The Homes of Pupils

The home plays a critical role not just in child development, but also in developing the skills of citizenship of our pupils. As a collaborative work we decided that pupils from all schools would write about their homes, and represent them in drawings. This cross-curricular work developed language, art and craft, and ICT skills. Pupils were proud to write about their homes and have their work shown to their partners. Here is link to 47 works by six-year old pupils Escola les Acacies. http://www.slideshare.net/raquel_ht/our-home16339021 Pupils in Stockholm created a model of Gamla Stan and pupils in Asvestohori first learned how the citizens of Byzantine lived and then created a model of Constantinople. For the pupils involved this was a journey in another time and space, a journey that made them think in a different way, because of the different problems facing citizens at that time.

Letters to and from Mayor of Galway

Dear Mayor, On behalf of our two sixth classes we want to thank you for inviting us to Galway City Hall. We really appreciated this visit. We are very thankful to you. We enjoyed the visit, and we really liked the way you showed us how the City Council works. We loved the council chamber, the housing department and the planning department. We liked the way you told us about the gold chain and we liked the way you told us about your life story. We have learned a lot about local government. Yours sincerely, Avelino and Jamie

Parliamentary Landmarks and Citizenship

Vol. 2 April 2013 This newsletter looks at the collaborative work by partners on homes, examines the importance of debate in the classroom as a means of developing the critical thinking of pupils on aspects of citizenship, and learns about the efforts of schools to teach pupils about democratic processes.

Stockholm featured two pupils as presenters of the school performance for visiting teachers. Moreover, pupils acted as guides to show teachers the sights of Gamla Stan. These are good examples of a school nurturing the citizenship skills of its pupils.

Mirror debates in Tomar

Class 3B of Templarios School usually debates every Friday. This school year, because of our eTwinning project, the goal is debating citizenship. Our debating template is a mirror debate: two teams face to face, for and against, whether they agree or disagree with the motion. And, most probably, this will be their first challenge: defending things in which one does not believe is not easy. Nevertheless, it is a wonderful exercise!

Hellenic Republic
The pupils of 6th class of Asvestohori school, with their teacher Nikos Voudrislis, prepared a presentation about the political system and the administrative divisions of Hellas.

City Hall Stockholm - Stadhuset

On March 18th one of our classes in Bjrngrdsskolan is visiting the City Hall (Stadhuset), Stockholm. It is well known for its hospitality, its unique art treasures, its interesting history and magnificent feasts like the great Nobel party. To prepare the students we have seen an introduction film about who works there, why and what they are doing. At the beginning the word democracy was explained and our students could refer to the pupils council in our school and how we have organized the pupils involvement in different matters. The students will think of questions about how issues are processed politically in Stockholm. Hopefully we are going to visit the Parliament, invite a politician to the classroom to discuss more everyday issues. We also plan to let the students have interviews with some citizens in our neighbourhood about what they think of the future of our town, Stockholm.

One of those mirror debates debated I am free, so I can do what I want or I am free, so I have to be careful with what I do Those who were in charge of the first argument smiled. They thought it was going to be easy. But surprise! The other side had much more things to say. It was very interesting noticing that the team defending total non responsible freedom was not as comfortable as they imagined. In fact, both teams knew that there are rights and duties.
Hellenic Parliament - (Wikimedia Commons)

In Ancient Greek, Demos translates as people, and Kratos translates as force or power. Democracy is made up from these words and essentially means power of the people. Hellas is now a parliamentary republic. It has 325 municipalities run by mayors and municipal councils.