Comenius SICS
This Comenius Project has its own website. Click here for further details.
Activities 2005-2006:
Strategies for Inclusion and Citizenship through Sport Report of Activities
Dorothy Stringer School, as a Specialist Sports College, saw the educational capital of diversifying its range of sports by importing activities such as Carpoeira from Portugal and Gaelic Football for boys and girls from Ireland. As well as these, the school has been working on sporting activities which incorporate the concepts of Fair Play and inclusion. WORLD CUP TOURNAMENT : This year there has been a World Cup football tournament at the school where pupils from different classes have played against each other, with each team representing one of the 32 countries participating in the World Cup. To avoid the normal dominance of boys in football activities and to ensure the inclusion of girls, each team had to include at least one girl. By having young people playing for a particular country, the school hoped to break down the usual nationalist stereotypes that go with international sporting activities, particularly football, and to encourage classmates to support a country other than their own. The tournament took on board the notion of Fair Play and points were awarded to each team in every match. At the end of the tournament there was a Fair Play team winner, in addition to the ordinary winner. This is an idea that has been adapted from the Spanish system implemented at break times.
Annual Sports Day
This year’s sports day had a similar theme whereby form groups were given the responsibility of showing they had taken on board the notion of Fair Play, according to principles set down and agreed by all participating. At the end of the day, Fair Play bonus points were awarded to form groups on a sliding scale, in addition to the points accrued through athletic activities.
Gaelic Football
After returning from Ireland the school implemented the game of Gaelic football with our pupils. The older pupils really enjoyed playing the game as it was for them a mixture of rugby, football and basketball. This was a innovative way for them to gain an understanding of other cultures and the type of games that exist in other countries. It provoked them to ask questions about Irish people and the theme of the project. In so doing it raised the awareness of those participating. This has now become an important feature of the curriculum for older pupils.
Outdoor Activity Centre
To continue promoting the idea of inclusion through sport, a group of year 10 (14/15 years old) BTEC pupils were taken to the school’s outdoor activity centre in Dolawen in North Wales. These are pupils who follow a reduced academic timetable but instead take a diploma in sports-based courses. Whilst there the pupils were obliged to take responsibility for their everyday living, including cooking and cleaning, as well as building a team spirit through sports activities such as rock climbing.
Values
The school has taken up the idea of ‘values’ from the partners in Spain. In P.E. lessons, teachers have got younger pupils to think about which values ( such as cooperation, trust, confidence, respect, groupwork, cultural heritage) are demonstrated in different sporting activities. Teachers in other curriculum areas have started to look at how these principles could be applied in their own subject areas.
Project Meetings
There was a project meeting at IES JUAN ANTONIO FERNANDEZ PEREZ in Melilla from 26th to 29th October at which there were 14 representatives not including the large number of Spanish colleagues who participated in the project activities of the visit. The meeting reviewed the project’s progress since April 2005 at the time of the previous project meeting in Ireland and outlined the rationale for continuing the project into a third year 2006/7. The second important focus of the meeting was to witness how IES JUAN ANTONIO FERNANDEZ PEREZ implemented Strategies for Inclusion and Citizenship through Sport. The SICS case studies and the success of participant schools to develop policy and practice based on them have been evidenced above. There were further presentations from all the schools. Planning continued on how to realise the wider dissemination objectives of constructing a project website and leaflet. The Portuguese representative said they did not wish to continue with a third year since it was their intention to take part other European projects. On the appointment of a new Project Co-ordinator at Dorothy Stringer school it was decided that project coordination would be transferred to Beykent College for 2006-7. We discussed the objectives for next year and designed the activities to develop in the third and last year of the project and completed the Socrates renewal application form.
The final project meeting of the year took place at DOROTHY STRINGER SCHOOL in Brighton from 4th to 7th May and 13 delegates attended. Representatives from the six partner schools reviewed the year’s work and discussed the possibility of forming a Comenius 3 network to advance and extend the work of the project into the future. The delegates from Melilla presented the updated project website www.sics-comenius.eu and discussion took place as to how each school could upload their own project work on to the website. Staff from Dorothy Stringer School undertook presentations to the whole group on the Junior Sports Leadership programme, which included a question and answer session with pupils participating in the programme. Delegates then observed Junior Sports Leadership in action through a lesson where elder pupils (15/16 years old) coached primary school pupils (8/9 years old) in sporting activities and saw how this promoted inclusion. A further presentation took place on Dorothy Stringer’s outdoor activity centre at Dolawen in North Wales. Delegates saw how this can be used as an inclusion resource for disaffected pupils who grow in responsibility by participating in team-building sporting activities such as rock climbing and river walking. Discussion took place as to how this valuable resource could be perhaps shared by other schools participating in this project, including the possibility of a future Comenius 1 Language Project, incorporating use of the centre.
