ESCOLAS TRIGAL SANTA MARIA (PORTUGAL)

Our school is located in a small city called Tadim which is located in a semi-rural area, next to a big city called Braga, in the north of Portugal. We have approximately 870 students from 3 to 15 years and 63 teachers. The students go from kindergarten to the 9th grade elementary school. The majority of the students is from this rural area. Most of our students come from families that work mainly in the fields and in small family industries. Some come from one parent families and have social needs. Some have divorced parents and a few are orphans. Almost 8% of students have special education needs. We have very few students coming from other countries (Ukraine, Cabo Verde, France) and also have Roma students. Our immigrant students have a support of a Portuguese teacher to help them to cope with language difficulties. Most of our students are not used to deal with students from other nationalities or even with refugees, so this represents an opportunity for them to interact with other cultures. The participation in this project will be important to develop the European citizenship of students and to let them realize that there are opportunities for them waiting outside the small place where they live. The key person involved in this project will be António Rocha, the ICT teacher of the school. He has more than 20 years of experience in working in projects involving technologies and engineering. Is also the Erasmus+ coordinator of the school. We also have other teachers, who will participate, that are used to work in this kind of projects. For the last 5 years, Manuel Costa, science teacher, as won projects involving science (Physics, Natural sciences, Math, and ICT) from the “Ilidio Pinho School Science Prize”. He has over 30 years’ experience in the field of teaching. He is one of the most active teachers when it comes to developing projects with students. We have also won a project from “Montepio Bank School Prize”. This project was coordinated by Ana Oliveira, Physics teacher, and allows us to build in the school an ICT lab to improve the teaching of math and foreign languages (French and English). She has 23 years’ experience in teaching. We also have a robotics club, coordinated by Jorge Reis, Electronics teacher, which intends to develop student’s critical thinking. He has 20 years’ experience in teaching and over 10 years working on robotics projects. The most involved persons on this project will bring their personal and different fields of knowledge to help the growth of the project and will bring also their experience of a collaborative project working. All this combined will help all the project to be successful to our students. All the teachers involved in the project are used to do collaborative work so they will make a good solid work team. Expert partners: "Parque Nacional Peneda-Gerês", "Quinta Pedagógica de Braga", University of Minho. If the responsible for the project leaves, the Director will assume the project.