ODYSSEUS 2000

Personal Identity and social living

italiano

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DIDACTIC  ACTIVITIES (september 1999-august 2000)
(by Carla Maria Ceriachi and Mirella Argentati)

During this second year the exchanges concerning didactic activities have been of two kinds: among adults and among children. Teachers exchanged methodological didactic routes concerning how to teach the language of the host country as the second language. We also exchanged ideas concerning the welcome activities realised for all foreign pupils.
Furthermore we have presented some significant didactic units realised in our scholastic reality.

• The rights of children: juvenile work
• Covering card of Gypsy pupils
• Christmas among Roma
• A call to reading for…a better world
• Health week
• The richness of diversity through poetry and literature
• World space: North-South

• Food
• Flora & Fauna of our region: plants and animals migrations
• Our art and the art of the others
• Myth: stories suspended between reality and imagination
• Roma and Gagè: comparison between two cultures (engagement and marriage)
• Stories of life, habits and traditions (exchange of letters in English and Spanish)

We had the impression of being the main characters of a special and unique experience, in which everyone had the possibility to grow up, both children and teachers.
Modifications and corrections in the project (cancellation of the meeting at the beginning of the second year, earlier conclusion…) have caused a lot of difficulties.

Anyhow there has been a common will to find the best solution to our problems. In effect we have never lost our wish to carry on, to go on with this enthralling “trip”. On the contrary, our friendship and the esteem towards all the partners, children and adults, has grown.
Our pupils showed an increasing curiosity towards the other countries: that has always encouraged and stimulated us. The exchange of letters upon common themes was very useful: both the wish to discover and to communicate one’s own reality and the interest in receiving other different experiences have increased at the same time.

During the meeting in Jesi, a very significant moment of debate, we had the opportunity to open a dialogue upon very interesting themes: personal identity, diversity, and integration.
To reason upon common topics together and directly was extremely interesting and productive.
During this meeting a strong wish has emerged: to plan common routes that tend to a better social integration using different topics. Many suggestions came up in order to complete and to develop the experiences realised this year. After a proper reflection they will be analysed during the first meeting of the third year of the project.

Some of these suggestions tend to a deepening of certain themes that have already been faced this year. But they have showed great opportunities of development: they are Myth and Art.
Other hypothesis concern didactic units, which analyse natural environments (resources, cultivations, feeding…).

Other ideas consider the social- historical aspect (habits, traditions, history) of different cultures, deepening the comparison between Roma and Gagè.  All the partners communicated a strong exigency: to realise the training course of the third year upon the theme of social competence:  administration of personal and social conflict in order to have a better integration.
Furthermore the final observations of the teachers underlined the necessity to establish a more direct and frequent contact among all the children next year, increasing postal exchanges and introducing e-mail exchanges. In the following pages it is possible to see some examples of the activities realised during this second year.

The whole documentation of didactic materials can be consulted at the headmastership of the First School District in Jesi (the co-ordinating school): Bruna Aguzzi <ds@jesicentro.it>