From the 5th to the 12th of May, twins students and their professors had one week together, for their Maths&languages year.
First, They spent 5 days in Cluj-Napoca, in order to work on their Mathematics research, and the most important for french students, live like Romanians! This exchange was mainly cultural, all french students discovered the habits of their hostess, very welcoming. Despite the weather, they even organized a mathematic treasure hunt across the city. Students could advance in their researches, and work on there common presentation for the congress.
Everyone went to the congress in Iaşi. How? Across the Romanians Carpates of courses! The most amazing thing for everyone. They also visited a traditional life Romanian museum during the trip. The congress, around 400 persons was very fast, everyone enjoyed the atmosphere, discussed with all students around Europe.
Next step? Try to write a common article and summit it to the editorial committee of the Association!
Lycée Zmichowska came to visit his twin Lycée Louis Vicat in Souillac, from 30th mars to 7th of april for the LTTA meeting, for the second year of the project.
9 students, their mathematic professor and researcher from Warsaw came during one week, in the South-West of France. Their Program ? Mathematics of course, with a 3 hours seminar each day preparing the congress. It was a very good experience in terms off english communication, and mathematics research. The week were about cultural visits such as Lascaux IV, but the most important: living like a South-West french!
The week finished by the most important thing for M&L students: the congress! Two subjects were presented by the two groups of the twin in english, in front of the 500 participants. Very intimidating, but the students, well prepared succeed and impressed the audience.
Eight students from Colegiul National Emil Racovita Cluj-Napoca (CNER), accompanied by their teachers (Ariana Vacaretu and Monica Cotul) and their researcher (Lorand Parajdi) were part of the 7-day learning activity organized by Lycée d’Altitude de Briançon (France).
During the week, the students immersed in French Language, French culture, French lessons and universal mathematics.
“On Tuesday, I’ve been in three science lessons. I enjoyed a lot as I did, together with French peers, chemistry experiments. At home, we have few opportunities to do science experiments as the teaching approach is more theoretical”. (Flavia)
“After school, we had a lot of fun with our French hosts. In one evening, we went sleighing – as it was real winter in the French Alps.” (Andrei)
“During the guided tour, we found out a lot of information about Cité Vauban Briançon – a very well preserved medieval city.” (Alexandra)
“After studying the shape of the bells from the Briançon’s Collégiale (church) for almost one school year I was really happy to see them in reality.” (Vlad)
During the first four days of the exchange, Romanian and French students spent some time to finalize both the plenary, and the interactive presentation of their research results. In the last three days, the Romanian students and their French peers participated in the MATh.en.JEANS Lyon Congress. The Congress was a great opportunity for the students to develop interactive communication (about mathematics/ the research work) skills, oral scientific communication (about mathematics/ the research work) skills, and language skills (French and English). During the Congress, the students enjoyed sharing their research work and results and learned a lot of math.
“The best part of the Lyon Congress was Pierre Dehornoy’s presentation Magic Tricks and Graph Theory. It was an inspiring presentation – I’ve learned a lot from both the content of the presentation, and its delivery.” (Dragos)
Both the preparation of the presentations, and the presentations themselves gave opportunity to each student to raise awareness of the achieved results (by himself, by his group or the twin group) and to reorganise the new knowledge related to both the content and the process of the research.
“In the Forum, we discussed with a researcher who wanted to learn about our research results. He asked a question which gave us an excellent idea about a geometrical representation we didn’t think about.” (Ioana and Maria)
All in all, the experience was successful and very enjoyable and we all have come home with new things that we have learned or experienced and will stay with us for a long time.
“It was a very beautiful experience. I’m very happy that I had had that experience and I hope that I will have that opportunity again.” (Amos)
A cancelled flight didn’t prevented them to meet their twinned groupe in Padova!
Students from Lycée Vaclav Havel (Bègles), accompanied by their teachers (Anne-Pascale Lemay, Nadine Castagnos and Cathy Racadot) and and their researcher (Adrien Boussicault) spent 6 days in Padova with their Italian research partners (from Liceo Curiel). The programme, nicely set-up by Mauro Dianin and Luca Fortin (teachers at Liceo Curiel), included M&L joint-research activity, tourism, discovery of Italian lessons, fun and of course a 3-day participation to the Padova MATh.en.JEANS international congress.
You will find here some pictures. More information about this trip will come soon!
8 students and 2 teachers from Lycée Louis Vicat (Souillac) had the privilege to be warmly welcomed one week by their twins of the Lycée Zmichowska (Warsaw) from the 10th to the 16th of February 2018. This was the first official travel totally financed by the M&L Erasmus + project as LTTA meeting (Learning Teaching Training Activities).
After 5 months of intense virtual collaboration on their shared research topics, the pupils from these schools had finally the opportunity to meet physically. And what a meeting! They spent nearly 100% of their time together in tourism activities, M&L research meetings, meals, evening in the host families… They got to know each other very fast.
The core activity of the project, mathematics research, has given satisfactory results in terms of communication, exchanges of skills and methods and results formalisation by the students. All the twinned groups worked more than 6 hours in M&L seminars very seriously and went further on their shared conclusions. Some of them even finalised their presentations dedicated to the congress and started to write their common publications. A very nice way for them to realise how much learning foreign languages is crucial for their lives and professional careers to come!
No doubt that we have seen the birth of a group as it was really difficult to know which student was from Souillac or Warsaw by the end of the week. Apart from the accents of course… The beginning of a rich 3-years adventure!
The LTTA (Learning Teaching Training Activities) meeting between the Briançon and Cluj-Napoca teams is now taking place in the Lycée d’Altitude of Briançon (France). The programme includes M&L research seminars, immersion in French lessons and tourism before a joint travel to the Lyon MATh.en.JEANS Congress (22nd to 24th of March).
According to the latest information available, everything is running smoothly!
Romanian and French students, visiting the Collégiale of Briançon with their teachers.
« The young and French students we are, got the chance to participate to an exchange program from the first to 8 December along with an incredible and hidden country named Romania.
First, let us define what it is all about. Our high school the « lycée François ARAGO » in Perpignan, South of France, is involved into the project « MATh.en.JEANS » thanks to Miss Diumenge, a maths teacher. Thus, she could create the workshop « Graine de chercheurs* » which is based on working on Maths in another way. This year is quite special because we must make all the research in English and a new teacher joined us, Miss Queru.
Miss Queru supporting the students.
Therefore, the journey started when the plane landed in Bucharest. It was the evening, the night even, and we had to find the hostel, feet in cold pools. The next day, a Bucharest visit was planned, and we met the Romanian teachers and some correspondents. Discovering the capital allowed us to share the first moments of friendship, both within the French group (everyone didn’t know the whole group yet) and the Romanian one. For lunch, we ate our first « Sarmales », the famous traditional meal from Romania. Those little mincemeat balls surrounded with cabbage were… Yummy! At the end of the afternoon, the bus took us to Buzau, a little town in Eastern Romania. There, everybody got make acquaintance with their respective correspondents. We spent the first evening with our « loan » family. Sunday, last day before we started working, we shared some ice-skating adventure! That was very funny because we weren’t used to ice-skating compared to Romanian students. Some of us were taught their first lesson!
The ice-skating experience!
We spent the rest of the week investigating our Maths topics and discovering a new culture. Despite of the fact the education system is very different; we succeeded in working together bounded by the love of math.
Students involved into collaborative work on their shared research topics.
We could participate to an amazing conference by the famous Romanian teacher, Bogdan Enescu. We could present our subject’s advancement at the end of the week, in English! (At least we tried). The 6 December was a great day. Indeed, Romania don’t celebrate Christmas as much as other countries but “Nicolas day”. Certain of us got the surprise to receive some presents in their shoes, another clue which show the families’ kindness. Romanian students reserved us a last surprise with a show, and especially the resume of “Je vole” of Michel Sardou by a young Romanian girl I thought very affecting. The last evening, we shared a last moment together during a party, last smiles, last laughter before to come back in France.
Arago students presenting their work.. in English!
If we want to resume this journey by a quote, « Do not listen to what they say. Go see » is the best one. All of the pupils and teachers who lived this unforgettable journey are longing to go back. People we met will stay in our memories and I hope the relationships tied will go on for a long time. »
