St Monica School hosts Comenius visit

The exchange of letters by pupils is one of the ongoing activities connected with the Comenius 1 school project in which St Monica School, Birkirkara, is currently involved for the second year running. So it was a very pleasant experience for some of these pupils to actually meet their pen-friends during the third project meeting recently hosted by the Maltese school.

The project, called "Legends Across Europe" and funded by the EU Socrates Programme, involves schoolchildren from Malta, Poland, Italy, Spain and Turkey exchanging various legends from their town, region or country. The aim is to broaden knowledge about other European countries and encourage friendship and acceptance of cultural differences by exploring aspects of folklore.

So far this year, the pupils have prepared a legend from their town in their own language with a translation in English and presented visually in cartoon form. All these legends have now been compiled into a book. Thus, it was very fitting that a rendering of the famous Birkirkara legend Rajt ma Rajtx, which is included in this book, was sung by St Monica pupils at the opening ceremony of the Malta project meeting.

The Grade 6 pupils also sang a medley of traditional Maltese songs and a group of Grade 5 pupils danced Il-Maltija, giving the foreign schoolchildren and their teachers a taste of Maltese folklore.

This was followed by a reception where the visitors were introduced to a week-long experience of traditional, home-made Maltese food prepared by the parents of students at the school.

The foreign pupils were warmly hosted by families of St Monica students and had the opportunity to attend lessons besides joining their teachers on various cultural outings which included The Malta Experience, Valletta, Mdina, the Three Cities, Hagar Qim, Wied iz-Zurrieq, Ta' Qali Crafts Village and Sliema. The co-ordinators also planned the details of the next project meeting to be held in Spain in May, the activities to be carried out by the end of this year and also prepared the renewal forms for the last year of the project.

The meeting was an opportunity to show that Malta has a lot to offer educationally, culturally and historically. More importantly it was an occasion in which "old" friendships were strengthened and many new friendships made.