VoiceS - Integrated competences for European Teachers. Giving voice(s) to professionalism and citizenship in school networking.
Els Pinetons - Spain
Mar RODRÍGUEZ SÁNCHEZ (VoiceS Member of the Spanish national group)
The School
Pinetons school is a kindergarten and primary school institution located in Ripollet, a town closed to Barcelona. In our school there are currently 35 teachers and 520 students who are aged between 3 and 10 years old. Since our school is just six years old, it is still growing and it will have, at the end, students until they are 12 years old.
The majority of our students have Catalan or Spanish origins. However, there are 4-5% of students from other backgrounds such as African, South-American and Central Europe.
Moreover, we have a special unit specialized in autism since there are eight children diagnosed with this spectrum disorder. These children are between three and five years old and they are totally integrated in the ordinary classroom. Receiving attention from the unit within the regular class.
Concerning our pedagogical school project, we enhance project based learning. Thanks to this approach, students explore real-world problems and challenges. With this type of active and engaged learning, students are inspired to obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they're studying. Consequently, in our school textbooks are not usually used since the knowledge is constructed from the students' interests.
Regarding foreign languages, English is taught as a first foreign language and we are currently implementing a CLIL project in involving Science and artistic contents. Likewise, we are participating in a Comenius project called “Parent participation in early education” with a school from Germany and another one from Sweden. We are very keen on working with other European schools. Indeed, networking is one of our most important targets. Clearly, when teachers, students, parents and local agencies share opinions and agree on the same aims, pupils become more confident and effective learners, and education goals are more easily achieved.
School house
Sketch of the school house
Developing the project "A Day in the Life of..."
The teachers from the different countries involved set up a project which is framed in the European Dimension (identity and culture). In particular, our project aims to develop the kids' awareness of their own culture and identity as well as of the other cultures that coexist in Europe.
First of all, the different schools prepared either a video or a set of pictures to introduce the participants in each school. The kids used English as a communicative language and posted the materials produced in the blog of the project which was especially prepared for the occasion.
The 50 participants of Els Pinetons schools were arranged in smaller groups of 4-5 kids and they focused on one of the following topics: breakfast time, lunch time, dinner time, my school, from home to school and after school. The objective was to work on these themes and produce some materials and to share the information with the other countries. One of the key points was to enhance the students' autonomy and personal initiative by means of giving them the opportunity to plan their work and choose the way to show their results. Consequently, some groups chose to record some videos while others felt more comfortable by doing some posters and taking some pictures or interviewing some teachers to show the main characteristics of the educational institution.
Dinner time
Poster work
Reflecting on the work
After exchanging pictures and videos of the children's reality in the blog, the kids posted some comments and pointed out the most outstanding similarities and differences among the different countries regarding their culture and routines. Then, the three countries exchanged videos or written documents reflecting on this information.
Kids presenting their posters
The kids have deeply enjoyed this experience and have learnt a lot from the other countries. Without a doubt, the children are now more open-minded towards the European reality and interested to keep on working in a more global context. Besides that, they have used English with a clear communicative purpose as well as the ICT rather than in an isolated and less meaningful way.
We highly recommend any school to join the VoiceS network because is really an enriching experience, not only for students but also for teachers.