Between 3rd and 8th May 2023, the second learning teaching training mobility took place in Nocera Umbra, Italy. Groups formed by 2 teachers and 5 students from the two partner countries (Serbia and Romania) and 2 teachers and 8 students from the Italy delegation attended the meeting and participated in the activities.
The aim of this meeting was for the students of Romania and Serbia to learn about the cultural heritage of Italy: the greatest poet of Italian literature Dante Alighieri and the Renaissance art of Florence and Perugia.
Moreover, this was a great opportunity for students to get to know each other, practice their English, and develop their digital and communication skills. At the same time, teachers had the opportunity to share ideas, spend more time together to discuss project ideas for the future, possible problems, dissemination for all the schools involved.
The students stayed with their Italian peers’ families and, every day, were engaged in English language activities related to the Italian cultural heritage.
3rd May 2023
The first day of the activities saw the students engaged in two ice-breaking activities. The card game of Dixit offered them the inspiration to talk about themselves, and in the game “playing with history” students had to reconstruct six historical events related to the three countries using incomplete historical facts. The morning went on with a CLIL (content and learning integrated learning) lesson on the highest Italian poet Dante Alighieri, author of the masterpiece The Divine Comedy, and, more specifically, on the fifth Canto of Inferno. In the afternoon they got busy with a treasure hunt looking for rhymed hints hidden around the historical centre of the city.
4th and 5th May 2023
The CLIL class provided the basis and inspiration for a digital storytelling that the students, divided into two groups, developed in the following two days. Guided by an external expert, a former English native teacher turned film-maker, the students learnt to write a storyboard, use the camera, and film. They created one short film each on the themes of friendship and betrayal. The video shootings took place in the historical centre of Nocera Umbra, thus giving the kids the opportunity to explore the city and observe it from a different point of view: behind a camera! The final product was presented on the last day of the mobility.
5th May 2023
The students also had numerous opportunities for interaction during their time in families and free time with their peers. The web radio interviews, the virtual reality lab and the Italian language classes were also designed to make them interact both formally and informally. However, the event that brought people together was the Italian cooking class and the resultant dinner. The Serbian, Romanian and Italian students, led by two experienced chefs, learnt how to make homemade tagliatelle, from rolling out the dough to boiling the pasta. Italian cuisine plays an important role in our national cultural heritage, and cooking together was a moment of coming together, which not only united different cultures but also brought the school closer to the community in the spirit of the “learning city” model. The dinner was a collective success and everyone had great fun.
6th and 8th May 2023
During their stay, the young guests and our students had the opportunity to immerse themselves in the art of Italian Renaissance, through a visit to the city of Florence and its treasures — the Accademia Gallery, Pitti Palace and the Gardens of Boboli — and a trip to Perugia to visit the Perugino (temporary) exhibition at the National Gallery of Umbria.
The guest students were given the assignment of recording their visits through photos and films and of interviewing their host families during their free day on 7th May. They were then asked to put all this information together on a Canva report. At the end of the week, each student was provided with a certificate of attendance and a feedback form to evaluate his/her intercultural experience.
It was a fantastic week, in which the students had time to practice real-life English, getting to know each other’s culture and eventually to bond.
Silvia Segatori
Istituto Omnicomprensivo D. Alighieri, Italy
The videos below were created within the LTT activity on the topic Betrayal, based on Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Videos were made by students of all three partners schools.
