New Horizons For St Brides C/W Primary!

Having been successful in their bid to become a Comenius link school, staff at St Brides C/W Primary School have recently travelled to Catalonia to visit one of their partner schools as they embarked on the first of four Comenius Project transnational trips.

The schools Comenius project will see the five partner schools from the Czech Republic, Italy, Catalonia, Sweden and Wales work collaboratively over the next two years to produce work under the projects title ‘Caring For Our World’ which will incorporate all aspects of the curriculum and will endeavour to inspire the pupils to learn about becoming global citizens.

Pupils will learn about each others’ language and culture, compare and contrast the characteristics of the countries native woodlands and explore the ways in which each country raises money for local, national and international charities. This work will also be accompanied by the exchanging of e-mails, speaking about their work via video-conferencing and sending each other samples of work and information.  

Father Philip Morris, Mrs Mair Decker and Mrs Rachel Glover, accompanied by their Comenius mascot Dewi the Dragon spent four days visiting their partner school, CEIP Castell Ciuró in Molins de Rei, near Barcelona. Although some of the time was spent in conference, planning the next round of project work, the visitors were treated to a warm welcome by their Catalan partners as the school put on a whole host of activities aimed at showing their guests the Catalan education system and culture.

Part of the visit also saw the culmination of a project logo competition. Entries from each partner school were put forward with the winning logo being chosen from the Catalan school.

The staff of St Brides were over-whelmed by the host school’s hospitality and were especially touched that the school had arranged for the town to put on a mini ‘fiesta’ in their honour. This involved the towns “El Camell” mascot being paraded as well as towns people creating human pyramids. Staff were also invited to the Town Council Chambers where they met the mayor and exchanged gifts.

St Brides Primary is now looking forward to sharing and using the exchanged work with its pupils, staff and community during 2009.

‘ El Camell’	Dewi the Dragon enjoying lessons with Y6 pupils in CEIP Castell Ciuró.