Staff at Larbert Village PS have used interdisciplinary learning to  prepare their pupils for their Comenius visitors during week beginning 2nd June 2014. Children have extended their knowledge and understanding of International Education by studying traditional  tales from the 7 European countries which their visitors come from. Laura Willox and staff colleagues planned their teaching around these stories to develop their pupils’ literacy skills,  and to offer an engaging context for pupils to apply other curricular skills. Pupils in all stages have read at least one story from each country and have been able to interpret these through drawing, storyboards and story telling sessions. They collated their work into a “floor book”  and were able to share these with their visitors.

 In primary 2W, pupils asked their Spanish visitor about other Spanish legends and found out about his part of Spain and Spanish customs. They also learned that their assumption that Spanish people have a siesta at lunchtime was not true – a valuable reminder not to stereotype! 

 The children all had different views about each story. For example, some pupils relished the scary Portugese story while others liked the stories with dragons, magic and romance. Click here to view what the children said about their preparations for the visit.

The children in the Butterfly room of the enhanced provision unit had the important task of designing, and sourcing the contents for, a small souvenir gift bag for their visitors. As you can see, the children were deservedly proud of their Scottish themed bags complete with shortbread, tablet, Larbert Village pencils and Saltires!                                     

All in all, this has been a really valuable process for everyone involved and has contributed to building a really positive ethos within the school and its community as well as to their programme of interdisciplinary learning.