I’ll be putting some information on here later this week, but a bit of news is that I have heard from our friend Rita in Portugal who has, with her pupils, created a blog about famous europeans. It can be found at:

http://grandeseuropeus.blogspot.com/

It is in Portuguese, but you can translate using the google translate bar at the top.

They would be delighted if you would have a look and leave a comment, so please try at home (we’re not able to access the site in school, which is a shame!) The english European one of the students has written about is William Shakespeare – see if you can find the page, translate it and learn something, then leave a comment!

Today the children in Y3 watched the DVD about their friends in Spain, and read the book the Spanish children have made for them. Y6 watched the DVD from Turkey, and have been looking at the Portuguese book, Y4 have been finding out about Denmark…

On Tuesday the whole school came into an assembly to find out more about Denmark, Mrs. Brankin and Miss Newham have been sharing all our news with the younger children and Mr Hewer and Mrs Shotton are spending time with the junior classes to allow them to ask questions and find out lots more.

There is plenty more to come, the teachers have all now been given contact details for the schools they will be getting in touch with in the first instance… which are:
Y5 and Y6 will be communicating with our Portuguese and Turkish friends,
Y3 and Y4 will be getting in touch with the children in Poland and Bulgaria,
Y2 and Y1 will be contacting the Danish school,
and our Nursery and Reception children will be sharing pictures and questions with our friends in Spain.

We hope to find out lots of new things about the children and our varied lifestyles, please help your children to think of things they might like to find out when they ’speak’ to their new friends!
More information will be coming home next week, along with a simple task for the Comenius project which we would like all the children to carry out as their homework. (Details to follow)
The children are looking forward to watching the other school’s DVDs, we have 3 so far, and reading the books, which have been beautifully made and once the children have read them they will go downstairs with the Comenius display.

More pictures are now on the Y3 blog.

Follow the links to the school’s own websites, or look at the new Comenius website showing details of all the schools and the aims of the project at www.greateuropeans.eu

Don’t forget, if you would like to see this information written in a different language, just go to the google translate bar on the side of the page!

Mr Hewer, Mrs Shotton, Mrs Brankin and Miss Newham have had the fantastic opportunity to visit the wonderful country Denmark. We had a fantastic time, meeting up with friends that we made in Poland and of course meeting new members of the project. The week flew by there was so much to see and learn about the culture and country. Where do I start? We arrived Sunday evening after a full day of travelling to be met by by the Head Teacher from the Danish school in Bronderslev to be taken to a hotel which can be seen in the pictures below. The following day we spent in school (Sondergades), where we experienced lessons in Danish about their chosen famous European ‘Hans Christian Anderson’. The children were well behaved, one of the obvious things we noticed was the small class sizes however there were no Teaching Assistants. The country had an unprecedented amount of snow… like us but they seemed to be able to cope a lot better. The snow ploughs ensure the pavements and roads are clear so people can get on with their usual day. We had a guided tour of the school where we were able to make comparisons of similarities and differences to Green Park. We had a chance to meet up with the 6 other countries to discuss developments in the program. We were very lucky as we had a day trip to the most northern tip of Denmark where we had a cold walk along a beach in nothern Jutland ‘Skagen’ where we saw seals and when we stood in the sea we were actually standing in two oceans – very clever!! The tour continued where we saw scenes from the famous Skagen artists.  We were taken to ‘Lonstrup’ an area where the cliffs were eroding an incredible 5 to 10 metres a year and summer houses and a church were in trouble of going over the cliff edge. A very kind teacher ‘Lars’ from the Danish school invited us all back to his home for afternoon tea and to meet his family. The Danish people we met were warm and generous it was a pleasure to meet them.  Anyway…there’s so much more to tell you but you’ll see in the assembly next week so have a look at our best bits!

On the Friday before last. Mr Hewer and Mrs Shotton led a special assembly with George Howarth MP, governors of the school and the reporter and photographer from the Maghull Champion, and of course all the children and staff!

We looked at how the Comenius project is taking shape, and what is next on the agenda.

The children did really well to recognise all the flags of the different countries, and learned lots about the school and areas we visited in Poland. The presentation can be found on the school system and Mr Rafferty is going to try to put a version of it on here too, so that the children can have a proper look at another time.

The main points of the assembly were..
-To give more information about the trip to meet the partners in Poland and to share pictures of them and our time in Poland.

-To tell the children which of their suggestions for our famous British Europeans had been successful… and these were
The Beatles, J.K.Rowling and Florence Nightingale.

-To tell the children about the next step in the project.
In January there will be a group of staff from Green Park heading to our next partner country, Denmark. We need to take some things with us…
A DVD of our school, which we are busy compiling at the moment, and
A piece of work to introduce the children from each partner school to our classes and give one contact email address for each class and details of how to link to our website.
Hopefully we will get lots of messages from our new friends in this way, and it will be lovely and safe because we will only be receiving and sending mail through one class address.

We appeared in the Maghull Champion last week, and we will be sending a copy of this press release to the British Council, who are delighted with what we have achieved so far.

Watch this space – I’ll try and get some nice pictures on, and we had better start learning a little Danish to help with the next trip!!

It has been a busy, fun and hard working week for us in Poland.
We had a very long journey home – partly due to a missed flight – whoops, wasn’t our fault!! After an eventful 24 hours, though, we are here.

Here are a few photos of our time in Poland, some from the wonderful school that we visited, with staff and children as nice as those as Green Park – we didn’t think that was possible!
Some of the photos are of our teacher partners, and there might even be one or two trips out, unusual trains and us doing a little bit of teaching ourselves!

The partners loved the books you made for them, and they were so impressed that they have made some future plans as a result of them… We’ll tell you more soon!

We will be talking to you all very soon and showing you lots more photos in the next couple of weeks, but these are just a few to be going along with!

Mr Hewer and Mrs Shotton in Poland, October 2009 on PhotoPeach

Get a Voki now!

We are having a great time, the people from all of the countries are lovely. Mr. Hewer says hello, he is starting to feel much better and looks forward to seeing you all soon. (He says the food is helping him to recover!)

We are working hard and I hope you are too! : )

I will try to put some photos on later but we have to back to our meeting in a minute so bye for now!

Love from Mrs S and Mr H xxxx

In our entrance hall you will see a display with lots of maps and flags, and words in other languages.

This is because our friends at the British Council, (if you remember they said they were so pleased with our international links that they gave us a special International Schools Award last year) have been back in touch with Mr Hewer and he has asked them if we can take part in another very important project… and they said yes!

So Mr Hewer was busy filling in forms and applications last February,  and we have reached an agreement for 7 schools in 7 countries to work together to make our schools more aware of each other, our countries, and our place in Europe.  We will be learning a lot about our own country and the other 6 countries too, and we will share links and curriculum ideas, hopefully through ICT, art and lots of other different ways.

At the moment it is all very new to us, and we don’t know what will  happen.

Next week, 2 members of staff will be going to Ciechanow in Poland to meet the group co-ordinator and staff from all of the other schools, to decide how we will begin the project which is going to last for 2 years.  We are very excited to meet the children and they will be delighted with the pictures that you have sent to them.

These are the schools that will be meeting up:

Społeczna Szkoła Podstawowa STO

 Ciechanow, Poland

15 СОУ „Адам Мицкевич”

Sofia, Bulgaria

Søndergades Skole

Brønderslev, Denmark

Agrupamento de Escolas de S.Teotónio

S.Teotónio, Portugal

CRA Villayón

Villayón, Spain

NECİP-MÜNİRE ÖNEMLİ İLKÖĞRETİM OKULU

  Aksaray, Turkey

And…

Green Park Community Primary School,

Maghull, England

So the 7 countries are Poland, Bulgaria, Denmark, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and England.

You can find all of these countries on the google map link to the right – what else can you find out about them?

Make sure you have a look in the entrance hall to find out more about the project, and watch this space!