Exploring Mtarfa through Comenius

The Comenius project "Our culture, our environment", undertaken by Dr Ganado Primary School in Mtarfa, is currently in its second year. Louise Chircop, class teacher, and Marianne Cachia, project co-ordinator, recently attended a meeting in Bicester, Oxford. Representatives of schools in Spain and Poland were also present.

The main objective of the meeting was to plan ahead the new scheme of work to be exchanged in March. In Bicester, each participating school had to bring along information on its town or village in the form of a booklet which the pupils had to produce during their first school term.

Mtarfa school produced an interesting and informative booklet on this locality going back in history to the Bronze Age as the tombs and the silos found here suggest. Earlier, in November, all pupils accompanied by their class teachers and parents, visited different sites during their walkabouts as part of the school's annual marathon.

Each class was assigned a particular site to visit and to research information. The early stages in Kindergarten and Year 1 explored the Civic Centre, the famous Clock Tower and the Water Reservoir built by the British. The Year 2 class visited the Railway Station Museum which is now part of a restaurant.

The Year 3 classes went down the Mushroom Plantation which is an underground maze of tunnels where pupils learnt how mushrooms are cultivated, as explained by the owner himself.

Pupils in Year 4 gathered information about two old chapels thanks to the local parish priest, Fr Joe Buhagiar, who explained the origin of Sta Lucija Chapel and that of St Oswald. The same classes joined Years 5 and 6 to Chadwick Lakes.

All four classes meandered through paths and passages enjoying the landscape and learning on its flora and fauna. Later on, John Grech, class teacher, and Ms Chircop presented a Power Point presentation depicting the splendour of this place captured after the first seasonal rains.

By means of these visits and walkabouts, pupils and their parents were able to deepen their knowledge about their locality, its history and heritage. It was an exercise which rendered the residents proud of their locality.

All the information and drawings gathered by each class were compiled in four booklets and then handed to each Comenius partner in Bicester by the two Maltese representatives, Louise and Marianne.

They showed them the school and invited them to classrooms to observe and learn. This experience was enriching not only for the two representatives who were able to learn how other countries go about educational matters but also for the pupils, other teachers and parents who learned new facts about their own locality and those of other partners too.

So far six staff members have benefited from these exchange visits, which serve as a link to share and swap skills, ideas and cultures and also to promote a European dimension.

These experiences are only possible thanks to the EUPU, the national agency which funds Comenius school projects.