Instituto de Enseñanza Secundaria Aldebarán

IES Aldebarán is a Secondary State School in Madrid with 840 pupils and 64 teachers. There are 28 classrooms, Music, Art, and computer rooms.

Pupils come from middle economic level and middle cultural background families.

The immigration rate is quite high, mostly from South and Central America but also from Morocco, Romania and other European countries.

We get great results in Bachillerato and we have been an English Bilingual School within a program offered by the Comunidad de Madrid since 2012, this involves teaching Advanced English, which also deals with English literature, and other subjects in English, using the CLIL methodology. In grade 4th of ESO students (15 to16 years old) sit for Cambridge exams and they always get their B1, B2 and even some C1 certificates before they finish their mandatory studies.

Every year there are several language assistants from U.S.A, U.K , Canada and Australia who enrich all the classes given in English enormously. They also take part in the school community and its projects.

We have taken part in “Global Classrooms”, which is a competition organized by United Nations, for some years. Two years ago we won the best delegation.

Extra-curricular clubs, the most successful one is our Drama Club, although we have many others such as "Funny break time activities", Reading Club, Sport Competitions, which teachers organize on a volunteer basis.

We could be more technologically advanced, this being one of the reasons for taking part in this project.

We also have a problem, especially in 4^th grade and 1^st Bachillerato, which consists of a big division among students who will or do continue studying and those who may not . Therefore, we think this project would be a great opportunity to build up community and improve this situation.

We have a constant need for teacher training activities, as the world has changed so much we have a need to change our teaching strategies and we are eager to learn from other countries. We need to become more skilled in ICT tools to improve our teaching skills. We mainly need to improve our students’ team work and of course, their marks as well, especially as I mentioned before in 4^th ESO graders. Besides, as it was said in the previous item, there is a need to build up the school community, involving all the different actors and gaining a sense of pride to belong to the Aldebarán High School. We also aim for a better diffusion in the area.

Besides, there is a great demand on cultural/language exchanges and field trips by parents and students as well. Parents were handed in a questionnaire at the beginning of the year and it gave a massive affirmative response.

Our school had never taken part in any European project but some of our teachers have participated in Comenius and Erasmus + in other high schools so their previous experiences will be very useful for our project. Nevertheless, we have had various student exchanges, virtual and on-site in USA and Germany and we have been travelling to United Kingdom for the last six years with our 3^rd ESO graders. We always spend a week in which our students attend classes in a Secondary Comprehensive School and go on field trips and they live in host-families, this experience always turns out to be a great success.