martes, 31 de marzo de 2015

SENEGAL TRIP: SMILING STARS PROJECT REACHES AFRICA!

Email from our teacher Humberto:

Dear students,

We have visited the SPER school in the outskirts of Dakar. The taxi driver didn't know were it was exactly but he then told us that he knew the cook at the center! When we arrived, Mr Carvalho and the kids welcomed us, they were very polite. Mr Carvalho showed us the facilities of their school: they have a kitchen, a patio, several bedrooms for the kids and a classroom were they have a small bookcase, three big desks and some chairs and a blackboard. He tells us that kids here arrive voluntarily, through different activities they carry on in the streets. Each of them carry sad stories but they are free to explain them or not. In the SPER (Solidarité pour les Enfants de la Rue) they are devoted to help these children, give them shelter, food and education. So you are actually collaborating beyond education.They are in touch with La Puponnière so they will be so kind to deliver the baby materials and toys to them.

They were really happy to receive your contribution: notebooks, pens, colored pencils.... are very much needed here, as well as clothes. They also loved the footballs! So they really thank you from the bottom of their hearts and send you lots of love. Their smile is the best present we can have.

Here you have some pictures from Senegal, people here is very cheerful, nature is impressive and the Pink Lake... is really pink! Hope you were here. In a way you are (look at the walls!).

Best wishes and congratulations for your hard work

Humberto Burcet

 At SPER:
 Monsieur Agustin Carvalho, director of SPER:
 Kids receiving your materials!

 Their classroom
 Library and games. They will contact La puponnière for the baby's stuff
We share the same values! Like in our posters. Now you have cooperated in their education process improving their opportunities through access to your materials... and your support!

Pictures from Senegal:
Baobab
 Giraffe in a Reserve (Bandia)
Cheerful women in Gorée Island (here there was the House of Slaves we talked about in class)
Kids in a small village in the desert. 

 A bird in the Pink Lake!

viernes, 27 de marzo de 2015

Packing and wrapping time!

We have collected more things and solved the problem of the baby stuff so we have been able to get pacifiers and milk bottles and also an aids box and games. We made it! Now we have to classify, pack and wrap all what we have collected! We have also printed a message with pictures, the logos of Euroscola and our school and a smiling star for the packages, Cristina from Aula d'Acollida has helped us. The teacher says he has a limit of 23 kg of baggage o carry so we have to adapt to that and the space of a suitcase or backpack. This is the practice gif/stop-motion we used as a practice for our story of the Smiling Stars. This is the trip we are making to Senegal through our materials!


All teachers congratulate for our efforts and we are very excited: we have really worked a lot for solidarity and education! Now Humberto will take all these materials for Senegal, He has read the emails received and has already an appointment at SPER (Solidarité Pour les Enfants de la Rue) for Monday 30 April.

Have a nice trip and take pictures!





miércoles, 25 de marzo de 2015

More breakfasts and VIDEOMESSAGE!

http://wl.static.fotolia.com/jpg/00/62/73/68/400_F_62736812_z6srUAnFw8Lk6ZCsF1v6EZmiovMqCgQ1.jpgToday we did more solidarity breakfasts. We could sell enough to buy more school materials and footballs but we need more for La Puponnière, because they told us that what they really need for the babies is baby stuff and we haven't collected yet enough for them so tomorrow we will sell breakfasts too. It is a lot of work but Meriam's mother is eager to keep collaborating with us and will help her bake another of her delicious chocolate cakes... the sell very well! Thanks for that!

So... we have to provide baby stuff and we will work for that! However, we already have baby clothes to give them so we are happy as well. We would also like to collect more toys and games: they are part of education too!

Now that we have almost everything ready and we have started packing, we wanted to create a common message (and mutilingual) with some of us for our future friends in Senegal. Here we send you these materials to cooperate with your education. With all our love! Smiling stars project rocks!


martes, 24 de marzo de 2015

Networking Europe: visiting teacher from Finland

Our teacher for EUROSCOLA has tried to contact an MEP for a video conference or a visit of one of her assistants. We chose Paloma Lopez Bermejo because she is in a commission working for Africa (Delegation for relations with the Pan-African Parliament) but the fax couldn't reach her and we couldn't find her email (note for EUROSCOLA: where can we find them?)

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/125047/PALOMA_LOPEZ%20BERMEJO_home.html

However we are lucky! Arnia, a teacher from Finland is visiting our school (she said she is job shadowing) and she told us that they won the Euroscola competition in her country last year! She showed us pictures of their visit, their experience in the Parliament, and how good the experience! We are so excited! We wish we can have a similar experience next year and we hope we can win! Our project and effort deserves it!



After her presentation we could talk to her and ask many question about Education in Finland and told her about the Smiling Stars project. She was enthusiastic about it and took pictures to show in Finland so our work will be already known in at least three countries! Spain, Senegal and Finland!

We are delighted with the collaboration of people. Here we are making a list of all the pieces of clothes and sports materials we are collecting for Senegal kids.


lunes, 23 de marzo de 2015

Video for the campaign: SCORE A GOAL FOR SENEGAL!


Videoclip time!! Here the green star flies to the new Senegal flag made the colours of the footballs. How many of us are ther? 28? Like the countries of the EU!

People is collaborating with our campaign. 
We brought the boxes more boxes and decorated them.





 
After the success of the "humanitarian breakfast" to raise money last week, we have been able to buy 3 footballs, 1 softball and a pumper. So good! We also start having school materials and clothes and toys in the boxes we have made. They told us also to buy balloons for small children.



With the three footballs we have created like a lipdub/videoclip. We took the idea from the football game in Euroscola, so we made it real! After playing a football competition, our particular worldcup (teams Africa-Asia vs. Europe-America) ended in a draw (3-3) and all the teams partcipating in Euroscola 2015 (3rd of ESO) have joined to make this video. 




The footballs represent the flag of Senegal. The green star flies to them and we pass the balls to each other, symbolizing our (world-European Union) and finally the three balls are kicked, one by a boy from Pakistan (Asia), the second one by a boy from Chile (America) and the third one by a girls from Mali (Africa). We tried to score goals to poverty, hunger, disease, and pollution (in the barrier). 

We scored 2 out of 3... not bad!! All our energy to Senegal!! We hope you like it!

Here you have our videoclip! We will play for the St Jordi exhibition on the 23rd April 2015 in the Community Centre "Centre Cívic de La Salut" so we let our Smiling Stars project arrive to our families and neighbours and put in the our school blog.
http://agora.xtec.cat/ses-badalona/





viernes, 20 de marzo de 2015

Stage 1: Euroscola test

Today is the day of the test! We have been preparing for this moment and we hope we can have a good result! We have worked discussing contents, researching extra materials, reading a lot and watching videos, and revising. We have done a video clip showing our research process. We wanted to use the idea of the video clip we know from French lessons, meaning "Dad, where are you?" as we are working with orphanages in Senegal. The music teacher wants to help us coordinating (and maybe we can do something similar involving teachers and students doing the same actions).

Here is our rehearsing: we created games, glued posters, printed pictures and revised for the test!





jueves, 19 de marzo de 2015

ÇA VA? Introducing ourselves to our friends in Senegal


ÇA VA?
Here we have the video we have produced for the children in Senegal to know us! Made by students of French as a second foreign language participating in Euroscola 2015-Smiling Stars!

We chose the locations we liked inside our school. We talk about our origins, our likes and dislikes. We want to know about the students in Senegal! And they to know us personally.

We wish we could go to Senegal with our teacher Humberto! In a way, this is like going there if they watch us! Hope you like it!


martes, 17 de marzo de 2015

Humanitarian Breakfast and sports competition. Rehearsing videos.


The humanitarian breakfast day arrived! We have brought the food we said. One of our mums helped us with a delicious spongy chocolate cake, two more of us baked the strawberry and chocolate muffins and two more filled in the crepes. We have sold our products at the door of the playground and we have sold out all our cakes! teachers and students have collaborated and also relatives who visited the school who were interested in the project and liked it.

We were a bit nervous because today there was a strike in Education and furthermore the students of 2nd of ESO were on an excursion. Things we did not expect but even though all that, we sold all the cakes and raised 20 euros to buy materials. the initiative has been so successful that we want to repeat next week.







A charity has given to us school materials so we can spend the 20 euros in sports materials. We are worried about the price of the footballs and the pumper (it can be 15 euros just the pumper!) but researching we have found one for 5.95. In the same sports shop there are soft balls for 2.99 but opinions in the web say it's better buy the 3.99 ones, they are more resistant. We think for Senegal it is better like this: resistant. So we can buy the balls!

For the sports competition, many students were absent so we could not organize the event. We will try next week!

On the other hand, we have started rehearsing our introduction in French in this class with Joana, the French teacher. Tomorrow we can start recording!

lunes, 16 de marzo de 2015

Posters 3 and 4: Education and Senegal!

We complete the rest of the posters about Smiling Stars Project - Euroscola 2015. Once finished, it looks really great!! Everybody congratulates us for the effort at school. Parents coming to the school also asks and want to collaborate.



Poster 3: Education and Happiness

For poster number three (green, of hope) we have looked for famous sentences about Education from our own cultures: Confuccius from China, Malala from Pakistan, Nelson Mandela from Africa... and in many languages: Catalan, Spanish, English, French, Chinese, Urdu...

We also propose a new millennium goal: HAPPINESS!  The 9th Millennium Goal. Through education we want to impact on the other objectives, as education is the key for the rest to evolve.

We added a QR code that links to Cooperation projects of the EU in Senegal. We decided to customize the QR code with the Senegal Flag. http://eeas.europa.eu/senegal/index_en.htm

We learn this option from a QR creator program we used to create our poster for the EU quiz. it looks nice, doesn't it?

Definitely we are very INVOLVED in our project!

http://funderstanding.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Quote-of-the-day-10-Funderstanding.png

The QR code takes you to the link giving information about EU aid in Senegal. We want to do our bit ourselves.

Some info
Relations between the EU and Senegal are based on political dialogue under the Cotonou Agreement, relating to development assistance and trade.
The EU has also sent delegations to observe recent elections in Senegal: an observation mission for the presidential elections in February 2012 and an expert mission for the legislative elections in July 2012.

Development assistance

Provided through the European Development Fund mainly for:
  • Strengthening democratic governance;
  • Development of sustainable agriculture and food security;
  • Water and sanitation. (we remember the story about "no WC, no girlfriend")http://www.euro-scola.com/administrador/multimedias/28.jpg
The total amount of 11th EFD funding for Senegal is EUR 347 million for the 2014-2020 period, EUR 200 million of which is for the first 2014-2017 period. A revision of the amount should take place in 2016/17 in order to prepare for the second phase (2018-2020). This will be based on the new development strategy to be defined by Senegal.

Senegal also receives aid from regional, intra-ACP and issue-specific programmes, as well as EU humanitarian aid to help tackle the consequences of the Sahel food crisis.

The link provided at Eusocolos 1 was broken but we have already an idea of that food crisis. Senegal is just between the Sahel region and the sub-Saharian Africa.


Poster 4: Senegal 
We research about Senegal. Sembe, a student from 4th of ESO from Gambia lived there for many years and explains about her experience at school. We see that Gambia is surrounded by Senegal, it follows the river Gambia. When she lived in Senegal they had very little. She is very happy when she sees the picture of the children running bare footed. "I was like them! So happy!". It's a great lesson we learn. You can be happy with little.
https://elhadji2002.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ruta-de-turismo-responsable-por-senegal-5.jpg
For this poster we research about the history, landscapes, geography... and we help other groups create a quiz like ours for the EU. We look for a word cloud of volunteering and learn what happened with the Paris-Dakar, the rally has been moved to Latin  America due to instability and safety issues in a neighbouring country, Mauritania.


Landscapes in Senegal are incredible, there is a Pink Lake! We want out teacher to confirm this with his own eyes! Each group finds information about the projects and we find more info and images from SPER. Our teacher reads us an email answering to our offer to help, and we are very happy. So happy that we want to include their answer in the poster (left down corner).

http://blog.universalplaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/frases-de-viaje-travel-quotes-viajar-vacaciones-1000frasesdeviaje-proverbio-senegales.jpghttp://www.biorigenes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/lagohillier.jpg


domingo, 15 de marzo de 2015

Posters 1 and 2 + Stop motion and name for the project: EUROSCOLA 2015-SMILING STARS


 General look of the 4 posters finished. Today we explain the first and second ones. Here you can see the boxes to collect the materials for our solidarity program with Senegal: SMILING STARS! Do you want to know a nice story? Follow this post! And the green star!


We start working together making the posters. We have four cork boards in a row at the hall of the school so everybody will see our campaign. We divide it into the fours sections we had in mind. Each section will have a background color:
1) Blue background: European Union, cooperation, information we learnt with Euroscolos...
2) Orange: 8 Goals of the Millennium
3) Green: Education (and Happiness): what can we do to help
4) Pink: Senegal: information about the country and the projects we contact

Among all of us we decide to fins a name for the whole project. Since both the EU flag and the Senegal flag have stars and we want  to reach happiness through the goals, we call our Euroscola project: SMILING STARS. We wanted to create something original so we started a stop-motion video.

We practised with a little video. Then we created a story.

Video

Pre-production 
After watching the videos of the chronology of the EU, the effects of Second World War, etc. we imagine a universe were there is a chaos (post-war), and all the stars are scattered in the sky. Then, they decide to gather together, 6 at the beginning (they represent the founding states of the EU), then, the rest of the 12 stars of the flag, which will represent the rest of the following countries up to 28 now. The yellow stars join forces and keep peace. They grow institutions (Council, Parliament, Commission...) and projects (like 112, European Security Card...) represented by the QR codes. One day a green star from another galaxy comes to visit them it is the green star of the flag of Senegal), it explains about the same rights for everybody, but not the same opportunities... and asks for cooperation. The yellow stars decide to help. And the green star is happy (smiling).
Production
Draw and cut the stars, take the pictures, keep continuity.
Look for copyleft music
Check programs to edit stop-motion and train
Post-production
Edit the pictures, join them. Adjust speed. Create titles. Add music. Export and publish. It's amazing we are creating like cartoons! We hope you like it! We will post it to engage people to our project.


Poster 1: European Union (blue)
Poster 1 is the result of our stop-motion story. The middle of the European Flag was very empty so we decide to create a QUIZ that is useful to train for the 1st Stage but it is open to all our school.

GAME 1: QR Codes Quiz
They are 12 questions about the EU. They can find the answers by accessing the QR codes in each of the stars. The green star (representing the Senegal star) guides us to the next poster: the (Goals of the Millennium. There is another EU game below yet!




GAME 2: Logo Quiz. In the part below there is another game created with the help of other groups: a logo quiz. There are 12 logos of the EU institutions and projects and they have to answer questions related to them.


There will be prizes for the winners (9 May is the Day of Europe and our teachers says he will have present for those who answer correctly... out of 3rd of ESO of course!). It's useful for us to prepare the contest.

Difficulty is middle-high... so it is for 2nd to 4th of ESO students.

Poster 2: Eight Goals of the Millenium (orange)
The Narnians group created a hand-made poster with the Goals of the Millenium. We proposed to make a cards game with the 8 goals. We printed them and created threes sets of memory games. We asked in the primary school Alexandre Gali (near our high school) to play the game with the little kids of "Infantil" during their lunch break (after their lunch they play games). The time coincides with our last class on Tuesdays. We played the game with them and explained what was the meaning of each card... for their level. We enjoyed a lot playing with them!

Nadia Ghulam helped us in this activity. She is an Afghan who spent two years posing as her dead brother to evade the Taliban's strictures against women: she explains us that she wanted to study! She is a great example for us and we are glad she is working with us in class regularly. Goals 2 and 3 are perfectly represented in her. She makes us aware of how lucky we are and not to waste the opportunities we have. She is now engaged in a theater play and some of us have had the opportunity of seeing her. More info on her: http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/para-todos-la-2/para-todos-2-nadia-ghulam/944882/


 We also talked about not wasting food. We showed the card number 1 (Goal number 1: the dish with hot food) and asked if they had eaaten all in their dish before the games that day. We learnt from the video we watched the first day of Euroscola that we waste TOO MUCH: we DEBATED about food waste and decided to do something about it so we tried to EDUCATE them like this (Goal 2).
http://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/food_waste/index_en.htm

After we played the game with the kids, we thanked the teachers in charge of the primary schools and gave some "feedback" on the experience: those kids were not quiet, that was great!

Then added our small black and white cards and created a game for the younger students of our school (1st-2nd ESO): we glued all the cards pairs representing the 8 Goals around the big poster of our colleagues except two cards... students have to guess which two cards are missing (and at the same time are paying attention to what the cards stand for).
In the part below another group (The Incredibles) put the signs they created for the materials we wanted to collect. The other group created a QR code for having more information about the 8 Goals of the Millenium (upper right corner).

We have put two desks and the decorated boxes (picture at the beginning). Students, teachers, parents etc. can now put their donations: school materials, sport materials, toys and clothes. We need to spread the word as much as possible! Two of us have talked to all the head of departments of each subject to collaborate with materials too. For the boxes we got the help of Aula Oberta next door, and their teacher or Arts, Cristina Fons: they are very crafty and generous! THANKS!!