Comenius in our school

One of the most important issues in our school in a school year 2009/2010 is participation in Comenius programme. It involves the partnership of pre-school, primary and secondary educational institutions. It also supports the involved schools financially and methodically in the scope of participation.

In 2008 our school came in contact with German and Dutch partners. We created a joint project to fulfill the first demand which concerns partnership of European educational institutions. In June 2009 we were informed that our two-year project would be fully financed by European Union.

Our partner institutions are:

• Gymnasium Kreuzgasse from Koln in Germany – the coordinator of the project
• College Pierre de Ronsard from Paris in France
• Lycee Chateaubriand from Rennes in France
• Pedro Eanes Lobado from Amora in Portugal

The title of the project is “Living in a Backstreet or residing in Style – Urban living: a European Comparison”.

The topic allows a comprehensive approach, linking geographical, literary, historical and social research. This includes interviews with residents, architects and local authorities, as well as field studies, building small-size urban models, panel discussions, and perhaps developing ones own visions of future urban living.

Pupils, teachers and parents will all be involved. Communication should be in three languages, English, French and German, to help promote multi-language skills, using ICT without neglecting face-to-face talking during the mobilities.

Objectives:

• become sensitive for cultural differences in coping with class distinction
• involve different age groups as well as different levels of organization: after discovering one’s own city on the one hand and the foreign cities on the other comparison, critical examination of the various problems and intensive reflection of their aspects as well as potential solutions and existing positive examples
• develop knowledge and understanding on different levels: among young people of different countries as well as between pupils, their teachers and their parents of each school,
• teach students responsibility for their personal development and their life in the future,
• encourage lifelong language learning and to support innovative ICT,
• improve communication skills,
• promote teacher training through cooperation,
• enlarge pedagogical approaches in a European context,
• take a communicative approach (providing conditions to use the Internet, to encourage to speak, argue, write and present in foreign languages)
• choose an audio visual approach to make students inspired and motivated to search for information, share the findings with the others.

We do plan to have the following effects of our work: photos, school newsletter articles, internet presentations, exhibitions, manual works, competitions promoting Europe, debates and essays concerning world’s peace, international correspondence and international meeting participation. All the effects are to be presented to our students, their parents and the cooperating institutions during meetings and celebrations, European Days and open days organised at school.

Beata Pastuszko, Beata Opala