Visibility of eTwinning Projects Groups July 2019 Newsletter Newsletter 9 | Page 108

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2019 Newsletter
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In Cyprus, a Civil engineer, Mr Kyriakos Tsioupanis,
was hosted at school. Mr Tsioupanis has an artificial
leg because of an accident while serving in the
army. He was invited to school to talk about the
inner strength that enabled him to study abroad
and overcome every difficulty he had to face.
Following the event (that took place on the 3th of
December), in the coming few days, the students
were taught issues related to diversity and had
produced different kinds of creative assignments
and activities. In particular the first-class children
wrote acrostic poems using the word RESPECT.
They wanted to give the message that people with
disabilities need respect not pity.
In Poland, sensory workshops for children from
grades 1-3 were prepared. During the classes,
students experienced how to get to know and
perceive the world of a person with motor, visual
and auditory disabilities. Children with blindfolds
recognized the flavours and smells of products
demonstrated by teachers and arranged wooden
jigsaw puzzles. These struggles brought students
closer to the specificity of the functioning of the
blind. The next tasks the children had were
exercises, consisting in recognizing sounds and
writing dictations, of course, with stoppers in their
ears. In this way, students learned about the
difficulties that deaf people face. The last exercises
that pupils from grades 1-3 were given, were
slalom between the bollards without the use of legs,
drawing geometric figures with the help of feet, and
stacking the tower from blocks, with kitchen gloves
on their hands. Participation in these activities
made the children aware of the problems
encountered by people with mobility disabilities in
their lives. At the end of the meeting, students
participated in a sign language lesson. The
youngest got to know the dactylography, that is,
the finger alphabet and the gestures defining the
polite phrases.
In Portugal, this day was celebrated by the Physical
Education Department; the teacher Raquel Serrano
organized a tournament of BOCCIA among students
(from the 5th grade to 9th grade). Students got the
opportunity to learn how to play this sport, which,
in the Portuguese school, is played by the students
with disabilities. It was truly an inclusive activity, all
students, in groups played along with the team of
students with Special Needs.
“It's normal to be different” is the motto of the
Italian school. Every year teachers work with
children on a peculiar issue, which has to do with
people, their identity and human relationships. This
year the theme was Ikigai. Ikigai is a Japanese
word that cannot be translated with a single word in
English. Ikigai is a treasure in our soul, whihc we
have to discover and cultivate day by day to live
happily, in peace with ourselves and with other
people. We could say it is our reason to live.
What is my passion? What am I good at? What's
the reason I wake up every morning? What can I do
for other people? What does the world need?
Around these questions, we can build a big thinking
on what we are and how we can live our life fully,
taking care of us and of other people. If we focus
on it we will discover that in the little details of
everyday life we can find seeds to make our souls
blossom. Every team proposed this theme in their
class in many different ways: reading books,
interviewing children, writing stories or poems,
finding the words to describe pupils' talents and the
way they can help other people through them. After
these activities, each class created an artwork,
which was exhibited in the hall of the school on 3rd
December.
In Romania, in order to change attitudes, as well as
to create and develop an empathic behaviour
towards the disabled, the students from 3rd, 4th
and 8th grades were asked to search for some
information about the disabled which they turned
into drawings, posters, messages. Furthermore, the
school psychologist explained to the students the
concepts of disability and infirmity. There was also
an interactive meeting between the students and a
disabled person. This person told the children about
the incident which led to his disability and has put
him into a wheelchair, his feelings, how his life is
today. M.B.M. has shared a few of the difficulties he
had to face: the inability to walk, the depression,
the ignorant people, the lack of the access ramp at
the entrance of the buildings. With the help of his
family and psychologists, he managed to overcome
all these obstacles and today he is very proud that
he is an active person that can move easily in his
wheelchair, he can drive and he also attends
different charities for other disabled people.
The students have been challenged to play the part
of a disabled person, to use the wheelchair and
they have realised that it is not easy to live like
this. They have discovered that the disabled people
are not different from us, they only do things which
we think are normal, a little bit different. Many
disabled can fit perfectly in our society, they can
learn, they can work, but they need the necessary
conditions to do that and it depends on us to
provide them. At the end the students have handed
in cards and messages to support and encourage
him.
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