Building Bridges
in Sonderborg
Mrs. Paula Vorne
1st grade teacher
Maikkula
Comprehensive school is privileged to be a part of a Comenius project called ”Building
Bridges from North to the South”. Our first meeting was held in Sonderborg,
Denmark at the end of September. Trip to Sonderborg didn’t go quite as planned
due to a technical failure in the airplane so we had we had to make an extra
landing to Helsinki instead of flying straight to Copenhagen. We were really
happy when we finally reached Sonderborg at 2AM.
Main goal
for this first meeting was to get to know our partners from Denmark, France,
Italy and Spain and plan the exercices we would do before the next meeting. We
also learned about the different school systems in all participating countries.
It was really interesting to hear how similar and yet different the school
systems in different corners of Europe really are. I think we’d have a lot to
learn from each other.
Every class
that is involved in this project gets a pen pal-class from another country and
the pupils make personal profiles to the Moodle-platform that is used in this
project. Children are really expecting to get to know the pupils from the other
countries. All the participating schools build a Comenius wall to their own
school and all partners send some material on that wall. Before Christmas we
will film children singing traditional Christmas songs and send the film to our
partners via Moodle.
Our Danish
hosts had arranged us a lot of interesting program for our three day visit. We
got to participate to the lessons, the students had prepared presentations for
us of their city, Denmark and capital Copenhagen and they prepared a delicious
lunch for us representing traditional Danish foods. We also got really nice
sightseeing tours to the island of Als and saw some really beautiful and
interesting places although the first day there was a real autumn storm in the
area.
Three days
in Sonderborg with our Comenius friends were filled with laughter and talk in
many different languages. We spent so much time together that we were a really
tight group when the trip was over. Thank you so much to our Danish hosts for
three amazing days in Sonderborg! Next meeting is in Cogoleto, Italy in
February 2013 and I think that everyone is really looking forward to meeting
others again. At least I am!