain isolated and have little or no access to cultural places like Orléans or Paris. Following a first contact seminar in Liège which was entitled “European partners against school dropping” we have decided to organize an exchange project on e-Twinning. It happened to be very positive for our pupils, especially the most in need ones to whom the project was dedicated. These pupils were very motivated to write to young Europeans of the same age to get to know more about their everyday school life and home life and about their tastes and customs. We have noticed that their motivation had a positive impact on their writing skills: because they were in a communication process, most of these pupils, who were known to have difficulties, finally accepted more readily to write short texts and to double-check their texts. This improvement has already had positive consequences in class where writing tasks do not appear to them as unattainable as they used to. Besides, several teachers have been involved in the project for example in French, history, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, English, including the help of the librarian for the research part. In order to get along with our School Project, we would like our school to enter a European development process by multiplying exchanges projects, especially linguistic ones, as well as by improving our pupils’ knowledge of their own region. We have thus started the “heritage and exchange” project which relies on a partnership between European and local structures. The project is due to take place on a 2-schoolyear period of time, with a class of 8th year and a class of 9th year (pupils aged between 12 and 14) in which we will identify the pupils who may drop school. Weekly lessons will be dedicated to the project. For the parts of the project which will take place during the usual lessons, all the classes of a same year will participate to the activities. For example, in French: writing of a text about one of the themes of the project, in biology: the action of water on the landscape and the flora and the fauna of the River Loire, in history: the variety of local architecture, and the Loire Valley as a place of tourism, in physics: the impact of human activities on the environment and how to save the resources of the planet, in English: translation of articles for our partners. A pilot committee of referent members of each partner country will see to the organization of the project and will organize, create, analyse, check and adapt the activities during frequent and formal meetings with the teachers, and according to a timetable that the partners will have previously agreed upon. In order to carry through our project, we are asking for training courses which will help us improve our professional practice (creativity, innovation, interdisciplinarity,…) as well as open up new horizons to our pupils, especially European ones. We do hope the benefit will be great for our pupils, for our teaching practice and for the image of our school. We will do our best to involve more colleagues in more numerous exchanges projects. To finish, we would like our school to be part of a European educational policy and thus help build an example of multilinguistic and multicultural society. The boatmen on River Loire used to ensure the economic and social development by transporting necessary goods (such as building materials, coal, wood..) Today, we have to take over their task and become in a way "boatmen for Europe" , conveying our ideas, hopes and dreams.
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