COMENIUS PARTNERSHIPS

TITLE:
BLOG: The Secret of our Success in Studying and Teaching English

The objective of this project is for the students aged 10 to 18 years old from five European countries /Poland, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy and Spain/ to realise that they are part of the same community with similar cultural and educational roots.We will compose the multicultural and multinational mosaic of different types of schools / primary school, grammar school, secondary school and technical college /via activities that are related with topics of the youngsters’ interests (ecology, geography, diet, the educational systems, everyday life, habits, traditions etc).The Polish, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Bulgarian students /16 people from each country/ will communicate with each other using different communicators. They will discuss the current content of the book that will be created thanks to their blogs. The meetings in each one of the five countries will serve their closer mutual acquaintance.The project aims to take full advantage of ICT in order to improve learning opportunities for everyone, especially the weaker students.We would like to encourage the participants of our project to broaden their knowledge of other cultures and show them how people from different European countries promote and preserve their cultural sights.

Participating Institutions:

Complex of Car Schools Zespół Szkół Samochodowych I Licealnych no 2 in Warsaw is composed of Technical Car College and Vocational Car School. There are 30 classes in the Technical College. 14 of them are held under the patronage of the reputed firms like Peugeot Poland, Toyota Motor Poland, MAN and Mercedes Benz. There are 83 well qualified teachers and about 800 students are educated at the school. The school maintains contacts with some European countries and takes care of European standards of education and the competitiveness of its students on the European job market.
1st Gymnasio Chalkidonas is situated in the small town Chalkidona, not far from Thessaloniki, a city in Northern Greece. It is an agricultural region. The students / 171 people / are between 12 and 16 years old. As most of Greek schools nowadays it is a multicultural school with lots of students coming from immigrant families from Albania, Russia, Georgia and Romania.
The High School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics “Academic Nikola Obreshkov” in the city of Bourgas is one of the most prestigious and demanding schools in Bulgaria and certainly the best school in Bourgas region. The students who study here are accepted after a keen competition, which proves their motivation and high intellectual abilities. The High School is a school with longstanding history, codes of behaviour and strong tradition. The best teachers of Mathematics, IT, Physics, Chemistry and Biology, in the discipline of Arts and humanities are picked up in the school, because its goal is to issue the best training of its students.
The Italian institution, Circolo Didattico Viale Battisti, is located in Recanati, a town of 21.000 inhabitants, in Marche region, in the middle of Italy. Most of the students belong to families with a good social-economic situation. But there's a very disadvantaged minority made up of migrants from Africa, Romania, Albany and refugees from ex-Yugoslavia. Their problems of integration are principally represented by the barrier of the language the lack of a familiar and social network, the differences in terms of religion and economic level.
IES Sant Vicent Ferrer, in Spain, is a heterogeneous local school. There are some immigrants, basically from Morocco and South America, however the great majority of their students are from Algemesi (their small town) and the surrounded villages. There are secondary studies and vocational studies related to computing too. In total, there are around 700 students. Moreover, they form part of a regional programme called CLIC (Content teacher to teach some language), and their students are really interested in improving their knowledge of other countries.

The concrete objectives of the partnership are:

The promotion of understanding between European citizens.

To design and develop new educational approaches.

To show students how to discover their own and other peoples’ cultural heritage.

Develop skills in cross-curricular and cross-cultural co-operation, strengthening links with the wider European community.

Develop expertise, knowledge, motivation, achievement and new skill for students and teachers.

To compare our educational systems.

Make students become lifelong learners and acquaint themselves with the wider world through interaction with others.

To foster a positive feeling towards the EC.To improve the English of all participants to be involved.

To make all partners familiar with working with ICT and new methods of teaching.

The use of new technology, which teenagers are familiar with, for educational purposes. e.g.: Internet blogs, Skype, Msn, e-books.

To deal with subjects related to the final leaving school exam such as: school, health, home, family and social life, work, travel and tourism, eating, shopping and services, people, sport/culture, science andtechnology, nature environment, state and society. These topics are also related to the B2 national English language examinations.Increase the students motivation to learn English.

We will influence students to get to know the culture of the participating countries.

We will initiate a long lasting and fruitful cooperation between the five schools.

The schools will exchange experience.

Equip our students with skills and qualities useful on the European Labour Market (biographies etc) and useful for the society / tolerance, openness, creativity, courage, self-esteem.