The official name of our school is OSNOVNA ŠOLA LOVRENC NA POHORJU (Lovrenc na Pohorju Primary School)

Address:
Osnovna šola Lovrenc na Pohorju
Šolska ulica 6
2344 Lovrenc na Pohorju, Slovenia

Lovrenc na Pohorju is a countryside village in the heart of the Pohorje valley with a population of around 3200 inhabitants. The nearest large city is Maribor, the second largest city in Slovenia.
The area where our local school is located is considered a disadvantaged area. Lots of people have to commute to other near-by cities for work, or, even worse, have no job. In the last years, a lot of our citizens were made redundant. There are a few agricultural workers. Lots of parents do not live together or are divorced. Quite a lot of pupils therefore have serious financial and social problems, as their parents are without income, often having only basics education and thus not being very capable of looking after their children very well. We therefore organize charity events, such as “Drobtinica” (“bread crumbs”) in collaboration with the Red Cross to raise money for disadvantaged families.
The school has 240 students (age 6 to age 15), attending classes from 1 to 9, 30 teachers and 4 special educators. Our school is inclusive, so our percentage of students with special needs is relatively high – 20%. However, this includes students with general learning difficulties, ADHD students, hearing impaired students as well as gifted students. Our teachers and special educators help the students in need and for our gifted students, we organize camps. Currently, we have no refugee or Romani students.
The language spoken at school is Slovenian. All children start learning English in the first year and have it for nine years. Some older pupils also learn German and French.
School subjects are Slovenian, English, German, French, Math, Nature Studies, Society, Art, Music, Physical Education, Science, Engineering and Technology, Physics, Chemistry, Ethics, Household Management, History, Geography, Astronomy, Tourism, Ethnology, Computing, Chess.
We allow students to broaden their knowledge and skills in a variety of areas of interests: choirs, music classes, puppet club, cheerleaders, English and German Reading Badge, happy school, young beekeepers, local hobby club, art club, photography club, vivaristics, traffic circle, historic club and theater club, school newspaper, school radio…
Thanks to many donations, our school has an Interactive White Board in every classroom and we frequently include ICT supported teaching in our lesson planning. We also have a computer lab.
After completing our programme, most of our students either wish to attend a general secondary school in order to later attend a university, or choose to attend a vocational school and seek employment in our region.
We also organize many different themed days (culture, science, sports, engineering).
Our students participate in many competitions, some of them are nationwide, for example Slovenian, Mathematics and Logic, English, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, History and sports.
Students also attend the so-called "Outdoor school":
Year 2 students go to a cabin for three days, where they will learn all about life and work in the woods.Year 3 students go to a nearby swimming resort for 10 days, where they learn how to swim.Year 4 students visit the seaside for 5 days, where they learn all about coastal life.Year 5 students go to a mountain cabin for 5 days, where they learn how to ski or ski cross-country. Year 7 students visit the Karst region for 5 days and learn about this very specific landscape and its features (intermittent lake Cerknica and the caves).
At school we have “Protector” project. Students from Year 9 are “Protectors” of Year 1 students. They attend workshops together and act as support for the younger students.
We participated in an international Comenius Project: A healthy mind in a healthy body. The project lasted two years. Participating schools are from Spain (Sevilla, Dos Hermanas), Iceland, Norway, Finland, Germany, Cyprus and Slovenia. All participants gained a lot of knowledge and experience.
Both teachers and students like to attend our school and work very hard to not only teach our students useful life skills, but put a great emphasis on teaching empathy and positive interpersonal relationships.
Our main needs and interests during this project are to:

• •        get a general idea of how teaching is done in Spain
• •        find out how Spanish teachers approach project work and outdoor lessons
• •        how you incorporate ICT in your classrooms
• •        see how CLIL methodology is implemented in foreign language and other lessons
• •        interchange experience and knowledge of teaching methods and approaches
• •        how you deal with special needs students (both exceptional students and students with difficulties)

The school has gained these titles: Eco school, Healthy school, Cultural school and A young basketball player school. All the titles are confirmed annually.
Year-round, we execute the following projects:
Eco-School, Formative Assessment of Knowledge, Heavenly Library, Growing with a Book, Fruits of Society, The School Fruit Scheme, Lifelong Learning Week, Traffic Safety, Healthy School, Symbiosis Movement, Healthy Lifestyle and “Protectors”.
Our students are very successful in school competitions; they also participate in regional and national competitions, where they get the highest awards. They are also successful in sports, mainly basketball. We are also active in drama, performing an annual play with our drama club on 8 February, our National Day of Culture.
Every year, we self-evaluate a chosen field of interest. Teachers, students and parents fill out questionnaires about the work and climate at the school. This way, we find key areas that need improvement which form the basis for your yearly plan. This has proven to be a very efficient way of improving certain areas. Currently, we are focusing most on interpersonal relationships, formative assessment and reading-writing strategies. We have built an outdoor classroom, a school garden and a school orchard. These will continue to be at the top of our priority list next year.
Students can also participate in a Student Parliament, which is of course made up of students from the entire school. They meet several times a year, where they discuss their opinions and wishes regarding work at school. Their opinion is taken into account when we choose what areas to focus our energy on. So far, we think we’re doing a good job, but there is always room for improvement.
The personell participating in the project are:

• Marija Osvald Novak – headmistress, English and Slovenian language teacher
• Irena Črešnar – co-ordinator, class teacher,
• Goran Poglajen – class teacher,
• Alenka Kasjak – class teacher, English for Young Learners teacher,
• Monika Novak – English and German teacher,
• Nataša Kušar – English and German teacher,
• Petra Krivc – Mathematics, Physics, IT and Astronomy teacher
• Andrej Čokl – Chemistry and IT teacher,
• Mateja Žerjav – Slovenian language teacher,
• Barbara Rocek Bregar – Slovenian language teacher, librarian,
• Primož Vračko – P.E. teacher,
• Nataša Strmšnik – special educator,
• Helena Lorbek – special educator,
• Venčeslava Rakovnik – special educator

Most of them have already participated in the Comenius project. We have visited schools in Norway, Finland, Cyprus, Iceland and Spain. They are prepared to arrange observation practice and activities across the curriculum, some would like to see what teaching looks like in Spain. Others have applied for seminars in other foreign countries. We have not yet assigned roles specifically, because we are unsure if the number of teachers depends on the number of teachers visiting or not. All of them are actively involved in preparing the project and forming the main goals of the project. The headmistress and I, the coordinator are leading the project; we will fill out the application and communicate with other participating schools.

Our main needs and interests during this project are to:

• get a basic idea of how teaching is practiced in Spain
• see how CLIL methodology is implemented
• interchange experience and knowledge of teaching methods and approaches
• find out how you teachers approach project work and outdoor lessons
• how you incorporate technology in your classrooms
• how you deal with students with learning difficulties and gifted students