School is Us: Sharing Experiences / Todos Somos Escola – Partilhar Experiências.

Hosted by OSOS , contributed by Nazaré on 31 July 2019

Entroncamento is a town in the centre of Portugal and since the beginning it has welcomed many people from different parts of the country. Nowadays the town is the home of several communities from different countries and it is also known for its large gypsy community, a traditional itinerant group who has settled in for many years.

Our school is no different. Some of our students are from different places around the world. 

Through new and motivating learning methodologies, our goal was for the young learners to share their cultural experiences and engage with the different local communities around the school in this process. With this project we wanted to spread on the idea that every kind of knowledge is important to our children’s learning.

Learning Objectives
Share cultural experiences within the local comunity and develop real inclusion skills in society.
Teacher: Nazaré
Age group
6-9
Students participating
20
Thematic Area: Mathematics

Feel

School is US: Sharing Experiences aimed to expand and go beyond the traditional boundaries between the school and the community around it. In order to do so, we started by presenting the OSOS project to the class and then we elicited different students to talk about the places where they or their families are from.

By sharing their own family examples, students were able to think about diversity and different traditions.  In the final part of this process three questions were arisen:

  1. Who are we?
  2. How many are we?
  3. What do we have in common and what do we share?

Imagine

At this stage we decided to create a logo for the project. Then we encouraged the students to do a brainstorming in order to get ideas to write a guideline with the different steps of  the project. Kids decided to:

  • ask questions to family and neighbours;
  • make Christmas cards and offer them to different institutions around school;
  • visit the parish council and interview its president;
  • do some formal research on the internet about the places where they are from;
  • visit the National Railroad Museum;
  • ask their parents to write about their childhood and primary school experiences;
  • visit the city park;
  • participate in the Local Kids Assembly where they would present the conclusions od their project.

All these activities were included and articulated with the 4th grade curriculum.

Create

During the 2nd and 3rd terms, students were able to produce two boards where they presented the results of their research: they painted and marked on a map the places where Entroncamento communities are from. The class participated in a school exhibition and won the merit award.

Outside the classroom, in the corridor wall students painted a second board which was intitled Work in Progress. They were able to present all the work they had been doing throughout the school year.

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Share

In order to finish their OSOS project students prepared and participated in the Local Kids Assembly hosted by the City Hall, Políticos de Palmo e Meio. The students had the opportunity to participate in a political assembly where they presented the project to the community in the presence of other schools. They even questioned the mayor about the integration policy of the foreign communities. The students were praised for their work and the relevance of this project.

Throughout the school year students created and kept a blog so that all the community could be informed about their work: http://todossomosescola.blogspot.com/.