Euro Kids: Knowing Me, Knowing You

St Sebastian Primary 'A', Qormi, has launched a new three-year Comenius project together with two schools from Belgium, and schools from the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark.

January 10 saw 10 participants - headteachers, assistant heads or teachers from the six schools meet - at Bollekenskindertuin, in Ghent, Belgium.

Most of them knew each other already from the preparatory meeting held in January 2004. Since then, a lot of work has been done by the partner schools. The first task was to build a 'Cultural Box' and to send one to each school.

It was an interesting experience to open each box that arrived and to discover the culture of each country. It was also very exciting to decide what to include in the cultural box since the Maltese partners wanted to put as much Maltese history as possible in that box.

During the past few months, the teachers communicated by post and e-mails with their partners. They also exchanged a good amount of children's work that helped to diminish the distance between them.

St Sebastian Primary 'A' was represented by Mrs Sonia Vella, the school co-ordinator and also the project co-ordinator. This meeting at Ghent was preceded by months of work: continuous communication by means of email, matching of classes, packing and mailing parcels of pupils' work and urging and pushing everyone to keep deadlines.

On the first day at the Ghent school, the participants were met by the headmaster, Patrick D'Haenens. They were then introduced to the staff and later to the pupils. Each one spoke to the pupils in their native language and the pupils entertained them by singing an action song as a welcome.

The partners had the opportunity to visit classrooms, take part in the lessons and answer the children's questions. Later in the day, the partners met to evaluate the work done so far in the project and to discuss any problems. They also planned what must be done by the end of this scholastic year and set some deadlines. One big decision was to set up a project Website with links to each school's Website.

Since one of the partner schools is in Denmark, and Denmark is celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen, the partners decided that each class will work on one of his fairy tales and then go on to other favourite tales by local authors. Each school will then send one story with pictures for the children's corner of the website. The story will be written and illustrated by the children themselves.

Another project is to make a CD with games using pictures from Andersen's stories as well as videos of the children acting some of Andersen's fairy tales.

On the second day, the participants went to visit Ter Leie Kindertuin, another school in Ghent, run by the same headmaster, Patrick D'Haenens. They were welcomed by the pupils and staff who sang and danced for them. After going round the classes talking to the teachers and the pupils, the partners discussed the plan for 2005 and 2006. After the plans were fed into the computer, the partners filled their renewal application.

On the last day, the partners decided to make an interactive CD. So they recorded the numbers and the alphabet as well as a short conversation in their respective language. The CD should be in each classroom shortly.

Questions were put to each other about the ways of life in their respective countries and also the methods of teaching, profiling and classroom management. In the afternoon, the partners were treated to a special visit to the city hall where they met the alderman and the mayor of Ghent.

Now all partners are steadily working at their project, teacher exchange visits are taking place, children's work is being exchanged and partners from all schools will be meeting in Malta in May to watch the End of Year concert at St Sebastian Primary School 'A', Qormi, and to evaluate the current scholastic year's work.