Základná škola Ožďany

Comenius

Comenius is part of the Socrates project of the European Union in the field of education. It was first introduced in 1995, it supports international cooperation and mobilities and strenthens the european dimension in the field of education.Comenius projects seek to enhance the quality and reinforce the European dimension of school education by encouraging transnational cooperation between schools and contributing to improved professional development of staff directly involved in the school education sector,and to promote the learning of languages and intercultural awareness.

We received a grant in the Comenius 1 - School projects. The topic of our project is Customs, traditions and culture of our region. The coordinating institution is a school from Poland and other partners are from Italy, Latwia, Turkey and Spain. The main aim of the project is to give the pupils the possibility to learn about the cultures of other countries, form their system of universal values and improve their skills that can help them to communicate despite the cultural and language differences.

The project is planned for 3 years. In the first year, school year 2005/2006, we concentrate on the customs and cultural traditions in our schools. In the second year, if our renewal application is accepted, we will widen the range of interests and move to an interesting place in our region and we will investigate its history. In the last year we should be interested in our region in general.

Activities in the school year 2005/2006:

We have started the realization of our project right after having it approved by our national agency.

In September we have started introducing ourselves and sending information concerning our schools, students and teachers. We all have started organizing our European corner, where we gather information and products concerning the Socrates project. The teachers and students started gathering materials required for the presentation of our school and the neighbourhood. We started planning and preparing for our visit to Italy. We made the presentation of our school and our village.

October was the month when we got acquainted with the traditional costume of our regions and took folk dolls with us to the meeting of the headmasters and project coordinators in Sasso di Castalda, Italy and then we exchanged them with our partners. In Sasso di Castalda we:presented our schools and promoted our regions during the meeting with the Italian pupils, parents, teacher, officials and other members of the local commuity.

We also made work on ammendments of the planned activities. We got acquainted with the calendar of festivals in the partners’ countries, chose one holiday to tape it and exchange with other partners. We learned how the educational system works in Italy.

In November we finished the European corner. The material we brought from Italy was used to prepare information concerning our partners’ countries and regions. We placed the informational material and souveniers in a showcase on the corridor of the school so that all pupils and visitors of the school can see them. The students learn about the partners’ schools from the electronic presentations given to us by the partners. The folk dolls started their tour.

In December we started preparations for the recording of the Christmas traditions – making Christmas biscuits, Advent garlands and Christmas decorations - in our region and most of all in our school. The pupils sent Christmas mails to our partners.

In January. We sent the recording of the Christmas traditions to our partners. We prepared the dictionary including words and phrases that we will learn in our partners’ languages.

These activities are planned for the rest of school year 2005/2006:

Approximate date	Activity	Location (in the case of mobility : from / to)
February	Folk songbook.	Creating songbooks and exchanging it with other partners.
March	Writing dance manual	Creating dancing manuals and exchanging it with other partners.
April	Legends.	Preparing picture legends and exchanging it with other partners.
May	My region - trips – gathering materials.	Gathering information on particular regions and exchanging it with other partners.
June	Meeting devoted to evaluation and planning activities for the following year. Stage performances of the pupils from the partner schools.	Ankara, Turkey

By the 1, February 2006 we had to hand in to our national agency an application for the renewal of the project for the next school year. We did so together with our partner institutions and now we only have to wait for the results. We hope for the best, so that we can continue with a wide range of interesting activities. For the next year we planned the following activities:

In the next year of the project we intend to continue to get to know more and more about the traditions, customs and culture of our partner countries. Before starting the new activities we plan to organize a meeting of headmasters and project coordinators to evaluate the previous year and to make more precise plans for the second year of the project.

We are going to learn about the traditional kitchen of the partner countries, to try to cook their traditional dishes and make a short international cook book. Also we want to continue the song book and dance manual of the previous year by adding songs and dances to them.

We also want to learn about famous personalities coming from the countries/regions of the partner schools and about the legends of the regions where the schools are situated.

In the second year of the project we also intend to give the possibility to our students to explore more deeply the history, culture and traditions of their own region, to collect information and material they consider important and interesting and during the meeting in Spain to show it to the pupils from the partner schools and that way make their own culture known abroad

Approximate date	Activity	Location (in the case of mobility : from / to)
September	Remanding what was achieved during the last school year in the Socrates Comenius project. Re-establishing the contact with partners after the summer break. Preparations for the coordinator and the headmaster’s meeting with other partners.	All partners. Exhibition, presentation.
October	School customs – “Autumn tables”. We prepare a cookery book containing recipes of the traditional, regional dishes. Meeting of the coordinators and the headmasters - making amendments, promotion of our region.	Every school prepares a school event dealing with proper diet and food, gather information concerning traditional dishes and three or four of them translate into English and send to other partners. Meeting in Latvia.
November	We prepare our partners’ traditional dishes.	Every school sends a Power Point presentation showing the process of preparing the traditional dishes. Every partner is to prepare a chosen dish and say how they find it.
December	The calendar.	The presentation in Power Point showing the whole school year (important events and activities).
January	Famous people	Each partner sends to other countries three photographs of famous people from their region. Each photograph is to be accompanied with a set of multiple choice questions (quiz). The school that gets the highest score wins a prize.
February	Continuation of the folk song book	Creating songbooks containing another song and exchanging it with other partners.
March	Continuation of the dance manual	Creating dancing manuals of another dance and exchanging it with other partners.
April	We get to know other partners’ fairy tales and legends.	Students prepare a comic book of a characteristic for particular region and country fairy tale. The comic books are send to all the partners.
May	My region - trips – gathering materials.	Gathering information on particular regions and exchanging it with other partners.
June	Meeting devoted to evaluation and planning activities for the following year. Stage performances of the pupils from the partner schools.	Spain

The project will end with the presentation of the achievements of every school. The results of our work will be represented by a short cook book of traditional dishes of the partner countries, presentations and recording of the process of cooking these dishes, a calendar of events and activities of each school, the second part of the song book and dance manual, comic book of regional legends and a stage performance during the visit to Spain. The effects of our work will be popularized with the help of the school paper, local newspapers, radio, television and the Internet.