School and island presentation

Country Presentation

We are a primary school, located in Las Palmas of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain). The number of students is approximately 172, with ages between 3 and 12 years old in the current year. In our center we have 22 different nationalities and 72 of them are immigrants. We also have students with special educational needs. The students come from different social classes and around 54,65% of them arise from jobless families (all family members unemployed). Our staff at the school is composed by 13 teachers, where the center it is provided by several facilities. Since the academic year (2009/2010) we are developing a Multilingual Plan at the school covering three languages: Spanish, English and French. All subjects are taught in Spanish but students start with the English language at the age of 3 years old, and they also start learning French at 10. The main aim for our teachers is to achieve the integration of children coming from different social groups to form an active part of the Spanish society. In this sense, we are acutely aware of the empowerment of personal values of solidarity, cooperation, interculturality, responsibility and inclusion, using those values as a backbone of our teaching practice. This is the reason why we believe that the participation in this project would help our students to improve their skills in another language such as English (using it in a deep context and not only as a formal language acquisition); and to realize that we belong to the European Union and becoming aware that we are not so different from other countries. The teacher in charge of it is Mr. Vicente Manuel Marco Miralles, and most of the staff is collaborating. They will also be constantly informed about the process of the project, so that nearly every teacher of the school could overtake this role. Although the principal of my school, MS. Coralia del Pino Ojeda García, will take over my role only in the event of Mr. Vicente Marco leaves his project position in the future. As I mentioned above, we are a multilingual, multicultural school whose students have got a low level acquisition. The person in charge of the project has already participated in two Comenius projects (in 2011 and in 2013) and he will be glad to add his experience to this project. Although the school has not experience on this kind of projects. Our educational community is eager to work and learn waiting it with enthusiasm.