Thursday 15 January 2009

WELCOME TO OUR PROJECT!

Dear colleagues!

Our names are Montse, Maite and Sonia and we’re writing from “Esplugues de Llobregat”, which is a wonderful town close to Barcelona. We work as English teachers in a state primary school called “CEIP Foch i Torres”. This year we would like to participate in a Comenius Programme. Our main reason for doing a Comenius Project is to enrich the intercultural and foreign language competences of our students giving them a wide perspective on school, on everyday life in Europe and the variety of European culture.

There have been many changes in the schools in our society since we were at school so we consider it very important to give our students all the opportunities that this project could generate. We think with this project we can aim to raise pupil’s tolerance towards other cultures and minorities in their own country.

With this e-mail our school is trying to encourage you to join us in the same project. The objective of this project will be to improve our students’ competence in oral skills in English as a foreign language as well as their knowledge of each other’s culture. This could be achieved through virtual communication, using everything that new technologies are able to offer.

We would like to share our local customs and traditions with you showing you how we run our school. In our project we have the participation of all the members that represent our school: Infant Education teachers, Primary Teachers, and the headmaster and other staff at the school. And, of course, we count on the participation of all the children and parents. So, basically it is a project that involves all the school community and not just the English department of the school.

We think this project will be a great opportunity for the pupils to acquire new knowledge, learn about each other’s customs and traditions and become familiar with the minority languages of the different countries that will be involved. It is important to mention, that our school has a basic goal of trying to promote “inclusive education”. This enables students with disabilities to be taught in the regular classroom. We educate students to be citizens in an inclusive society. In our opinion a Comenius Project will give the opportunity to pupil to increase their self-esteem since they realise that a person with a disability can contribute to teamwork and join international projects too.

Another important aspect in our school are newcomers that apart from learning our school language, also have to learn English. They enrich our culture with their own personal experiences. The project could be another nice opportunity to show and share with you their culture.

In connection with this development it is clear that the project would be nice to motivate students to learn English as a foreign language and also it will reinforce and will widen their social and cultural knowledge. We cannot forget how New Technologies will form part of our project being the main support to make communication possible. It could reinforce the social and computer skills of the pupils while strengthening their motivation and confidence. We aim to enhance new technologies as a main tool to achieve our school goal.

Our objective will improve their social skills, self-confidence, develop intercultural understanding and promote their autonomy as learners.

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