A smile at Europe

It was a joy to see children happily joining in as they played Iz-zunzana ddur iddur... and to hear the chant gewz, lewz, qastan, tin.... given a new slant as it was sung with great gusto by English eight-year-olds.

This was one of the activities which took place at Staunton and Corse School in Gloucester, England, last month, during a Comenius project meeting.

After successfully finishing our first Comenius project last June, my college has now ventured on another three-year educational adventure.

Our working group consists of England (two schools), Italy, Hungary, Portugal, Poland, and of course, Malta. The new project is entitled "Let's all smile at Europe". This is yet subdivided into three themes: a theme every year. The theme for the first year is festivals and traditions.

Our first task is for each school to compile a collaborative School Tourist Guide. Each school will research and produce a tourist guide of their school locality, including maps, buildings, an account of a typical school day, festivals and traditions. This will be a tourist guide with a difference, made by children for children.

The second year will be dedicated to games and pastimes and in the third year we shall focus on stories, myths and legends.

As part of the meeting, representatives from all the participating partner schools met in Gloucester also for Website training. In the next three years, a variety of text and images showing both the process and the end results of each planned activity will be included on the Website created specifically for this project.

The Website can be accessed at www.smile-at-europe.ik.org . The Website will also provide students with continuous opportunity for evaluation, since, after each activity, they can include their comments on its guestbook.

The objectives of the visit were various. Apart from Website training and the project meeting, all representatives had to join in all the current school activities. During a special assembly, we all had the opportunity to introduce our country, verbally and by putting up a display in the school foyer.

Each of us was also allotted a class for a week, teaching children a traditional game or song from our country. During this, the children's faces spoke for themselves; children enjoy the same activities the world over!

All of us are very enthusiastic about this project and are looking forward to working with our partners, thus promoting the European dimension in the curriculum.

Ms Buttigieg is deputy head, Junior School, St Albert the Great College.