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My World, Your World,Our World!

Comenius News 4

July 2011

The meeting with all our friends from the Comeniusproject had been planned a long time. I guess that weall were all mighty enthusiastic and nervous about it.

The children thought that it would be great fun toplay with everyone who will come, then they realizedthat it was just adults who would come. The childrenhad worked a lot with the project Billy goats gruff andthey thought it was great fun. The children in the 5year group decided that it would be great fun to makethe recipe book for all of you.

It was interesting to hear about special education inother countries and it felt that it was something wecould continue talk about. The children in the otherschools thought that it was exciting to have visitorsfrom other countries that they could talk to. Wethought that everything went as it should.

And finely, the weather was with us!

A very big thank you to the Swedishteam for sharing their culture, lifestyle andschool with us.

The exchange enabled us to compare theway in wich different European schoolsrun:

- integrating challenged or gifted children

- parents ‘ role at school

- the link between school life and nature

It is enriching for the partner schools toshare a traditional story from each coun-try.

We were surprised by the calm and tran-quility of the children and the teachingteam.

We sensed an atmosphere of freedom,kust , autonomy and respect amongst allmembers of the staff.

Thank you to all our partners for theirwork during these exchanges.

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 EnglishEngland will also learn a Swedish song!The songs will be presented in the form of a DVD so partner countries can see children singing anddoing 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.

Hello fromEngland!

Satra Brun is a small town nestled amongst a huge forest andmany lakes with breath taking views! Oh! and some very largemoose!

We received a very warm and friendly welcome from our Swed-ish friends and the children. We spent time at SatraBrun Nurs-ery, children go here from the ages of 1 ½ to 6 years old. Wesaw the youngest children learning maths through role playwhilst wearing “magic glasses”! We also saw how everyone isincluded in a class of five year olds; one child had a hearingdisability so all of the children were learning to sign. Theycould sign the names of animals and match them to their pic-tures – they could even say the animal names in English!

We were lucky enough to have a visit to Heden school, thisschool is for 6 to 12 year olds, each class has a maximum of15 children. The 11 and 12 year olds were very excited aboutgiving us a guided tour of the school they had prepared them-selves in English. They asked and answered lots of our ques-tions and we were very impressed with the high standard oftheir English.

All of the “Skoola” had a relaxed , calm, quiet atmosphere andfelt like home.

We had a fabulous time learning all about Swedish schoolsand have come back to school with lots of new ideas to

try out. (and a pet moose!)

Ola from Spain!Hola de nuevo!

 For the Spanish Team the meeting in Sweden has beenvery interesting and so nice.

We´ve enjoyed a lot the beautiful and warm weather and thewhole planning in the swedish schools.All the information we shared about how each country workswith children with special needs has been really interesting anduseful for us indeed.We´ve learnt new ways of teaching and weare more concerned now about how difficult is to teach in ourspanish schools without teachers and resources enough.When we saw three adults with a nine students group in aMaths lesson and we compared that with how we work inSpain( only one adult with twenty-five students) we really feltthat we should make a lot of  deep changes in our EducationalSystem.We are so impressed by  your beautiful and peaceful landscapesand with the big spaces you have in your schools where thestudents play sports and have the playground time.Thanks a lot to the  whole swedish staff because they did areally fantastic meeting.Now, we´re so excited due to all of you´re coming to visit us

here in Spain.See you in November!

Hog vagy fromHungary

It was a great pleasure for us to have the chance to visitSwedish schools, and study their education system. We weregiven an extremely warm welcome in Sala. The colleagues

hosted us with great attention during the three days. We foundit very good that the youngest children were educated together

with the six-year old ones. They played together in theplayground and learnt together in the same class. The schoolsprovide ideal facilities for the children to get first handexperience in learning.They take advantages of the natural

environment around the school building, in the school buildingand in the playground. The pre-school is very well equippedwith toys that serve the children’s entertainment, learningthrough games, and their individual skill development. We

could observe interesting activities with all age groups from theyoungest ones to the oldest up to the age of six. The number ofchildren in the groups were ideal. We admired how the teachers

dealt with the children in the classrooms and outside theclassroom. We have gained a lot of useful experience. Besides

the professional programmes, we could enjoy the warmhospitality of our hosts. Many thanks to them for all the

work they did for us and the success of theprogramme.

AlbuM

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