THE SCHOOLS

These are the schools which will be participating in our Comenius project:

-HUNDERUPSKOLEN (ODENSE, DENMARK)

Hunderupskolen is a school of 781 pupils and has a faculty of 48 teachers . The pupils range from pre-school to the 9th grade. The school is one of our city's biggest and is located in the centre of Odense, which is the 3rd biggest city in Denmark. The school is well known for high standards in creating stimulating learning environments for the students. The majority of the parents have graduated from long educations and they ask questions to improve their children's education. They are very supportive parents! The faculty is a mix of many interests and teachers supply/support each other both in teaching, but also in social ways. Hunderupskolen is a relatively new school, but it has managed to build up good traditions during the year which encourage the students to help and understand each other across grades and age. Being part of this project will hopefully enable the students to expand their perception of what it means to be a European citizen instead of just being Danish. And this on many levels.  

The school is the coordinating school and will be in charge of getting the project moving forward.

-TINGLOKKESKOLEN (ODENSE, DENMARK)

Tingløkkeskolen is a public, Danish school situated in the South Western part of the town Odense. The school has approximately 650 students ranking from the age of five to sixteen years, and they are divided into groups from kindergarten to the 9th grade.  The ethnic and cultural background of our students vary and about 16,6 % have another nationality than Danish. 

The teacher faculty has about 50 members, but our school also has an after-school centre, so the entire staff consists of 70. 

We teach in two main teams: The first team works with kindergarten to the sixth grade, and the second team teaches seventh to ninth grade. Our students are taught English from the third grade and choose either German or French from the seventh grade. 

Tingløkkeskolen was founded in 1952, it has been expanded over time, and has finished a major renovation project in the beginning of 2012, which has brought us even more modern facilities and a better learning environments as well.  The school is surrounded with green areas and the local neighborhood offers sport clubs, a zoo, a historical reconstructed village and other exciting locations to possibly include in the lessons.     

At Tingløkkeskolen we aim to prepare our students for their future life and education by putting a great emphasis on trust, openness, involvement, appreciation and community. Lately we have also been working with implementing Cooperative learning strategies throughout the school. At the moment, we are working on improving our international dimension at Tingløkkeskolen, as well as reviewing and developing our lesson plans and every day structure. 

Furthermore, Tingløkkeskolen is an Eco-School and received a Green Flag in March 2012. This means that we will be able to share good practice regarding Eco-issues.

The school hopes to involve itself in the project in order for us, to share ideas and experience with our European partners. We believe that it will help pupils to compare and contrast different cultures and socio-economic conditions. The title of the project is "Footprints", and it aims to teach the students about the impact of former generations on the lives that teenagers live today, and how one day they will leave various footprints themselves. The emphasis on cultural differences and similarities and history will allow the students to reflect on the lives they lead, and how it affects future generations. Tingloekkeskolen will take on the role as vice coordinator of the project.

-COLEGIO ANTONIO DE NEBRIJA ( MURCIA, SPAIN)

Our school is located in Cabezo de Torres, a rural area in the North of the city of Murcia. It has a total of 807 students between 0 and 18 years of age. It has a total of 102 workers. 90 of them are teachers and the rest work for the different services of the school. Our students can start their education since they are four months and they can leave when they are eighteen years old. 

In our school, the main axis is to make a global formation of our students. We integrate in their education some other areas like dancing, alternative sports like judo or drama. Not only we make good students of them but also good people. Although we give a huge importance to Spanish language, English and French are fully integrated in our curriculum for all our students since they are three years old.

We also give a great importance to the education of children with special needs. In fact there are some students fully integrated in the classrooms with the rest of their partners. They also have a group of teachers specially devoted to them.

In the project “Footprints” we will be in charge of the dissemintation. We will try to make our project known in different media like newspapers, magazines, websites, etc.

-YSGOL BECA (CLUNDERWEN, WALES)

Ysgol Beca is a small rural school with 43 children on the register. It is situated in a small rural village providing education for children of 5 different villages in a radius of 8 miles. The children are of mixed abilities ranging from 3 years old up to 11 years old. It is not a deprived area but the school is situated in an area that is 20 miles from a larger town and so the children suffer from rural depravation since they cannot attend clubs or extra curricular activities often. The school prides itself in giving the children a variety of experiences and promotes the children's awareness of their own culture. This project will further promote the school's vision of developing the children as global citizens who have a good understanding of their place in the community. Ysgol Beca is a Welsh medium school and all pupils leave fully bilingual in both Welsh and English. At present we are encouraging awareness of other European languages and cultures and hope this project will aid us in this endeavor. Ysgol Beca will be in charge of press releases producing a news letter about the project every term to be distributed in the communities of all partner schools and be in charge of updating the online magazine.

-PATTANEN SCHOOL (RAAHE, FINLAND)

Pattanen school is the largest school in Raahe area. We have grades from the 1st to the 9th with pupils between 7 to 16 years of age, about 600 altogether.   Our staff and pupils are interested in various things.  For example, increasing the use of ICT is among our interests. The school is situated in Pattijoki, an area with an increasing number of children in the City of Raahe. The buildings in Pattijoki are mostly detached houses and row houses. Our school would need more space but all available classrooms are occupied. We have some pupils with special needs. Some of them are integrated into the normal classes but there are also small groups for learners of different age with learning or behavioural problems. Our teachers are devoted to guiding learners to work together for the common good. International issues are also important aspects for our pupils to acknowledge. Learning to know pupils of your own age from different parts of Europe and working together on the same kind of issues is an important process in improving understanding of differences and similarities between nations. This project could be a huge learning opportunity for both our teachers and pupils.