School Presentation From Turkey

       School presentation is a very important activity for school projects. We thought that it would be better if a presentation would be a student work completely. And Turkish team had organized a video competition to introduce our school. The competition went on for one month. And students took photos inside and around school, prepared their texts to be read in the video and asked their friends for help. Now the competition is finished and Cüneyt Beylan, Turkish 8th grade student is the winnner of the competition. Here we publish his video introducing our school, Düzce Cumhuriyet Secondary School. Congratulations and many thanks to Cüneyt for his excellent work. Here comes our school video..

Hello from Italy

we have finished to make our musical instruments. You can see the photos of some of them on Twin space. Next Saturday we are having a Christmas party for our parents and the new kids who will come to our school next year and we'll have a Comenius corner.

We are going to show them the musical instruments we have made and we're sure they will like them.

Here you can see a video we have made this afternoon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIpjz6v7_5E

Mobility to Italy

         POW team met in Trezzano on 4th-9th of November. Hospitable Italian team had prepared a splendid welcome. The magic started in the gate of Istituto Comprensivo Franceschi. Art teacher Pietro De Seta had prepared a wall painting including partner countries flags and welcome words in their mother tongues. And more paints were ready to colorify contact persons' hand to leave an unforgettable print on the wall.

 

      The POW team (Estonia, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Slovakia and Turkey) met each other in the first exciting day. During the day we could see the departments of Istituto Comprensivo Franceschi in company with Italian students. We also had opportunity to attend some of the lessons. And during the week in Trezzano we could visit a primary school, a playschool and a children’s library.

 

       In children’s library we also could see a video about Navigli which is a system of navigable and interconnected canals around Milan.

 

        Wednesday was the day for Milan city tour. The POW team visited the Cathedral, Galleria, the Scala, Leonardo’s Last Supper. And we had well-quilifed guides (Michele, Giuseppe and two students) with us.
 

 

 

        During the time in Italian school, we also had some meetings with the whole team about some project issues like dates of visits and students’ mobilities. We shared our ideas and formed a general timetable about the 2-year-period.  

       And the last day was so inspiring with the presentation of disabled athlete Marco who took part in parolympic games. Italian teachers Francine, Vittoria, Francesca and Emanuela with her class were with us in the meeting, too.

 

 

           To be continoued in the next mobility to Slovakia..

 

It has been a very good and busy week.

We have prepared some musical instruments but haven't finished yet.

I hope we can finish them next week.

In the meanwhile we have seen the fab works of the Turkish and Estonian teams.

Very nice pics, Estonia, and a lovely video Turkey.

We like them.

Congratulations!

For the moment enjoy these two pics that show two typical Italian instruments

The first one is called: scacciapensieri and it is used in Sicily

 while this is a mandolin

Italy

The Comenius week in Italy is over.

We'll remember it forever...

We have new, fantastic friends and we are doing a great work together.

The arrival

The rainbow

At the primary school

Dinner at school

In Milan

At the nursery school

Listening to Marco Filippazzi, a paralympic athlete

Postcards from Italy

Last week, my 7th grade pupils prepared some post-card to give our European guests when they are in Italy.

Each post-cards has a picture of Milan ( a monument, something typical, the football team) and on the back, the kids wrote a short description of themselves and their e-mail address. When the European teachers and kids are in Italy, they can take one of the postcards and take it to one of their pupils.

SUPPORTING LETTER FROM SLOVAKIAN LOCAL ADMINISTRATION OFFICE

         Our Slovakian partner reported us a letter from their local administration office. In this letter they define their pleasure and expectations about our project. Below you can read the summary of this letter in the words of  Slovakian contact person and deputy headmaster Ludmila:

     "In September, we announced our participation in our project „Piece of a Whole“ to our local administration Office. We informed them about our goals and activities. We recieved the supporting letter in which they wrote how happy they are that we try to develop empathy, respect, tolerance and inclusive education among our students. They are opened for an international cooperations in the area of education.From the extensive letter I will translate only the most important facts. They wrote about these facts:

-          education

-          life in our town

-          history and nature

-          traditions (like Christmas markets, winefest...)

-          partnership with countries – among those countries are also Italy and Poland

-          environment and recycling activities in our town district

Except of activities above, the administration Office invested a significant ammont of Money for reconstruction of our schol – new windowframes for whole schol and new insulation fasade. They also take care of our garden (trees, bushes, grass field) and playground in front of our school. At the end of this letter they  emphasized their support and  entuhusiasm for this project.

Your sincerely

Ľudmila"

    

 

Zakladna Skola-Slovakia: An Inspiring Eco School Project

 

      Our Slovakian partner, Zakladna Skola, is a part of global network of Eco-schools. And they had mad many creative and exciting activities in this content last year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        Ludmila, the contact person and deputy headmaster of Slovakian school explains their Eco School Project in her words like this;

"Green School is a part of a global network of Eco-Schools and helps Slovak schools to implement environmental education linked with practical steps. They lead pupils and the whole school approach to be friendlier to the environment. i.e. help to reduce the overall impact on the school environment. Here are some of the activities: fall cleaning around the school,regular radio box, presentation,collection of plastic bottles,collection of waste paper in the classroom,collection of waste paper (the parents are involved, every year 2 times we collect about 30 tons),recycled game (collection of appliances - receive points, last year we won the camera), collection of old batteries and exchange toys, clothes ..."

       In the beginning of September 2015, when Ludmila shared their previous recycyling activities with us, their documents motivated and activated all of us. The pictures and videos she uploaded to our project page were really inspiring. By the help of those documents we shook off our torpidness and we got the work on.  Here is a video presenting the recycling activities carried out in Slovakian school:

PROJECT ACTIVITIES

In two-year-period, we will actualize 9 main activities coordinated with our partners. These are planned to develop awareness and respect towards differences among both pupils' peers and people from different nations, also. Here are our main activities:

o   “Recycling Activity”

Waste material unit will be activated in school to develop consciousness of environment. We will create some pieces, designs by using these waste materials. And at the end we will make an exhibition consisting of our creations

 

 

 

 

o   “ Chorus and rhytm group”

Chorus and rhytm group will be formed. Studens will design original musical instruments using waste materials. Students will be coached by the teacher who is in charge to play popular songs or songs composed by themselves.

o   “The World Cuisine”

Students will choose the food they like from their country and will take photos of its cooking phases. The recipe will be translated to English and shared with partners.

o   “Traditional Children Games”

In this activity which aims to revive oblivioned children games, students will ask elders to tell them about the games they played when they were kids. Students will write down the process and the rules of the games.These games will be played at school and recorded. And the games will be shared with partners after it is transleted to English. After the games of each partner are played at school, games will be voted and the favourite ones will be chosen.

o   “Adventure Of a Plant”

 Students will choose a plant seed and produce flower in a pot or in a special area in school. The growing process will be observed and recorded. These records will be shared with partners. And if possible, seed exchange will be actualized in one of the mobilities.

 

 

 

o   “Traditional Dolls”

 Students will design cloth dolls special to their regions/countries and beautify it with folkloric clothes. These dolls will be brought to host countries in the course of mobilities and will be exhibited.

o   “A Folk Tale”

 Each partner will translate a folk tale to English and prepare it as a theater play. The best performance will be recorded and shared with partners.

o  “Postcrossing”

Students will prepare handmade postcards explaining their historical places and introducing themselves. These postcards will be exchanged in one of the mobiliries. This activity may go on during two year period optionally.

 

      Additionally to our main activities, we will make some icebreaking, refreshing and warming activities in some periods. One of them is "Social media network". We have created a twinspace in etwinning.net. This platform provides not only a platform for our project stuff, but also a network for teachers and pupils to communicate with each other despite kms. Students will introduce themselves by these tools and they will communicate with the pupils from partner countries in two-year-period.

     

       Beside this, we will organize some competitions to activate and encourage our students to take longer role in the project. For example we will arrange a logo, poster, banner, photograph, picture, short film or kmowledge contest in our schools. The topic will be sometimes "Introduce your school", "Introduce yourself", "Environment", "Recycling" and any other creative idea. We will  announce the topic, conditions, duration and the rules of the competition on the wallboard or in the corner for the Comenius project in our schools.  And then we will share what will happen during the actitiy.

 

Piece of a Whole on Etwinning

       In the beginning of our project, while we were discussing with our partners to find a cyber platform to share our project outputs, videos, images, texts etc., we decided to use etwinning as our main platform. We preferred etwinning, because, twinspace is  legal educationally in our  partner countries, easy to communicate and practical to upload our several stuff in seperate parts for eaxch activity. Additionally, pupils would be able to communicate with each other in the parts of  "forum" and "pupils" in our twinspace. 

Out of this blogger page, we arranged a twinblog in twinspace, also. Our partners prefer using twinblog to share quick notifications about their activities. And we update our blogger page to draw an entire picture about our work in readers' minds. Here you can follow our twinblog, also.

 

What is POW?

 

 

Our project Piece Of A Whole is about integrating pupils with different learning levels (gifteds, pupils with attention deficit disorder, typically developing students and students with learning disabilities) in some activities to create an inclusive school climate. We intend to resolve the integration and adaptation problems of pupils with different learning levels with a common solution. We want to make activities with students who have different learning levels, in order to raise self confidence of pupils with learning disabilities. Beside this, we plan to raise empathy of both typically developing and gifted pupils towards the ones who are disadvantaged. We intend pupils with different learning levels develop awareness and respect towards differences among both their peers and people from different nations, also.

 

 

In the beggining, while we were searching a title for our project, we wanted to stress the integrating aim of our project. According to this point of view every student should feel herself/himself as a part of complement. This complement is the school, the country, Europe and the World. Thus,  we preferred "Piece of a Whole". Now in practice, while our partners are sharing their activities and works with us via several social media tools, we feel that we walk through the same path with the same aim, but with different characteristics. And walking day by day together, we  feel that we are Piece of a Great Whole indeed.