Early Start Spanish 2
4: Mi colegio - My school
 
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What you will learn in section 4:

You will see children in a Spanish primary school, in different classes and activities.

They will tell you the names of different rooms in their school, and you will see how to find your way around the school building - how to give and understand directions to different school rooms in Spanish.

  
My school's dining room - This is my classroom

Comparing your school with a primary school in Spain
One class sent a plan of their school, with simply labelled drawings of classes at work in each room, to their link school in Spain. They received similar information back, and talked about how their schools compared.

If you don't yet have a link school in a Spanish-speaking country, look back to the Starter Pack Introduction for helpful information.

In the Teacher's Guide, you will see a week's menus for school dinners in one Spanish primary school. This gives you a starting point for comparing with your own school. It would also be another good topic for exchanging information with a link school.

A school in Spain

This link may also be helpful. It has set of activities, suitable for beginners, all about Spanish school students and their daily life.

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet/ontheline/spanish/activity/index.htm

Spanish education system

For teachers who want clear informaation to help compare schools in Spain with those in other countries, including UK:

http://www.inca.org.uk/spain.html

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ZAPALLAL - a school in Peru

A community in the slums of Lima
One class decided to look at a very different school in another Spanish-speaking country - Peru.

They found out about the school at Zapallal, a community set up by Jesuit monks to help children in a huge sprawling shanty town to the north of the capital city Lima.

Here hundreds of thousands of people live with no proper facilities - no school, roads, running water or drainage, electricity...

Zapallal aims to help poor and lost children make a better future for themselves and their community - saving them from the dangers of delinquency and drugs.


They learned how to build their own brick schoolrooms - replacing the original straw and wood huts.

Curriculum
Zapallal has an unusual curriculum - what the students study depends on the skills and knowledge they decide they need to improve their lives and their surroundings.

They learned the skills to build their own school. They learned how to make trees grow in the dusty sand hills. They learned how to set up new businesses like growing vegetables to sell locally; breeding hens and growing animal feed; or making T-shirts to sell to tourists - maybe even export to England.

This is done with mainly local resources and skills. Foreign supporters help with fundraising, and volunteers come to help from other countries - including Britain.


Students and ex-students learned how to plant trees in the desert around Lima. It resulted in a contract to plant trees around the local power station.
    
Pictures courtesy of Sainsbury's Magazine
(LEFT) Students in a carpentry workshop, built with funds raised by foreign supporters.
(RIGHT) Brother Paul works to build a healthy community where pupils learn to live with dignity and certain basic values in a difficult modern urban setting

Find out more
The class talked about how their school lives compared with those of the Peruvian children. They decided to tell other classes and parents about a school that is very different to their's. They made a display and raised funds for Project Peru, a charity that supports Zapallal.

They found out more from the charity's website - http://www.projectperu.org.uk (and others similar) - and collected regular features from the 'Sainbury's Magazine' (from Sainbury's supermarkets).

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