Comenius News 4 My World, Your World, Our World!
A very big thank you to the Swedish team for sharing their culture, lifestyle and school with us. The exchange enabled us to compare the way in wich different European schools run: - integrating challenged or gifted children - parents ‘ role at school - the link between school life and nature
July 2011
The meeting with all our friends from the Comenius project had been planned a long time. I guess that we all were all mighty enthusiastic and nervous about it. The children thought that it would be great fun to play with everyone who will come, then they realized that it was just adults who would come. The children had worked a lot with the project Billy goats gruff and they thought it was great fun. The children in the 5 year group decided that it would be great fun to make the recipe book for all of you.
It is enriching for the partner schools to share a traditional story from each country. We were surprised by the calm and tranquility of the children and the teaching team. We sensed an atmosphere of freedom, kust , autonomy and respect amongst all members of the staff. Thank you to all our partners for their work during these exchanges.
It was interesting to hear about special education in other countries and it felt that it was something we could continue talk about. The children in the other schools thought that it was exciting to have visitors from other countries that they could talk to. We thought that everything went as it should. And finely, the weather was with us!
Learn, enjoy, achieve, discover, Together!
Hello from England!
Ola from Spain!
Hola de nuevo! For the Spanish Team the meeting in Sweden has been very interesting and so nice. We´ve enjoyed a lot the beautiful and warm weather and the Satra Brun is a small town nestled amongst a huge forest and whole planning in the swedish schools. many lakes with breath taking views! Oh! and some very large All the information we shared about how each country works moose! with children with special needs has been really interesting and useful for us indeed.We´ve learnt new ways of teaching and we We received a very warm and friendly welcome from our Swed- are more concerned now about how difficult is to teach in our ish friends and the children. We spent time at SatraBrun Nurs- spanish schools without teachers and resources enough. ery, children go here from the ages of 1 ½ to 6 years old. We When we saw three adults with a nine students group in a Maths lesson and we compared that with how we work in saw the youngest children learning maths through role play Spain( only one adult with twenty-five students) we really felt whilst wearing “magic glasses”! We also saw how everyone is that we should make a lot of deep changes in our Educational included in a class of five year olds; one child had a hearing System. We are so impressed by your beautiful and peaceful landscapes disability so all of the children were learning to sign. They and with the big spaces you have in your schools where the could sign the names of animals and match them to their picstudents play sports and have the playground time. tures – they could even say the animal names in English! Thanks a lot to the whole swedish staff because they did a really fantastic meeting. We were lucky enough to have a visit to Heden school, this Now, we´re so excited due to all of you´re coming to visit us school is for 6 to 12 year olds, each class has a maximum of here in Spain. 15 children. The 11 and 12 year olds were very excited about See you in November!
giving us a guided tour of the school they had prepared themselves in English. They asked and answered lots of our questions and we were very impressed with the high standard of their English. All of the “Skoola” had a relaxed , calm, quiet atmosphere and felt like home. We had a fabulous time learning all about Swedish schools and have come back to school with lots of new ideas to try out. (and a pet moose!)
A l b u M s w a p
Hog vagy from Hungary It was a great pleasure for us to have the chance to visit Swedish schools, and study their education system. We were given an extremely warm welcome in Sala. The colleagues hosted us with great attention during the three days. We found it very good that the youngest children were educated together with the six-year old ones. They played together in the playground and learnt together in the same class. The schools provide ideal facilities for the children to get first hand experience in learning.They take advantages of the natural environment around the school building, in the school building and in the playground. The pre-school is very well equipped with toys that serve the children’s entertainment, learning through games, and their individual skill development. We could observe interesting activities with all age groups from the youngest ones to the oldest up to the age of six. The number of children in the groups were ideal. We admired how the teachers dealt with the children in the classrooms and outside the classroom. We have gained a lot of useful experience. Besides the professional programmes, we could enjoy the warm hospitality of our hosts. Many thanks to them for all the work they did for us and the success of the programme.
What next? Who am I? Where do I play? Where can I learn? Next - My journey to school! Partners will share a song in their own language that is about travelling to school. Partners will learn “The wheels on the bus” in English England will also learn a Swedish song! The songs will be presented in the form of a DVD so partner countries can see children singing and doing actions to the songs in their environment. Children will contribute to the album at an appropriate level to describe their journey to school, this may include drawing maps, pictures, writing labels and captions, a short video.