Mtarfa school in Comenius project

Between October 16 and 21, Paul Schembri and Robert Magro, two teachers from Sir Temi Zammit Boys' Secondary School, Mtarfa, joined teachers from Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Austria, Germany and Italy at a meeting in Sfantu Gheorghe in Transylvania, in northern Romania, to participate in a Comenius project entitled "Countries through Art Works".

Mr Schembri, the Comenius project co-ordinator, teaches History, while Mr Magro is the IT manager of the Maltese team and also ICT teacher at the school.

The two teachers participated in a week of activities at the Liceul de Arti in Sfantu Gheorghe, a mixed secondary school that focuses on Arts such as History, Art, History of Art, Music, Drama, Literature, Theatre Studies, Crafts, and Pottery, though other academic subjects such as Mathematics are also taught. The school is also a centre of Arts in the region.

This educational project was initiated last year with the main coordinators being Eva Baksa from Budapest, and Edinda Illiescu from Sfantu Gheorghe.

Following initiatives by Mr C.S. Micallef, head of Sir Temi Zammit School, Mr Schembri successfully applied for participation in the project, which aims at improving students' creativity through preparing pieces of fine arts inspired by historically and culturally important and exciting places, buildings and objects in their country.

Students are required to cover historic events, places, buildings and artefacts, which are in their national curriculum. Consequently, their knowledge of history, history of art, art and craft will develop their ability to analyse and synthesise information will also improve.

The project's end-product will be presented in a series of three CD-ROMs introducing their school, the students and their country through art works. The viewer will be able to click on different topics and get detailed information about these references.

In addition to a picture of each individual art work the CD-ROM will include a description of the building, object and historic place on which it is based. This will allow students who are better at collecting and arranging information than at drawing, painting or making sculptures, to participate in the project. Thus, students with various abilities and talents could take part in the project.

The CD-ROM will also contain a map of Europe showing the place and date of the historic objects used, allowing the students to broaden their knowledge and culture of fellow European countries.

In addition to the CD-ROM the participants had already worked on a school Website to enable the participants to access already created products by the students and other information on the school.

The Comenius team at Sir Temi Zammit School had already worked on creating the school Website which can be accessed at http://schoolnet.gov.mt/mtarfasecondary. In it, one can find information about the school such as the administration, subjects taught and teachers, the school council, photos of the school and its beautiful natural surroundings, school history, extracurricular activities, sports, health and safety, a presentation produced by four students on water use in Malta, the participation of the school in the Comenius project, and other activities and general information on the school.

When presented during the meetings in Romania, the school Website was appreciated and highly praised and the Maltese team was asked to produce copies. Indeed, it was suggested that during the next scholastic year the meetings will be held at Sir Temi Zammit Boys' Secondary School in Mtarfa. The Maltese team was also acclaimed by the co-ordinators of the Comenius project for their excellent work.

Works on the project at Mtarfa started last year when some students produced works reflecting Maltese culture, history and traditions. They included paintings of Maltese country views, the Sette Giugno events, models of the luzzu and karozzella, clay models of the prehistoric statuette of the Fat Lady, a presentation on the fortifications of Malta and various kinds of charts on Maltese history. A student also worked on an article on Christmas in Malta. The works of the students were displayed during the meetings held in Romania.

During the evenings, participants were treated to various get-togethers including cultural visits to museums and cathedrals and an excursion to the beautiful neighbouring town of Brasov. As part of the Comenius project, the teachers at the Mtarfa school are to be given the opportunity to teach in one of the participating schools for a week.