Activities
The main purpose of this event was to equip teachers with methods and practices successfully implemented by the Spanish partner school with a view to adopting them. The Spanish school has good practices in the following areas:
● Inclusive education
● CLIL
● Project based learning
● Handling disciplinary issues
INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
The Director of Studies gave a presentation about the Spanish school system and the special programme the school has to integrate disabled children. The supporting staff: psychologist, physiotherapist, SEN teacher, assistants, etc. depending on the problem work together and have weekly meetings to discuss the needs and development of each student concerned. They also help the other teachers with ideas they can use to improve their students’ performance. We also had the chance to meet a former disabled student and learn how the school helped him to build a career and lead a happy life.
CLIL
We visited a Biology lesson to see how CLIL works In this lesson the systematic collaboration and hierarchy of human organs was introduced by an analogy of a production company (Economics). Students drew and presented how a company is built up and how the departments depend on each other and what the process of producing something goes on. It was very interesting.
PROJECT BASED LEARNING AND CLIL
We observed two English classes in which a new project was introduced which is inserted into the curriculum but provides additional learning material for students. In this project the stages of human life are linked to literature. Students read and talk about pieces of literature they liked reading since they were born and discuss how their reading habits change with time.
We also had a very intensive and interactive workshop on project based learning held by Schyler Hedstrom. After discussing the theory we worked in small groups on a project. Each member had a different role with fancy names like Google Guru, Social Butterflies, Wallflowers and we had to come up with ideas using ICT in the classroom.
MEDIATION - HANDLING DISCIPLINARY ISSUES
The school operates a voluntary based group of mediators who try to prevent or handle minor or major social or disciplinary problems at school. This is a group of students, preferably one or two from each class who partly pay attention to bullying or discrimination or exclusion and partly try to mediate between opposing parties or help students in trouble. They work along the codes of disciplinary problems at school that was also introduced by the Director of Studies. Besides talking about this system we role played some situations the teacher leaders of the group use to train the student moderators.
CULTURAL VISITS
Museo Sorolla - We learnt about painting techniques, handling of colours and relationship between painting and photography.
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando - Here the focus besides the fine arts was on the history of the Academia as well as cultural life of Spain.
Alcalá de Henares - The oldest university town of Spain has lots of historical and cultural sites including the longest arcade which is also a UNESCO Heritage site. We visited some university buildings and attended a presentation of an old theatre.
Corral de Comedias - In the evening we watched a traditional Spanish theatre play that is close to the operette as a genre.
All in all we had some wonderful days in Madrid full of training and cultural events. The school has a very good atmosphere and we met and talked to several teachers and other members of the staff. We prepared for the tasks of the year in terms of methodology and scheduling and discussing them in detail.