Kick of meeting at CEIP Antonio Machado - C.Villalba 10-14 October 2016
Ralleia Experimental Primary Schools Piraeus - Athens - Greece
Location • Our school is situated in Kastella, a beautiful neighbourhood of Piraeus • Piraeus: a port city in the region of Attica, Greece • Piraeus is located in the Athens urban area, 12 kilometres southwest of the city centre (municipality of Athens) and lies along the eastern coast of the Saronic Gulf
Piraeus
Location • Kastella is built on a hill (about 90 metres high) and the view from its top is spectacular. There are many cafes and shops here, as well as a theatre called “Veakeio”, where theatrical and musical events and concerts take place every summer.
Our School • An experimental primary school. • Cooperation with six (6) university departments: Pedagogical, English Literature, Theatrical Studies, Physical Education, French Literature and Fine School of Arts. • Students from different university departments do their practice and teaching simulations. • Our pupils are taught a variety of different subjects: Language, Maths, Science, English, ICT, Musical and Theatrical Education, Arts, Religion, Environmental Studies, Physical Education, Geography and Civil Education. • Technology is widely used, incorporated in practically all school subjects; most classrooms are equipped with portable computers and projectors
Our School - Classes • All our students are chosen through a draw procedure every June.
Our School - Classes 3 different schools: • 12 teacher school: Twelve different classes (one class for each teacher). Two classes for each grade (1st -6th ), consisting of twenty-six pupils each, on average
In Greece, a school can be characterized as “rural” when a teacher teaches two or more classes at the same time. Ralleio rural schools, functioning under the auspices of Athens University: • 3 teacher school: Students are aged 6 to 12 years old. • 1 teacher school: Students are aged 6 to 10 years old. ICT, Music, Art, Theater, Drama, Physical Education and Language teachers teach in all the above different schools.
Three-teacher rural school •
Ralleio three-teacher rural school teaching of all subjects by three teachers, each of whom teaches two classes at the same time: 1st and 2nd grade form one class, 3rd and 4th grade form a second class, 5th and 6th form a third class.
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There is a special way in which different school subjects are taught to students. In each class, students are taught the syllabus of Maths and Foreign Language of their actual grade. For the other school subjects there are “teaching cycles”: – Example: the students of 3rd and 4th grade are taught the school subjects of the 3rd grade in the first year and then the school subjects of the 4th grade the second year. The case is similar in the other two classes. Apart from the teaching to students, our school caters for the teaching practices of the university students and their acquisition of practical teaching skills, acting as a mentor, so that they can be well-equipped to teach later on, possibly in rural schools of several remote Greek areas. There are clear advantages of a rural, three-teacher school: – practising group work and cooperation skills – reinforcing mutual support and respect among students – enabling frequent subject revision – enhancing and further practicing differentiating teaching and learning
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One-teacher school • Students’ age : 6 -10 the 1st , 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade of Greek Elementary School. • Lessons are taught separately for the 1st and 2nd grades, but in cooperation for the two other grades. There is a kind of “teaching cycles” meaning that subjects to be taught each year belong either to 3rd or to the 4th grade. However, Mathematics and Foreign Language are taught to the corresponding grade. • Benefits: – peer teaching – mutual support and respect during the teaching procedures – the possibility of frequent content revision – differentiated teaching and learning methodology and – the promotion of educators’ lateral thinking and in-depth knowledge
The building • Our school consists of two three-storey buildings, connected through long corridors and flights of stairs
The building
The building • There are two large playgrounds, an assembly hall, a canteen with a dining room, an art room, a computer lab, a science lab, a music class and a library.
The building • Computer lab
The building • Science lab
The building • Music class
The building • Library
Pupils • Most of our students are of Greek origin, with a minority of students having different ethnical background (French, Romanian, Albanian for example). • They live either in the centre of Piraeus or in nearby areas and they come from middle to upper socialfinancial status families. • Their learning level ranges from medium to high and there are excellence clubs of interests where students are selected to participate. • Moreover, most of our pupils speak at least one foreign language (usually English) fluently. • Students come from middle to high social and cultural background.
SYNERGY: The Role of a Mentor – Good Practices regarding Autism For the past two years, our school has been participating in a program called “SYNERGY: The Role of a Mentor – Good Practices regarding Autism”. This program is a branch of another program, called ”Supporting Children with Behaviour Problems in Class” , in cooperation with the AT Autism Institute of Great Britain, the Aspire Institute of Malta and Bond University of Australia. Laskaridis Foundation has the general the supervision of the program, organizing a pilot program for the education and supervision of educators from Primary Schools that is concerned with the assessment and intervention in behavior problems (challenging behavior) in class. Program implementation is in three stages: • Education/Training • Class Guidance • Scientific supervision
After-class clubs • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Mathematical thinking Animation Robotics Choir and Music Drama Environmental studies Arts Ancient theatre Scenography and Stage Direction Table tennis/Sports Rhetoric and argumentation Foreign Languages (English, French, German) Chess Theatrical game
After-class clubs • Mathematical thinking: Statistics, Possibilities, Golden Ratio, Fibonacci Numbers, Perpendicular Bisector, Pethagorean Theorem etc.
Aims and Objectives of Ralleia Robotics Club • Lego Wedo, Lego Mindstorms (NXT & EV3) • Programming: Scratch (Lego Wedo), Lego provided development environment (NXT & EV3) • Enhance Creativity • Computational Thinking • Teamwork, Innovation, Discovery Learning • Problem Solving through a holistic approach • Relate with other school disciplines (Mathematics)
After-class clubs: Animation • Clay, Object animation and pixilation • 2D and 3D animation through object oriented programming environments
Robotics, animation, mathematical thinking: students, through these after-class clubs and the ICT lesson, are being taught about the problem solving procedure through algorithms, basic programming concepts(Scratch) as part of their ICT lesson, object oriented programming , mathematics etc.
Arduino + Scratch • Last school year we constructed a recycling arcade machine in order to encourage student to recycle by using Arduino and other circuits. This project is held through with cooperation with 4 other schools.
Oracle Raspberry Pi Weather Station • Global weather experiment as a member of a network of 1000 other schools around the globe. The scope of the project is to construct a weather station, write code to interface with the sensors and learn aspects of the new computing curriculum, measure a variety of weather characteristics, upload the weather data in a common database, compare data and cooperate with the other schools.
CLIL • CLIL teaching has been implemented in school subjects like Integrating ICT, Environmental Studies, Geography and History, with English Language teaching and learning.
Descriptive assessment • We apply descriptive assessment of students in the subject of English Language. • We also mentor students and conducting relevant field research. • eTwinning projects with different European partners.