Our Comenius Project
BRINGING A EUROPEAN DIMENSION TO OUR SCHOOLS FRANCE - ITALY - SCOTLAND - SPAIN Summary of Progress - Nov - June - term 5/6 Saturday, 15 June 2013 Teachers from France, Italy and Scotland visit Scotland for our final meeting of the project. Our final meeting was at Ednam, Scotland from 3-8 June 2013, where we reviewed our progress and success of the project and briefly discussed the final events of the project, including the final report. Cultural visits had been organised for the locality.
Meetings in Spain and France Partners went to Benicarlo in Spain on 12-16 November 2012 and to Vandeins in France on 3-8 February 2013. In Spain the two Mars were waiting to welcome us at the train station. They took us to the hotel and then for something to eat. On our first day we had a tour of the school and met all the pupils and staff from nursery to older pupils. We saw the nursery where they are taught English singing songs and doing actions and moving around the room. We also saw a PE lesson taught entirely in English. An activity that we all were involved in was to teach a game to the pupils. Each country brought a game and showed pupil groups how to play.
We were welcomed by the Mayor and an education person, as well as all the staff. One of the things we noticed is how the staff have improved in their spoken English. There were many things for us to do over the week, and we had a great time and felt very welcome. In France we did not see our colleagues from Italy, which was very disappointing. We all met up on the first evening for a meal and a catch up with all our colleagues. The activity each country shared with pupils, was to inform them about famous people and places of our different countries. The activities went well and pupils and staff found out a lot about inventors,
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Book of 40 Recipes
included in our book.
As part of our work on Healthy food and diet, that followed the sport activities work, we ended this work with a recipe book. Each country had to select ten local recipes that code be
There is a pdf version for download and will be available on our blog. Hard copies of the book have been ordered, and depending on the quality of the print, we may be able to order more copies if required.
Three starters, four main courses and three desserts from each of or countries will feature in our book.
Thanks to everyone for the recipes, they all look very delicious, and we should have a great time trying them out!
Meetings in Spain and France (con)
painters, sports people, as well as places in our countries. We visited a college for agriculture, which had grounds for growing crops and small allotment type activities: a working farm for students: laboratories for experiments relating to crops and pest control. We also visited a school for pupils that needed particular support as well as a regular college.
this visit in the evening we had a meal at a catering college. It had a restaurant and we had a large round table for our group, (We had a similar experience in Spain). The Director of the place was with us, giving us a very detailed break down of what goes on in his college. The meals at these places were great. The Director took us to his room after the meal to show us the carvings on the walls. The place was very old.
Mid week we had a guided tour of Pérouges, village médiéval this old village had a long and interesting history, being an important town in the middle ages, but almost becoming extinct during the 18th century. Today people live there and others have holiday homes. After
On another day we visited Les Compagnons du devoir, château de Pont de Veyle. It was a place that developed the skills of apprentices and trained them to such a level over a long period of time, that they become Page 2
skilled craftsmen in various types of work, eg stone, metal, wood. We had a return visit to Collège Yvon Morandat , which was the college that we visited a year ago. It was great seeing the staff and pupils again, and talking to them in class time. Many thanks to all the staff and pupils who worked hard to make our visits a great success.
Winter Greetings The winter Greetings contacts went well again this year. Pupils sang a selection of winter songs to each other in all our countries and again it was a great success. We mostly had good skype connections, and although a couple could have been better, it did not spoil our enjoyment of the songs. The pupils seemed very happy with the exchange. Schools also sent cards to each other made by pupils.
Email Contact During the first part of our project we exchanged emails between pupils and schools. This continued for a second round with schools writing to pupils, in two of our partner schools. It was interesting for pupils to share some information about themselves and their school.
Healthy Food Topic Schools concluded our healthy food and lifestyle activities with a workshop or events that reinforced our health and fitness theme during the project. This then led us to find local traditional recipes from our countries that would sustain interest in looking at healthy food options.
France/Scotland Connection France and Scotland (Vandeins and Ednam Primaries) have continued to develop their joint language activities. Since the project began we have increased our video conference links to connect every week. Pupils talk to each other to ask questions about the weather, date and numbers of pupils in class. We also put the pupils into working pairs, where two pupils were involved in an activity during an individual connection. The confidence of pupils in both schools in speaking the other’s language has grown immensely. This can be seen when they are asking questions of each other and they can respond naturally. We will build on this good work after the project has finished.
Recipe Book The Comenius recipe book will be available for anyone to order a hard copy online directly. It will also be available in A5 size. A link and more details will be available on the partners blog and board soon.
Poems/Stories About the Project To bring our project to a close, it was hoped that pupils would be able to write poems or stories about the joint activities they have enjoyed over the two years of the partnership. As time is short it is suggested that it would be good if pupils could at least write a paragraph about activities they have enjoyed and what they liked most about our joint work. This writing could be supported by some drawings or photos of the activities written about. Page 3
Final Project Visit to Scotland Our project is nearly finished Nine teachers from our partner schools came to Ednam for the last time. We had four teachers from the last meeting in Scotland and five new ones - two from Italy and three from Spain. We had a meal with the staff of our school on the first evening, and during the day visited Floors Castle in Kelso. During the week we visited Edinburgh, where we had a tour of the city, followed by a meal and a ‘ghost’ tour of an underground part of Edinburgh. We also visited the Forth Bridges and a museum that dates back to the 17th century when body snatchers would steal dead bodies for surgical experiments. Some of the body parts have been preserved in the museum and it was fascinating to see how surgeons gained knowledge that helps us today. We also visited Grey Friars Bobby. We also visited Livingston new town on the way to Glasgow, where we saw the Burrell Collection - a museum dedicated to the vast private collection of varied antiques acquired by Sir William Burrell. Teachers were able to visit classes and see approaches to teaching that were a bit different to their schools. For example the Italian teachers were particularly impressed with the independence of the nursery pupils who cleaned mats and brushed their teeth after a meal. We spent a little time, maybe not enough, looking at the project so far and at the few things we have left to complete. Overall we feel that the project has been very successful, and we have achieved all of our planned activities and more. We now have to complete the final report for our individual schools, with only one box (E1) to to complete together. We should put our ideas for this box on the board (a section will be made for this) and when we have completed our final draft of our report, we could share that on the board to enable us to add ideas to our report that we may have missed.
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