Connected Classroom in Italy – A collaboration between Istituto Sociale Scuola dell’Infanzia, Turin and Gonzaga Campus Scuola dell’Infanzia, Palermo

This was an exciting first time project which our two schools devised to explore collaborating via Educate Magis Connected Classrooms.  The focus of our project was to develop the Global Citizenship skills of our very young learners (ages 3 to 5 years) by working on an English language storybook.

We chose the book “Where the wild things are” by Maurice Sendak.  This story deals with important emotions and childhood imagination and music and dance  and we were able to easily adapt it for classroom activities and conclude the project with a performance in which the children from both schools interacted with each other remotely.

The project was managed by two English teachers from each school.  Although we are based in opposite ends of Italy, Palermo in the very south and Turin in the very north, we knew each other from a training meeting set up to discuss our common English programmes.  At that meeting we had agreed that we should find a way for our schools to collaborate using Educate Magis.

Happily, this March we activated our plan. We had regular telephone calls which we found time to set up around each others’ work commitments and together we devised a PPI programme.

We were really pleased that our project allowed us to develop an Ignatian student and a young global citizen in an innovative way.  The children enjoyed working on the various activities that we devised to develop their understanding of the story. They also produced their props for the final show.  They really enjoyed getting to know the various characters and in our supervised activities they explored the themes of big emotions such as fear and sadness and loss as well as concepts of power and acceptance.

As this was also an English project the children developed their comprehension and listening skills and learned many new words.  The opportunity to perform using English as their  second or third language was an integral part of the project. Performance in front of peers is an important way to develop self esteem and confidence and it was wonderful to see them do this with their counterparts from another school.  In fact, the children were very excited  about this aspect of the project. It was interesting to note too, that even though they are very young learners,  they were fully aware of  how they would connect remotely.  We know that the experience of remote learning and working during the pandemic has helped this.  With our project we emphasized that our schools are part of a big special network and  we are connected to children in schools all over the globe.

We both agreed that the opportunity to work together was also a great learning experience for us as teachers. There was the opportunity to share ideas for activities as well as discuss ways to manage and structure the interactive performance.  It was a true collaborative effort made possible with Educate Magis and the Connected Classroom.  Accessing the classroom couldn’t be simpler. We were both really pleased with how our project went.  It was a first time collaboration and we plan to repeat the experience at Christmas.

Leonora Flanagan, Istituto Sociale, Turin  and Alison Astwick, Gonzaga Campus Scuola dell’ Infanzia, Palermo