Meeting in Spain
MEETING IN SPAIN (4-6 FEBRUARY)
Last 4th of February, our Hungarian and Polish partners came to Spain to participate in a new project meeting. The aim of this meeting was discussing about different activities we could do to involve our youngest pupils in the world of the fairy tales in English.
They arrived in Cuenca in the afternoon, so we picked them up at the train station, we went to the hotel and, after having some minutes for resting, we went for a walk in the newest part of the city and we had dinner all together to speak about the meeting programme.
The following day, we went to Valverde de Júcar by bus. There, they met our head teacher and they participated in a visit all around the school. Our partners showed a presentation about their schools to our pupils of sixth grade and they asked them several questions for practicing the language. After this chat between teachers and students, we were to visit other school in Buenache de Alarcón. We couldn’t only visit the school but we could also visit the village with the pupils as guides. It was a good opportunity for them to speak English in a real context. Then, we went to have lunch In Valverde and we came back to Cuenca for doing a touristic visit to the old part of the city for seeing the most important monuments of the town: The Cathedral, Saint Paul’s bridge and the Hanging Houses. We had dinner and we went to the hotel.
The last day, we went to visit the other two schoosl of our educational centre: Albaladejo del Cuende and Villaverde y Pasaconsol. After a brief visit to these schools, we went to Valverde again in order to take part in the workshop about “Activities for involving the youngest pupils in the world of the fairy tales in English”. During the workshop we spoke about:
- The fairy tales we had chosen and the reasons for having done it.
- Proposed activities:
o Playing with the title (guessing the story through the title, reading the story and imaging the title or changing the title).
o Changing the final of the story.
o Coloring pages about the tale.
o Putting in order the images of the story.
o Making pictures about the tale.
o Crafts related to the story.
o Looking for similarities with other fairy tales.
o Telling the story including strange noises, for example for the animals.
o Making puppets using different techniques.
o Acting out the story (decorates, dresses, music…)
After this interesting discussion, we said good bye to the head teacher and the teachers in general and we went to Cuenca for having lunch and taking the train back to Madrid.
From our point of view, this meeting has been a good opportunity for our students to practice English and to avoid being afraid of speaking with foreign people, and a good opportunity also for teachers to share different opinions and to open our mind to new educational realities.