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Ysgol Y Dderi is a rural community primary school located in the Teifi valley of west Wales, halfway between Tregaron and the old university town of Lampeter. But that’s just our location on a map. Creatively speaking, we’re at the heart of Europe – thanks to a Comenius 3 network called Roots and Wings, which began in 1997.
What started off as a group of five schools (ourselves, Dalby Skole in Denmark, Gjerstad Skole in Norway, Gianni Rodari in Aliagna, Italy and Carducci on Elba), is today a community of seven, with the addition of Jelgava School in Latvia and Knockea School in the Republic of Ireland.
Comenius 3 networks enable partners across Europe with experience of joint projects to develop further links and disseminate findings on a particular theme. Here at Ysgol y Dderi, we aim to develop our Roots and Wings network so that it is not only embedded into the curriculum, but staff are as stimulated by it as much as the pupils – without adding too much to teachers’ workloads, of course! In this way, we hope to approach the internationalisation of our school in a truly holistic fashion.
So how does it work? Firstly, we decide on a common theme for a term, which is then developed by the teachers. In this way, we can make sure we’re covering all aspects of the National Curriculum in Wales. Next, we gather for our bi-annual Comenius 3 planning and evaluation meetings, held in a different partner school each time. Here, teachers get a chance to discuss ways to develop the project – including, of course, ideas from students. The meetings are attended by two pupils from each partner school, who are always amazingly creative in what they come up with for us to develop further into a practical project.
Take the theme we’re currently involved with, for example – Our Square Kilometre (the European version of our square mile!). Pupils were keen to look at their different natural heritages by studying plants native to each of their regions, and exploring the cultural, scientific and historic reasons for these being there. Then each school sent packages of seeds off to their partners (Ysgol y Dderi translates as Oak Tree School, so naturally we included acorns as part of our package!).
Here in Wales, the whole school was involved in the early investigative work, while the difficult job of planting and nurturing the seeds we received has been given to the nursery and reception classes, ably helped by our SEN pupils. So the aim is to create a garden which has a distinctive European flavour.
But it’s not just the Roots and Wings project that we use to drive the international agenda here. Ysgol y Dderi is a Welsh medium school, so our pupils are all bilingual from the age of three. This year, we took the opportunity to make them trilingual as well, thanks to a grant from the British Council which enabled us to appoint a Comenius language assistant to teach Italian here for six months from December 2003.
The result? Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 (children aged 7-11 years old) sang the Italian version of If You’re Happy and You Know It at our 2004 summer concert, while pupils can now walk around the school greeting friends, family and visitors in Italian. Twelve local villagers who also took lessons with Annalisa, our language assistant, are now able to hold a basic conversation in Italian, with one family even jetting off to Italy for their summer holidays!
Another example is our child council, established as the result of a Comenius 1 project which saw our headteacher (or ‘Mrs Ann’, as the pupils fondly call her) spend two weeks at Gjerstad Skole in Norway on a teacher exchange. She was very impressed by the child council they had set up there, and was determined that we launch a similar version. Our council has now been running successfully for five years – members’ duties include representing their year group at monthly meetings, reporting to the governing body termly, and even sitting in on such meetings as the interviewing of new members of staff.
We have also just said a fond farewell to a group of 16 Latvian children and two teachers, who spent a week with us at the school on an exchange visit which was rewarding for all of us.
Through Comenius 1, every staff member at Ysgol y Dderi has taken part in at least one European visit to a partner school – either as part of a planning/evaluation meeting, or a two-week teacher exchange. They have also taken part in the Year 6 (children aged 10-11) self-funded pupil exchange to Dalby Skole, Denmark.
There’s no doubt that this rounded and co-ordinated approach has helped make the international dimension a really important part of the school’s ethos – and in recognition of this, we’ve been lucky enough to gain the British Council International School Award.
There are other beneficial aspects, too. As a qualified learning support assistant, I have been very lucky to have been fully included in the Comenius 3 project, having been the co-ordinator for all seven schools for the past three years (the only school I have yet to visit is Gjerstad Skole in Norway!) My awareness of others, approach to SEN delivery, self-confidence and management skills have all been developed as a result.
It’s true that getting involved with such projects does involve extra work, but the benefits far outweigh the initial efforts, and as a Comenius network we have now developed an impressive bank of resources. It’s hard to imagine life without our partners now – certainly the culture of our school would be the poorer should we ever break the link. So if you’re pondering whether to get involved in a similar project, I’d say jump down off the fence and give it a go!
Aerona Walker is the International Co-ordinator at Ysgol Y Dderi Primary School at Llangybi near Lampeter, Dyfed
Comenius is part of Socrates, an education programme from the EU. Comenius 3 networks involve organisations across Europe which have experience of Comenius, enabling them to
disseminate information and support the development of further links and projects. Networks involve at least 6 organisations across at least 6 countries. For more details on Comenius 3 and other Comenius projects, visit the Socrates website.
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