Exploring mother nature in four European countries

Representatives of five schools in four European countries met last month in the UK to discuss and agree a plan of action for the coming three-year Comenius project.

It all started last February with a seminar organised by the local agency of Comenius 1 for primary school heads and teachers from European countries. The main objective of the seminar was to bring people together to become partners in a Comenius project.

The initial sense of trepidation coming from not knowing your potential partners soon evaporated, and by the second day five representatives, including myself, got together and formed a working group.

Spurred by a sense of camaraderie, we came up with a rough outline for a project. Details were finalised on returning to our respective countries and, much to our delight and satisfaction, our application, which was submitted the following April, was approved.

The five schools taking part in the project are St Albert the Great College of Valletta; Staunton and Corse School in Gloucester, England, the co-ordinating school; Southmoor, Greenland Community Infant School, County Durham; Bangsund Skole, Norway; and Escola 1 CEB de Parceiros, Portugal.

The main objective of this project is to promote trans-national co-operation and exchange experiences through the exploration of different aspects of social diversity within European culture.

The three-year project, entitled "Mother Nature's Workshop", is based on an environmental theme and the different schools will be engaged in the exploration of their surrounding natural environment.

The children will be sharing what they have learnt through the use of creative and imaginative writing, art, drama, music and information technology.

The representatives of the participating schools met for three days at Staunton and Corse School last month. The participants were given detailed hands-on training in managing and updating the Website created specifically for this project, www.mothernature.ik.org.

After the representatives of the participating schools were introduced during the school assembly, they set up displays of their schools and countries. The children took a special interest in Malta and could not stop asking questions about the Maltese way of life.

We also had the opportunity to visit various classrooms, noting similarities and differences, keeping our own schools in mind. That same day, we visited schools in nearby Cheltenham.

Both Bettridge Special School and Bournside Secondary School seemed to have access to relatively abundant human and material resources. During the afternoon we underwent Website training, where we learnt how to upload digital images and text.

On the last day we all participated in a sharing assembly at Staunton and Corse School. The children shared work with the rest of the school, an experience that proved to be very motivating for them.

This activity reminded me of the motivational assemblies held regularly at St Albert the Great College, during which we formally recognise the effort and achievement of all the children attending, irrespective of their academic attainment.

These assemblies are popular with the students and the parents, who are invited to participate.

At the end of our visit to Staunton and Corse School, we bid our farewells and exchanged gifts. During the coming weeks, the children at St Albert will be making and exchanging Christmas cards using recycled materials.

This will be closely followed by activities such as poetry writing, the designing of Easter cards and making sculptures. We hope to be able to share these experiences with readers in future.

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