Escola Rossend Montané
Our school
Rossend Montané school is located in a rural town in Alt Penedès. It is placed in Sant Pere Molanta, a village that belongs to the Olèrdola township. The area has 3.500 inhabitants. This village is surrounded by vineyards and factories and the families attending to the school belong to a middle-low socio-cultural level.
Most of the families work in factories and in the agricultural sector. Those working sections have contributed to receive immigrants from different countries from south America, east Europe and Africa.
Courses and level taught
In the school there are around 140 students from P3 to 6th grade organized in one group per each grade. There is an average of twelve to twenty students per class.
Background and experience
Students start being exposed to the foreign language in P3 and the exposure of hours get higher as they grow up. Moreover, to achieve the objectives mentioned before different projects have been conducted:
-The Reading in Pairs Project to improve the Reading and Speaking skills in the third cycle
-The usage of Etwinning to promote a real and natural approach to the language
- The collaboration with 'Sonrisas de Bombay', an NGO based in India, with whom we communicate throught Skype
- A Project-based approach, since there are various projects that students develop throughout the year. For English learning it is central to use integrated curriculum projects. Working through projects in a holistic way allows students to make connections between subjects.
Skills and knowledge
About the school’s methodology it promotes a global learning, which involves cross-working projects between subjects. That’s why there are three important projects that are worked during the whole year in all courses:
A cross-curricular topic common to all grades and subjects, especifically in the languages and Science areas.
STEAM project in which we promote Science, Technology and Maths from a creative and analytical point of view.
The solidarity fair where students raise money for disadvantaged people.
On the other hand, one afternoon per week different “workshops” are held, in which students are distributed in different classrooms to work on different activities and abilities: logic, constructions, mathematics, English, programming and the use of different software, etc.
What can we offer as a STEAM school?
Having actively been involved in the STEAM methodology of learning for a number of years now there are three areas of the approach that we feel particularly well versed in:
1. Critical and creative thinking: This promotes students' autonomy, entrepreneurship skills by making them think for themselves and helps them to develop different strategies related to problem solving.
2. Cooperative working: Which gives the students real life experiences along with the opportunity to build on their management skills and learn about mutual respect in a cooperative learning environment.
3. Cross curricular learning: Involving all subject materials and various age ranges giving a more global approach, helping to employ a universal style of learning that is suitable for schools in many other countries.
What we want to learn/achieve with this STEAMcat+ project?
Exchanging STEAM experiences
During 5 years we have been applying the STEAM methodology in the school. Throughout this period, teachers have been trained for this purpose. All STEAM projects are globalized and they take into account the gender perspective.
We are interested in sharing our knowledge and learning from other experiences and approaches.
Promoting an ESL exchange experience
We believe that exchanging educational experiences with other countries, for both students and teachers, is certainly enriching and adds value to our daily work. Our school has developed several projects with European countries, such as Poland, Hungary and Turkey.
We are willing to set up a continuous collaboration with other educative centres.
Raising cultural awareness
By working together with not only other schools but also other cultures we believe that a more holistic level of learning can be achieved, enriching the learning experience for all of those involved.
Our aim is to acquire experience from working a placement abroad in other educational centres, taking part in their English language based activities in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how the STEAM system is employed throughout Europe.