Comenius project at Carlo Diacono Junior Lyceum

Students at Carlo Diacono Girls' Junior Lyceum in Zejtun are currently participating in a Comenius project entitled "Culture Mosaic". The co-ordinating school is the College des Gorguettes in Cassis, France, and the other partner schools are the Wiener Gymnasium in Vienna, and the Scuola Media Statale Giosuè Carducci in Palermo. The content focus of this project is to highlight aspects of local culture, while seeking common cultural factors with the European partners.

Maltese students have been researching customs and traditions related to Christmas, Easter and Carnival which are typical of the partner countries as well as to other European countries, such as Spain and Germany. A cross-curricular approach has been adopted and a substantial number of subjects have been involved in this year's work.

All work was then exhibited during Carlo Diacono's Junior Lyceum annual Open Day last March. Visitors to the school hall, which was entirely devoted to an exhibition of students' work relating to this project, could watch a power-point presentation centering around traditions specific to Christmas, Easter and Carnival which students prepared during their Computer Studies lessons.

There was also students' written work done during English, French, Spanish, German and Italian lessons and work specifically related to Maltese food traditions done during Home Economics lessons. Students of German also exhibited their handiwork: decorated eggs and sweet pastries - two typically Austrian traditions related to Easter and Christmas respectively.

Another aspect of the project was a comparative study of the incidence of surnames within some of the classes at the school. This work was researched during Geography lessons and then presented in graphical form during Mathematics. It was also displayed during the Open Day exhibition. Students of History also exhibited a number of models of family coats of arms among other objects related to this theme.

Ms Miriam Consiglio, project co-ordinator, together with Ms Maria Ciappara, head of school, attended the first project meeting in Vienna last October.

Recently, Ms Marcelle Cannataci, project co-ordinator, accompanied Ms Ciappara and Ms Dalmas, home economics teacher at Carlo Diacono Junior Lyceum, to Cassis in France for another meeting, which was held to plan next year's activities for the project. During this meeting, apart from being shown around the French school's facilities, the delegation from Carlo Diacono was also hosted to a reception by the Mayor of Cassis.

Zejtun council, which had already helped the school set up the exhibition, has agreed to be one of the project's associated partners. A possible twinning with Cassis is also being discussed.