Portugal

 

Agrupamento de Escolas da Lousã is a recent cluster of schools, being part of a small town in the centre of Portugal (near the University of Coimbra) with about 16,000 inhabitants. This cluster is composed by five nursery schools, two primary schools and three other schools, which include primary, elementary and secondary levels. There are about 2262 students - 163 with special needs; 215 teachers, a psychologist and 96 staff members. All our schools are equipped with libraries, computers and interactive boards. One school is now participating in a new national project called "Tablets in the Classroom". We also have four units for disabled students, in which there are two “TEACCH programme” classrooms (for autistic students). At the moment our main goal is to develop the 21st century skills: learning, literacy and life skills. We want our students to think critically, be creative, be able to solve problems, be entrepreneurs, be able to use ICT in a responsible way and to develop other personal and social skills, as European citizens. To achieve this we’ve been working on a basis of project, collaborative and partnership work. So, we have important local, national and international partners and projects in different areas, such as technology, environment, citizenship, science, art, sport, multiculturalism, local heritage, social and economic development and inclusion. Some examples of this work are recognized programmes, such as eTwinning (since 2005 we have achieved 18 European Quality Labels and three National Prizes), “Microsoft Partners in Learning” , the previous – Comenius Action, “Young GeoScientists”, ”Eco- schools”,  "Design for Change";“Reading literacy”, among others. These projects are important not only to help our students being successful at school and as individuals, but also to fight poverty and social exclusion, as nowadays many families are dealing with great difficulties, due to unemployment and in our region there are also many dysfunctional families.

For some of them school is the only place where children/ teenagers can have access to different multicultural activities and experiences. In our school cluster there are also students from different nationalities and we might also have some refugees in the future. Our school cluster has been involved in different projects related to the topic “Traditional games”, such as an eTwinning project called “Dance of Emotions” which lasted 3 school years (2007-2010) and was awarded the European Quality Label. This project enabled an active participation of more than 60 students and an enriching exchange of experiences amongst students and teachers from Lousã (Portugal) and Flix (Spain). In Lousã it was monitored by the P.E. teacher Mário Maia, who has been doing research work on this subject and has already published some works including Jogo do Beto (The Beto Game). Every year he is also in charge of co-organising an activity called “Jogos da Freguesia” with local administrative authorities (Freguesia da Lousã unit), enabling the participation of more than 500 Primary school children. During one day they can learn and play different local traditional games, mainly the ones that their grandparents used to play, as a way to keep this heritage “alive”, and thus respected by all citizens, and provide social and emotional learning processes for these younger students. In May, this year the 11th edition will take place.