Comenius Week was held at Dun Frans Camilleri Primary School, Hamrun, from May 31 to June 8.
"Traditional poems, songs, dances and multimedia" was a three-year project in which the school joined others from Italy, Austria, Hungary and Slovenia. Dun Frans Camilleri Primary entered this group in its last year.
Most of the work included research on traditional children's songs and rhymes which have been documented on a CD, use of the Internet and uploading of their documents, video conferencing, use of IT for information about participants' countries and learning participants' songs.
This year there were three visits, Malta being the host country to end the project. The school welcomed a group of 40, including students, parents, teachers and headteachers. It was not easy to organise an eight-day programme for such a large group but the Hamrun schoolchildren were happy and proud to make so many friends, in fact they even exchanged mail and e-mail addresses.
On the first day the group was welcomed by the headmaster, Mr J. Camilleri, assistant heads Ms Scicluna and Mr Sammut (co-ordinator) and all the teaching staff who worked hard to make this a success. The programme also included excursions to Valletta, Mdina, Marsa-xlokk, Sliema and Mosta. The foreign guests spent a lovely day in Gozo.
On their fourth day a concert was held at school where children recited traditional rhymes and chanted songs in Maltese. For this occasion children of the fifth grade learnt songs in German, Italian, Hungarian and Slovenian. The traditional Il-Maltija was also performed.
The co-ordinators from the visiting schools held two meetings at the ICT Centre, working on a common Web platform which served as a link throughout the whole project.
Norman Borg of the ICT Centre did his utmost to assist the Maltese teachers and the EUPU gave great support.