newsletternewsletternewsletterN°2 – April 2011P.IN.O.K.I.O.Pupils for INnOvation as a Key to Intercultural and social inclusiOn

Creativity labs in Switzerland

p. 2

Teacher Training and Outcomes in Portugal (Experimental Group)

p. 3

P.IN.O.K.I.O… WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SWITZERLANDThe P.IN.O.K.I.O. project, promoted in Switzerland by the non profi t organization seed (www.seedlearn.org ) is cur-rently involving 2 primary schools, one located in Lugano, and the second one in Italy, very close to the border, with a number of children coming from nearby Switzerland. The total number of classes involved is 5 (for a total number of around 90 children), while the teachers working in the project are 8, plus 3 educators. After the teachers’ training that was carried out between November 2010 and February 2011, the teachers acquired all the “tools” to activate the Creativity Labs and the Inter-cultural Workshops in their schools.

Students at work!

In both schools involved, activities with the children started with the input of a tale narrated by a very special guest in each class. Those tales represented the starting point for a work of re-elaboration of the stories and a spur to use crea-tivity and to think “out of the box”, in a more intercultural way.

What happened at Istituto Dedalo Orsoline di San Carlo

At the Istituto Dedalo Orsoline di San Carlo, teachers decided to take advantage of the great opportunity of having as guest in the classroom the father of one of their pupils, coming from Burundi. He started by telling the children about his life when he was a child in his country of origin, then he introduced the beginning of a local story (only the fi rst half of the story!) that the pupils are now continuing. The children are, in fact, inventing the end of the story, coordinated by the teachers. The title of the story is in Kirundi – the local language of Burundi – TURAKENERANIYE, meaning : everyone needs the help of the others. It is the

story of an ant needing help as it is in danger because of a fl ood caused by heavy rain.The visit of the “special guest” was incredibly magic and the children listened to the tale fascinated by the possibility of getting somehow in touch with a very different culture. Children were very involved and interested and they asked the father from Burundi many questions about children and stories in Africa. After his visit, the pupils started to analyze the characters and went on inventing the end of the story. Teachers said “We realized that the P.IN.O.K.I.O. project is a great opportunity to involve children in a very cross-dis-ciplinary activity, helping them to think out of their usual context, in a more intercultural way, imagining different contexts and the life of children living very far away. We also have the opportunity, as teachers, to work together, to share ideas and to see our pupils from a different point of view thanks to the fact that we try to work in the presence of our colleagues. Even if we are in the early stage of the project, we can certainly affi rm that pupils are working with enthusiasm and to the best of their ability and they each day eagerly await the moment we work on the project.”Pupils will then perform their stories and create a kind of a short “movie” to be shown to their parents and to the Burundi father attending the fi nal presentation to tell the real end of the story.

newsletterN°1 – FEBRUARY 2010P.IN.O.K.I.O.Pupils for INnOvation as a Key to Intercultural and social inclusiOn

2

P.IN.O.K.I.O. at the primary school Il Piccolo Principe

The pupils from the primary school Il Piccolo Principe of the Fondazione San Benedetto in Lugano, also received a very interesting visit: two nice ladies, one from Tunisia and one from Turkey who came to tell a tale from their coun-tries of origin. They told the story of a poor family living in a house with a snake as “fl atmate” and the story of “The man who was afraid of the stars”. The children could listen to a part of the stories and during the following weeks they started imagining an end to the stories to be then presented to the two guests from Tunisia and Turkey. The pupils re-acted enthusiastically to the visit of the two ladies and asked so many questions to them that time passed by very quickly during the fi rst intercultural workshop! Luckily they will have the possibility to meet the two ladies again at the end of the creativity labs!

MADEIRA - TEACHER TRAINING AND OUTCOMES (EXPERI-MENTAL GROUP): JAN. - APRIL 2011This stage of the joint action programme, involving the re-search members of the University of Madeira together with the Board of Education in Madeira, having identifi ed fi ve primary schools for the experimental group, has comprised several courses of action, as was already scheduled in the

scope of the design and implementation of the creativity labs. Initially , four teacher training sessions, delivered in Portu-guese, were held in a multimedia environment at the Uni-versity of Madeira, and addressed at the teachers already selected per school in the experimental group, namely: i) “Communication in a Multilingual Society” (Comuni-cação Numa Sociedade Plurilingue), by Profs. Alcina Sousa, Aline Bazenga and Minh-Ha Lo-Cicero (5th Feb. 2011); ii) “Literature Rescues Life - The Intercultural Dimension and Social Inclusion: Stories and Characters in their Relation to the World” (A Literatura Salva a Vida - Interculturalidade e Inclusão Social: Histórias e Personagens na Relação com o Mundo), by Profs. Aline Bazenga and Luisa Paolinelli (11th Feb.); iii) “Bibliotherapy: Attitudes and Values” (Bib-lioterapia: Atitudes e Valores), by Prof. Luisa Soares (18th Feb.); IV. “Creativity: Arts and Technology towards Inclu-sion” (Criatividade: A Arte e a Tecnologia ao Serviço da In-clusão), by Profs. Carlos Valente and Paulo Brazão (25th Feb.). The key competencies having guided the design and undertaking of this set of workshops were meant to trigger collaborative activity-based and refl ective-oriented sessions on: communication in the mother tongue (KC1); social and civic competences (KC6); sense of initiative and entre-preneurship (KC7); and cultural awareness and expression (KC8). The participants enthusiastically followed the work-shops and shared their knowledge, pedagogic expertise, and most importantly their experiences on pupils’ needs and strengths in a multicultural and multilingual environment as the one in Madeira. The inclusion of back up material and references, both in print and digital format, made it possible to ground the theoretical and practical discussion among all the participants, not only in the workshops but later on in the ongoing online conversation settings (blogs, and internet). Secondly, the teachers participating in the workshops select-ed several characters from the stories to work on with the pupils in their schools (experimental group), as follows: São Filipe Primary School – Salta Pocinhas (Jumpy-Jumpy Little Fox) from “Romance da Raposa” (The Story of The Fox) by Aquilino Ribeiro; São Gonçalo and Santa Maria Maior Pri-mary Schools have selected Alice and Pinocchio, from “Alice in Wonderland” and “Pinocchio”, respectively. The British School of Madeira has been designing an activity-based ap-proach in the scope of the workshop on “bibliotherapy”. In-teractive literature based products are underway: a video (to be presented at São Filipe Primary School); and Pinocchio’s rap version, whose lyrics and music were created by the teachers and pupils, to be presented at Santa Maria Maior Primary School.

newsletterN°1 – FEBRUARY 2010P.IN.O.K.I.O.Pupils for INnOvation as a Key to Intercultural and social inclusiOn

3

www.pinokioproject.eu

Lifelong Learning Programme

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication refl ects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.