San Felipe Neri School
COMENIUS IN CÁDIZ 2009 – 2011
We live in a beautiful town in the south of Spain. It’s almost an island because it’s almost totally surrounded by the sea. It’s an old town with three thousand years of history and many different civilizations have lived here. So you can imagine the importance of our town in the history of our country.
In this town there is a school called San Felipe Neri. This school is friendly with other schools in distant countries: Denmark, Iceland and Finland. It’s a big school, with two buildings, one for Primary and the other for Secondary and High School. We also have two pavilions for sport lessons and two libraries.
We start at school when we are 3 years old. We do Pre-School during 3 years and when we are 6, we start Primary.
We are in Primary for 6 years though if some of us have special difficulties to learn, we can spend one more year in Primary. Secondary is from 12 to 16.
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In Primary we have six levels. 5ยบ C
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In each level we are divided in four groups and in each group we are 25 pupils more or less.
SUBJECTS
We study a lot of subjects like:
o Spanish Language o Maths o Science o English Language o Religion
o Physical Education o Music and Art (Drawing and Handcraft) We have some religious services along every term according with the main celebrations in our Catholic calendar. When we are 8 and 9, we are prepared for First Communion.
From 6 to 8, we have one extra lesson per week of Information Technology applied to English Language and another one of Sport.
From 8 to 12, we have one extra lesson per week of Information Technology and French Language. And from 8 to 10, we have one lesson per week of sailing.
Since last January, all of us (in the 5 th and the 6th level) have a net book paid for the Regional Government we can use along the years we are going to stay at school. We do activities using it in some subjects.
EXTRA CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
We also have some extra curricular activities like:
o Basketball o Football o Handball o Volleyball o School of Music o Rhythm and movement o Theatre o Spanish dancing (Flamenco) o English Academy o Scouts
o Sailing o Traffic behavior
TIMETABLE This is our timetable: Monday and Tuesday: From 9:00 to 13:00 and from 15:00 to 17:00 Wednesday to Friday: From 9:00 to 14:00
We only have one break from 11:30 to 12:00. And at this time we go out to the playground, we have breakfast and play with our friends.
We play football, basketball and other games with a ball. Some of us prefer walking and talking with friends. When it’s raining we stay in our classrooms and it is not allowed to run around. We can play table-games, read books, draw‌
HOLIDAYS
Our holidays are at the end of every term. For Christmas we have 3 weeks; for Easter we have 1 week; for summer we have 2 months and 20days, from July to September. We have other small celebrations along the year with 2 or 3 days off.
PUPILS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
We have a teacher specialized in special needs and one psychologist. Pupils are helped by them in their own groups although they are sometimes taken out to a special classroom for lessons. We teach lessons for one hour but some of them are half an hour. In my case, I am the only one who has lessons of one hour and a half.
TRIPS
We enjoy a lot when we go out with our friends and teachers for a trip. For example, last November we visited Coripe, a small village in the mountains where we went for hiking and we finished with a barbecue. In April, we did many enjoyable activities in an archeological campsite called ERA. Other trip which we enjoyed a lot was our stay in a farm school last year. We spent one week there, sharing games, activities, meals, and nights together and, of course, we learnt a lot about farm animals.
FESTIVALS AND CELEBRATIONS
Religious:
As you know ours is a catholic school, so we celebrate all the most important events in our religion. We have special celebrations at Christmas, in Easter and in May because this is the month that we dedicate to our Virgin, Mary.
Carnival:
Every year, in February we have a party at school to celebrate Carnival. We dress up like an animal, a monster, a fairy or something that you can invent or imagine. We sing songs written by us about things that happen at school and we can tell funny things about teachers always from the respect, of course.
School day:
At the end of May, we are looking forward to having the most important celebration in our school. We have a day with a lot of different kinds of attractive and entertaining activities. We can sing in the Karaoke, we can dance‌ There are sport competitions too.
We can share this day with our parents and they can also participate in the different activities.
We are very proud of our school and our teachers and, of course, with them, our principal Javier Anso and our Primary headmaster, Eduardo Castellanos.