People, puppets and learning

A very successful Comenius project meeting was recently held at George Schinas Primary School, Luqa, between partner school representatives from Madeira, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom, the co-ordinating school.

Children's work was celebrated and shared on the themes of "Friendship, famous people and a day in the life of...".

The 'hand of friendship' concept was explored by each partner school using puppetry as a medium. Each country prepared a presentation through e-mail and other research tools, on a locally personality. The presentation consisted of a typical 'day in the school life' of a pupil attending the respective schools.

Discussions were also held with regard to refining existing pen pal and e-mail links, this time including even the very young pupils in all four countries. Works by the four schools were exchanged, the progress of the project reviewed and plans were made for the third and final year of this project.

After the meeting, the school representatives toured the classrooms and met all the pupils and their teachers. A concert was also prepared over two days in which all classes from Kindergarten 1 to Year 7 participated.

The school staff together with the school council organised an after-school Maltese Night on the school grounds where our Comenius friends tasted Maltese food and local sweet delicacies as well as listened to music by members of our staff.

The foreign representatives were also invited to Luqa council where they were greeted by the mayor, Mr John Schembri, together with the council's executive secretary Michael Borg.

The council also generously sponsored a tour to Gozo for the group.

We are now looking forward with great enthusiasm to the third and final year of the project, and to meeting again at the end of this year in Madeira.