Following, you can get to know the partner schools in this ERASMUS KA2 project
Catalonia
School:Institut Public Sant Jordi
The school is located in a rural area in the centre of the Catalan region (Spain). It has 6,200 inhabitants and it is one hour away from Barcelona, the capital city of our Autonomous Community. The primary school was created more than 30 years ago, and in the school year 2011-2012, after the families' great demand to have a public secondary school, it expanded to a high school covering the students' education from 3 until 16 years old. The high school has got two classrooms for each grade of the obligatory education system (ESO) which includes students from 12 to 16 years old. The school represents an extensive heterogeneity, with quite a great social diversity and also very different economic background. The school (primary and secondary) has got about 500 students and 50 teachers. The part of the high school has got 150 students who are taught by 18 teachers most of them living in the town or nearby.
The school's philosophy is built on students' motivation to learn, taking into account each student's distinctive features and considering the uniqueness of each pupil. It makes students responsible of their own learning by promoting their participation into learning process. They know that everything around the school is changing, and try to provide competences needed in future society and working life.
They work with Problem-Based Learning (PBL) as one of the main school practices. It is an interesting and innovative way of teaching and learning which is attractive to students as they get meaningful learning, work different subjects with cooperative work, play an active role on their learning process, and teachers are there to help and guide them. Moreover, PBL is the best way for students to work considering different abilities and skills. Since last year, all the teacher from primary and secondary school have been receiving a training course run by Neus Sanmartí, a professor of the University of Education of UAB (in Barcelona), who is a specialist in teaching PBL and who has been one of the responsibles of reforming the education system of Finland.
Social emotional learning is another of our school's bases as it helps the students acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills to become meaningful people in the community.
They are also proud of their tutorial system which offers students a close guidance not only on academic field but also on personal life and future orientation. All teachers become tutors and are in charge of 10-12 pupils. Tutors maintain weekly contact with students and regular contact with parents, teachers and specialized professionals in order to guarantee the pupils' continuous academic and social development. School days begin with half an hour of form time which allows daily contact and close monitoring of pupil progress. This tutorial system together with peer mediation programme provide them with a very low school conflict rate.
The school has several different projects: an eTwinning project, second foreign language (German), a Solidarity Programme with a school from Syria, a "Fruit at schools" programme, social programmes to help our students to develop their skills, as well as other projects to strengthen the links with our primary school and with the whole community of the town.
Poland
School:Jozefoslaw mysiadlo Piaseczno Konstancin
About school:
Since 2005, they have been organizing the Nursery Kindergarten "Kindergarten". The eight years of experience has allowed them to develop methods that make three-year-olds play with letters and children of the age of five to read fluently, perform mathematics and be mature emotionally and socially. As a result, their graduates are very well prepared to receive school education.
Practice has shown that conducting classes creatively and involving the young man in the discovery of knowledge and individual approach to each child contributes to a high level of pupil abilities.
In general:
The school is open from 7:00 to 18:00, from the beginning of 8:30, the curriculum extended to the Ministry of National Education, an active, modern training based on the day-to-day use of the latest technologies in lessons, such as multimedia panels installed in all categories, effective English 8-9 (6 lessons per week including 2 native speakers), from class IV a second foreign language in the dimension of 3 lessons per week (in the Spanish and German elections), Discovery Club - an original program of exciting experiences and experiments (in collaboration with the Copernicus Science Center), a very rich program of additional classes that develop the passions and talents of students, interest groups and classes of compensatory re-creation, active day room - familiar conditions for casual play and participation in organized activities in the room or in the countryside,swimming lessons in category I, close cooperation with parents (electronic calendar, open days, special events), a complete diet prepared with modern catering equipment (including a steam oven that allows the preparation of delicious dishes, limiting the use of fat). They also offer the transfer of students from home to school and back,monthly trips to interesting places (galleries, theaters, museums, outdoor trips) and Green schools.
The school is situated in Jozefoslaw village (about 8,000 inhabitants), in the vicinity of Warsaw (15 kilometres from the capital, centre of Poland). The place is expanding rapidly and new citizens are moving in. The newcomers are usually people in their 30's and 40's who commute to Warsaw but want their kids to study locally. In their state school there are primary school students (aged 6-12) and middle (lower- secondary) school students (aged 13-16). All in all, they have 1480 students and 120 teachers. Their project is aimed at older children (13-16 year olds). The students attending school come from different backgrounds (some of them are really well off but some of them quite the contrary). They all have to follow the national curriculum and study English and German (students in primary school also started studying Spanish this school year). Students learning English have an opportunity to study the language according to their level of advancement. There is a placement test conducted in the 4th grade of primary school and then 1st grade of middle school.
The education at this level is aimed at getting general knowledge of the subjects, passing final exams and getting a place at upper-secondary school. The quality of the education is evaluated inside the school by a group of teachers and externally by the Ministry of Education.
This year Polish educational system is going through significant changes and the national curriculum focuses on the aims that will be also included and developed in our project:
stressing need for student cooperation
developing social skills contributing to student personal and cultural development
promoting national and national awareness
showing ways of developing respect and tolerance towards others
promoting creativity, innovativeness and entrepreneurship
developing critical thinking
enhancing student curiosity and motivation to learn
helping young people to find their strong points
showing students how important it is to be open in their community and responsible for others
Skills and abilities promoted in our school curriculum that are coherent with our project:
fluency in foreign languages
self-presentation skills, ability to perform in public and express opinions freely but with
respect to others
ability to find information in different sources and using ICT technology
making students sensitive to the surrounding world
team building and cooperation
Aystria
SCHOOL:Bilingual junior high school Neue Mittelschule
It is an Austrian state middle school (Neue Mittelschule) covering four years of secondary education from the ages of 10 to 14. The school was originally founded as a trial school in 1996, meaning that all students were taught according to the grammar school curriculum and were able to attend any type of school on graduation. The school was grounded on CLIL teaching principles whereby all classes had the majority of the subjects taught bilingually in English as well as in German. The original aim of the trial was to enable pupils to gain a confident command of the English language but also included optional classes in several other European languages.
English is used as the working language in the majority of school subjects beginning in the first years of our 4 year school. That means that students as young as 10 have a large part of their curriculum presented in English alongside the German language. In the first year parts of the lessons are presented in English supported by German, however, by the 4th year as much as 90% of the curriculum is taught directly in English with little or no German used as the teaching language, especially in subjects like geography, history, physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics. In order to enhance the value and authenticity of our English CLIL lessons we have 5 native English speaking teachers from England, the U.S.A. and Australia who team-teach with Austrian secondary school teachers in the aforementioned subjects. English is our daily working language.
This approach results in a considerable improvement in English language competence and has been borne out through national education standard testing which directly compares the performance of ALL students throughout the whole of Austria in ALL secondary schools, including grammar schools. We have also been very successful in English language competitions in our state which pit the best students from all state and grammar schools against each other in a competition called the "English Olympics". We have been state finalists every year, finishing consistently in the top 3 in our state and winning the state championship in 2014.
At the beginning of each school year and during the last week of the first semester there is a "Dr. Klippert project week" designed to develop key skills pupils will need to master in order to be successful outside of the school environment. This week focuses on learning, creative thinking, communication techniques and teamwork that helps pupils become more confident, independent, responsible and skilled in these areas, preparing them for future education and the employment marketplace.