Comenius 1-1: School Project

"Freedom and Limits - Conditions and contradictions for young people in Europe"

Palencia Conference
November 18th - 21st, 2008

Kurt-Tucholsky-Gymnasium – Hamburg
Tørring Amtsgymnasium - Tørring
IES Jorge Manrique – Palencia

Index

I. Evaluation of the first theme: Neighbours 

  • Germany                 
  • Spain                                     
  • Denmark                                          
  • Conclusion                                       

 II. Planning the second theme: Time                

  • Work in national groups                             
  • Work in topic groups                                   
  • Deadlines                                                     
  • Next conference                                          
  • Comenius news                                            
  • Other activities                                            

III. Cultural programme

IV. ANNEXES:
                           
Annex 1: Comenius Time (ideas suggested by Germany)
Annex 2: List of literature
Conference programme
List of participants
Addresses

I. Evaluation of the first theme: Neighbours

Germany
2 groups worked on the project:
A 7th grade class of 27 students worked in Geography, 12 lessons
An 11th grade bilingual class of 26 students worked in Social Science in a project week and thus spent 34-35 lessons on the project.
Three teachers were involved.

Work has been carried out on the cartoons and the students have created new symbols to represent the European countries. A lot of work was concentrated on the questionnaire and discussions on prejudice and apparently a lot of negative prejudice due to lack of knowledge was going around.
The discussion on prejudice will continue in Geography and Social Science classes.

In the game about the European house the students could choose which countries they wanted to represent, but it soon turned out that nobody wanted to represent the Poles or the French. All wanted to be well-known countries. They compiled a lot of information on their countries, gave lectures, showed photos and all this helped reduce the prejudice. The students had troubles with the immense flood of information, among others from geography books and Wikipedia.

They discussed how the house should be formed, where were the most attractive flats, for instance the sunny side/the shallow side/parking places and they added rooms for being together. The struggle for a better place has not yet been worked out.

The plan is to repeat the theme in the 11th grade and to focus on cultural and social issues.

Spain
Seven teachers worked in the project and three grades have been involved: 3rd eso, 1st bachillerato and 2nd bachillerato. About 150 students have been involved in the following subjects: Music (6 lessons), History (6 lessons), Science (14 lessons), Spanish (3 lessons), English (4 lessons), Philosophy (4 lessons), Educación Infantil (Child Pedagogic, 2 lessons).

Four teachers worked on the questionnaire. Due the amount and quality of the answers not all the arguments about the different countries were passed on to the partners. It is clear that the Spanish students lack knowledge about the north and Austria. They know the nearest countries best.
In music work has been carried out on national anthems and typical music from the different countries. A CD was produced.

In science lessons students searched for the perfectly balanced European diet, combining different dishes from the different countries.

Spanish students made drawings of the European House as homework. They also discussed rules for the common room in the house.
By a lottery the nations were distributed to 12 groups of two persons. Work was translated from Spanish into English. The students wrote a lot about the countries and discussed the prejudice.

Denmark
Three groups took part: a 3rd grade English (24 students) and two 2nd grade Spanish classes (respectively 23 and 19 students). Each class spent about 10 hours on the work. Two teachers were involved.

Like in the other countries the Danish students know their nearest neighbours the best, and for instance lack knowledge about Spain. A quite jovial attitude to the prejudice about the different countries was seen.

In one Spanish class the work on the European House was carried out in a system of small groups and matrix groups and thus they found a fair distribution of the nations in the house. They discussed and set the rules for the house and some wrote gossip stories about life in the house.
In the other Spanish class as well as in the English class the nations were distributed to different groups as well as in the house by a lottery. After a presentation of the countries there was a battle on arguments to achieve a better position in the house. Some countries were very successful in getting a better position due to the strength of the arguments of the groups.

Finally the Danish students produced a newspaper about life in the European House in principle dealing with three genres: crime report, letters to the editor and advertisements.

Conclusion
Summing up the evaluation the Danish students found that it had been fun to do the project, some said it was interesting even not everybody was serious about it. There was a high degree of language production in both Spanish and English classes.

The German students were reluctant at first, but became interested after a while.

Also the Spanish students were interested, but found out that they didn’t know much about some of the other countries. It has been useful to see the results and to compare.

It is interesting to see that there are many similarities in the way we (pre-) judge other nationalities.

II.- Planning the second theme: Time

The conference decided to work first in national groups, then in topic groups.
The Germans had prepared some suggestions at home (see annex 1), which conveyed a point of departure for everybody.

a) Work in national groups
Denmark
Since it must always be kept in mind, which classes to work with, the following points would be of interest in a Danish perspective:
The technical part sounded interesting – for instance building a clock, working with how to measure time, reaction times, speed etc.

Also routines would be an interesting aspect, both daily and yearly routines, as well as in a life perspective. Traditions in the different countries should be included.

Psychological time could be interesting, but no concrete ideas about how to work were presented.
The Danes would like to add another point to the German list (annex 1): Literature.
We could work with different stories about time, f. ex. Michael Ende: Momo, H.G: Wells: The Time Machine, Samuel Becket: Waiting for Godot, (see list of literature in annex 2). A task could be to write a new ending for an old story.

Spain
Spain had also discussed in the line of working with literature. They would like to work with poetry, for instance reading poetry related to time by 17th century poet Quevedo. Afterwards the students could write an essay.
Routines would also suit the Spaniards and in the special subject in Jorge Manrique, Educación Infantil (Child Pedagogic) it would be an interesting question to work with the way children perceive time.
History could work with old buildings, f. ex. organize pictures of buildings in the right chronological order.

Germany
Also Germany suggested reading stories concerning time, f. ex. Wolfgang Borchert: Die Küchenuhr and afterwards the students could write their own time stories, thus one focus should be on experiences with time in literature.
The German group also considered which subjects could take part and came up with the following: How to measure time in Physics/Maths
A questionnaire on different routines could be done in any subject.
Art: could try to make time visible, followed by an exhibition.
Biology could work on how you perceive time, f. ex. a small experiment on what you see first: look at two colours and try to establish which one was first.
Further suggestions for the literature/language classes could be to work on proverbs about time or to tell a story backwards or from the middle, or ….

b) Work in topic groups
After the national round we worked in three topic groups trying to substantiate the work we could do in class. In the following the results from the groups and the final decisions are presented.

1. Technical work
Relevant subjects could be Physics, Chemistry, Biology …
The main task should be to build a clock. It could be a sundial, water clock, digital clock etc, the complexity will depend on the level of the class in question.
Other relevant aspects would be to work on speed, black holes (other places in the universe?), other ways of estimating time (calendars etc.), time travelling.
A possible text for further studies is Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Time
A common product should be a photo or video documentation of the process and the results.

2, Routines
There was a consensus to work on an extended version of a weekly timetable. It should include not only school, but also eating habits, spare time activities etc.
Work should also include a presentation of routines in a larger perspective: a year and a lifetime, including typical traditions, celebrations or family events.
Germany will prepare a questionnaire, which should be answered during the 2nd week of January
Denmark will prepare the instruction. Work must be exchanged at the end of February

3. Literature
The literature group worked on three main tasks: proverbs, poems and short stories/novels.

Proverbs
Proverbs related to time should be passed on in the original language and translated into English. Partners try to find equivalents in their own language and return these (in original language and in English) to the other partners.

Poems
Literature and language classes read poems about time. Afterwards the students write their own poems about time. A selection of the five best ones should be sent to partners in original and English versions by e-mail or by snail mail.

Stories
Likewise literature/language classes read and analyse stories (short stories/novels) about time. For further inspiration see annex 2.
Afterwards students write essays and the best ones should be passed on to the partners.

Essay title: The day all clocks stopped.
The classes may decide to have a common introduction, or decide on a common occasion for the event, f. ex. a festival, or the same location f. ex. in class, at the station, in the street…
The task is to find out how to start time again.

c) Deadlines
Teachers exchange list of texts and other material before Christmas 2008 .
Answers to questionnaire about routines should be exchanged by mid-January 2009
Work on routines should be exchanged at the end of February 2009
All other work must be finished before the next conference: April 21st 2009 .

d) Next conference
The next and final conference in this project will be held 22-24 April-2009 in Hamburg.
Spain suggested that we should really make it a Grand Finale by bringing more teachers than usual. We will all try to find out which possibilities we have and how much money is left.

e) Comenius news
It was decided to make a last issue of Comenius news. The following content was suggested.

Ole on school in DK
Aylin and Kibar on the Tørring conference spring 08
Danish students on the Palencia conference autumn 08
Neighbourhood article (from Danish students’ newspaper)
House representation from Spain, food-project from Spain
Results from work on Time
Harry’s Corner

The articles should be sent to Inger as soon as possible (by January). This last issue will be published in connection with the conference in April and the following number of copies will be distributed:
Hamburg: 250, Palencia: 400, Tørring: 250, which makes a total of 1000 copies.

e) Other activities
A teachers’ visit from KTG to Tørring was scheduled to take place at the end of January.
A new round of individual students’ exchange was settled between Palencia and Tørring. The plan is to send Danish students to Palencia in February and place the revisit in connection with the Comenius Conference, possibly 13.04-26.04.

III. Cultural programme

The ABC of our cultural programme was Alcaldes, Bodegas and Cathedrals.

We started in Palencia where once again Alcalde Heliodoro Gallego took his time to talk with us and to show us the treasures of the town hall.

Another Alcalde, this time an Alcaldesa, Concha Gallardo, showed us around in the tiny village of Támara with its enormous Cathedral, San Hipólito. Thanks to her hard work and some support from the cultural heritage foundation (in which our good colleague Conchita is deeply involved), the Cathedral has been restored and is still in a restoration process. The Alcaldesa also took us to see a small local museum and a highlight was when she invited us for a drink in her own private wine Bodega. It seems that all Spaniards in Castilla-Leon have private Bodegas.
The village itself was in sharp contrast to the Cathedral since this is one of the places that are being depopulated – a big and growing problem for many villages in Castilla-Leon. Nowadays only around 50 people live in the village of Támara and most of them are quite old.

After Támara we went to Frómista to visit its austere Romanesque Church of San Martín on the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela. The showing-around was done by Jorge Manrique teachers who live in Frómista. Of course one of the teachers had a Bodega in the outskirts of the town, and we were generously offered to visit the cellars and to taste the products. Even we were a little late we managed another sight: the light and sound show in Church of Santa María del Castillo, which informs about the history of Frómista, not least the role it has played for the pilgrimages to Santiago.

The next day we had a very competent tour of the Archaeological Museum in Palencia. Afterwards the teachers went to Burgos, the city of El Cid (national hero of the 11th century) and famous for its splendid Cathedral. We had time to walk the streets of Burgos and get a first feeling of the Spanish Christmas atmosphere. Actually it seems that the Spaniards are not so overwhelmingly concerned with Christmas like we are in some other countries. At least Christmas decorations in shop windows and in the streets were only at a starting point and were at any rate more modest than in Denmark. Unfortunately we had no Bodegas this day, though time enough to buy cheese and other local specialities.

The last out-of-town excursion took us to Tordesillas where we started our visit in the Convent of Santa Clara. Apart from the predominant Gothic style the convent had a very unique Mudejar ceiling.
After the Convent we strolled through the city, passing the old Plaza Mayor (English: Alcalde Square) with its traditional arcades supported by wooden columns. Many bull fights have been held on this square.
And then of course our daily Bodega, this time a more commercial one: Bodega Muelas, whose cellars are extending for several kilometres under the village. The Bodega is a family business and three generations are working there together today. After an interesting round and presentation by the owner, we all bought several bottles of wine.

Everywhere we had wonderful food, often very rich tapas-menus, and not least with a lot of jamón. The last evening in Palencia we joined an official dinner with headmaster Jesús Coria and other school people. Special guest star this evening was Harry, who unfortunately had been hindered in taking part in the conference this time, due to a hospital stay, but who surprised everybody by appearing unexpectedly right before the dinner. Thus we could end the last conference in Palencia with all three “founding fathers/mothers” of the last 10 years’ joint Comenius work present.

Many thanks to our hosts who organized everything so perfectly well.

Inger Lehmann