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.

Synchronous Working

Along with 2013-2014 Academic year, our two-year-journey has started in 7 countries; Estonia, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Slovakia and Turkey. We are appyling POW (Piece of a Whole) activities coordinated with seven POW schools:

• Kose Gumnaasium-Kose-Estonia
• Ist. Comp. R. Franceschi-Milan-Italy
• Ecole elemetaire de la Benauge-Bordeaux-France
• Zespół Szkół w Bilczy-Morawica-Poland
• Zakladna skola-Bratislava-Slovakia
• CEIP UTIACA-Gran Canaria-Spain
• Cumhuriyet Ortaokulu-Düzce-Turkey

Let's learn more about these schools. Below you can read brief descriptions about our partner schools with their teachers' own words:

1. Kristel, from Estonia: " Kose Gümnaasium (secondary school) is a public school where students can learn from age 7-19. It serves a local community and therefore it has students with different learning abilities..  It has 12 grades and  an evening school. Many of the teachers attended the same school and they are familiar with local problems, thus they create a friendly and traditional school climate. There are 574 students and 52 teachers. It has good sport facilities - basketball, athletics  etc. The first sports hall was opened in1984. In 2007 a renovated modern stadium was opened and Kose Gümnaasium joined e-Kool system. The aim of the school is support the mental, phsyical, social and emotional  development. The school offers many extracurricular activities like choirs, folk dance etc. Because of the facilities, local position ,challenging teachers and a range of students with different abilities, Kose Gümnaasium will be able to create different materials, techniques, methods to integrate different learning levels."

2. Dominique, from France:  "Ecole elemetaire de la Benauge is situated in the city of Bordeaux in a rather disadvantaged area, but quiet and secure. This area is well connected with the center of the city (15 minutes by tram). A lot of pupils have important school difficulties but a good behaviour. 85 % of  children’s’ families are native from other countries (Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria...), but especially from North Africa and Africa. So, children are very open-minded to other cultures. We work with different local partners like, after school care institutions, pre-elementary schools, a botanical garden (scientific projects), the Conservatoire (music school), sports associations and parents association."

3. Anna, from Italy, "The ICA Franceschi is a public school and  is  located in Trezzano sul Naviglio, in the suburbs of Milan. İt consists of 3 kindegartens, three primary schools and 1 middle school located in 7 different buildings. The scuola media has got 16 classes. İn the school there are different workshops ( music, art, technology) and during physical education lessons pupils can practise different sports. There are also extra curricular activities as the preparation to Ket examinations or other sport activities. In the scuola media most of the pupils stay at school only in the mornings (8-14) and only three classes stay at school also twice a week in the afternoon. In the primary schools pupils stay at school from 8.30 to 16.30.The school also has evening courses for grown ups.İn our classes there are students with different abilities and students with special needs. These students are ususally helped by a support teacher for a few hours a week. The percentage of foreign pupils ( with some Italian or no Italian at all) is 8%."

4. Jagoda, from Poland: " Zespół Szkół is a Primary and Secondary School which has 590 pupils together, aged 6-15. Some of the teachers are common and they teach both primary and secondary parts of the school. School in Bilcza is an institution, acting on the principle that the school must be a friendly place for the student. Attending to our school young people feel safe on the field, and the relationship student – teacher is based on mutual respect and understanding. School pupils patterns provide positive relationships and respect for human rights. It teaches young people manners, respect for people (especially the elderly) and tolerance for differences of others, especially the disabled. Shapes the morale of students, pointing them in the order of the world around us. In doing so, our school pays attention to the education the student respect for the environment, other people's property and public property. Our school is an attractive place for students, allows him to gain comprehensive knowledge and develop interests.The school vision is to provide equal opportunities for all."

5. Elizabeth, from Slovakia: "Zakladna skola provides students with the basic and secondary education. Attend school for pupils aged from 6 to 15 years. Currently, here are 430 pupils and 40 teachers. Lessons focus of our school are foreign languages, computer science, sports, environmental and cultural education. Teachers use in the teaching process activating pädagigische methods together with the latest technology (computers, Internet, ActivBoard). The school is located on the outskirts of the Slovak capital Bratislava.The social spectrum of the pupilparents is diverse, with the moderate majority of workers professions. In recent years, one realizes the negative of the big cities - the drug threat, vandalism and aggression. The number of pupils with special educational needs is growing. This school year, there are nearly 60 students (more than 13% of all students of the school) who need the supervision of a Spezialpädogogen.Our school visit the children of immigrants - think these are the children of Vietnamese origin and refugee children from the former Soviet Union."

6. Miguel, from Spain: " CEIP UTIACA is in Utiaca, a neighborhood of a rural village called San Mateo, Gran Canaria. İt's 45 minutes from Las Palmas, the capital city of Gran Canaria. Our pupils are very spread out and isolated from the main services. Roads and communications are bad so our children have some disadvantages comparing to the rest of population from our island."

 7. Hilal, from Turkey: "Cumhuriyet Secondary School shares its building with Cumhuriyet Primary School and they both have 950 pupils together, between the ages of 6-14. The teachers are common and they teach both primary and secondary parts of the school. The school vision is to provide equality of opportunity for everyone. We are trying to involve all the student groups in cultural and social activities in order to help their cognitive, emotional and kinesthetic development. We work strategically to develop work methods and the way we organise the learning environment with the aim to reach all pupils and enable them to develop future needed key competences."