Luqa Primary in Comenius project

The Comenius project at Luqa Primary School started with a preparatory meeting with the participants of partner countries - namely England (as co-ordinator), Italy, Portugal (Madeira), Czech Republic and Malta. This was held at Lucca and Mrs Karmen Tedesco, head of Luqa Primary School, attended with great enthusiasm.

The project, entitled "People, Puppets and Learning" aims at conveying and sharing messages relating to aspects of citizenship and traditions using puppetry. The plan was set so that the project will develop gradually over a period of three years.

The first exchange visit took place at Longwell Green Primary School in Bristol. The school hosted two participants from each partner country. Luqa school was represented by Wilhelmina Scicluna, assistant head, and Marica Barbara, a Year 6 teacher.

The pupils in all the classes from Kindergarten to Year 6 carried out cross-curricular activities which focused on two traditional Maltese legends - Il-Wied ta' l-Isperanza and Il-Kuluri ta' Malta. The activities such as cultural visits on site, art and craft work, dramatisation of the stories together with a Power Point presentation of the Great Siege were recorded on a video and presented to the co-ordinating school and participants. They were impressed with the work done by our school.

It is worth mentioning that before this project, Luqa's kindergarten staff had created two puppets called Deskinu and Felina as the school mascots. The aim was to use puppets as a resource for language practice. They featured as part of the characters in the stories and became very popular with all the children.

On the first day the participating teachers were invited to go round Longwell Green school and visit the classes. In the afternoon the Key Stage 1 (Kindergarten, Years 1, 2,and 3) assembled in the school hall and we watched the children's performance related to the project. Each class sang songs and dramatised stories using hand and stick puppets. The next day, students in the Key Stage 2 (Years 4, 5 and 6) presented a pantomime, Hansel and Gretel, and a play, Theseus and the Minotaur. This visit was a remarkable and fruitful experience for the Maltese teachers.

During the visit, the plan for the second phase of the project was discussed. Each school has to work on two different stories, to ask children to create a story and play script using a common set of puppets and to take a story from Madeira and work on a puppet production, involving research of national culture and costume, historical period etc.

The next project visit will take place in Madeira towards the end of this scholastic year.