Together with all schools of the Municipality,  our school participates  in the  Youth Festival to show students' works and to disseminate Educational projects in which we are involved.  Erasmus + is represented there through videos, photos and some students who talk about their experience in such an enriching programme

The goal of the Educational Project of our School (Agrupamento de Escolas De Forte da Casa)  is to put the students as the leading characters of their learning process through the education of intelligence, cultural education, the management of emotions and the formation of their personality. Consequently, we have been exploring different methodologies and listening to students’ opinions in order to create a better learning environment.

This was one of the projects we found particularly interesting to join in order to improve and adopt new methods of teaching.  Using drama to teach language skills can make Education more appealing to students and consequently, prevent failure and early school leaving. Besides, it can decrease indiscipline as undisciplined students prefer a more non-formal way of learning.

Having in mind that the traditional learning is no longer catching students’ attention, our school has been betting on teachers’ training and students’ interests. We have already put into practice some strategies using theatre to learn languages, specially foreign languages. We have been sharing with other school teachers all the knowledge and experience acquired during the project. Most of the activities are seen by other teachers as one of the things implemented by the School Principal was that all teachers should at least attend two lessons from other colleagues in order to learn and share experiences and work in a collaborative way.

With our school social media management tools, we interact with our community and keep parents involved in our students' education. Agrupamento de Escolas de Forte da Casa has a Facebook account, a Youtube channel, a Flickr account and an official Webpage, where all the information has been posted and stored. We also share information through emails and in formal meetings.

 During the 2018 Youth Festival in Vila Franca de Xira, our students were there to talk about their experience in such an enriching programme. Together with all schools of the Municipality, our school participates in the  Youth Festival to show students' works and to disseminate Educational projects in which we are involved.  Erasmus + is also represented there through videos and photos.

 A Drama Games Booklet was specially created for the LTTA mobility in Lisbon. The Portuguese teachers prepared and recorded the drama games in a register booklet so that this project could be disseminated among other teachers. We also give some guidelines to help teachers set up and run a role-playing session. We suggest many drama activities: 

• Icebreakers, get-to-know-you exercises and confidence building activities to help students get comfortable, warmed up and focused;

• mime and movement; short improvisations, sound games  and role-plays that can be played individually, in pairs or short groups.

•   Poems and how to work with them as a drama activity;

 

 We made a short movie using Powtoon to disseminate the    activities performed in Nijverdal, The Netherlands.

 The project had a great impact because it challenged the traditional teachers and students to teach and to learn things differently. We also noticed that the slow learners and those students with special needs  get easily involved and improve their knowledge faster with more motivation and consequently better results. So nowadays we have more students getting involved in the activities.

We have implemented in a regular basis the drama dynamics in the classroom - all topics related to foreign language learning can benefit from role-plays, drama games and improv situations. Not all students joined the Theatre Group but as they belong to different classes they challenge the others to use this educational methodology in their lessons.

Since our students learn 2 foreign languages, we have extended the technique also to French so topics started to be addressed and worked using drama as one of the methodologies.

MYheARTheatre, an educational theatre company, came to our school to perform “ The Detectives” and English was the main language of communication. Not only did they perform the play but they also involved the students as actors.

Students also created and performed a play and role-plays about different topics: discrimination, work, immigration, Tv News, love and detective series, etc. which were uploaded on the Padlet (created by Italy) and  broadcast on school social media tools. Those works which couldn’t be recorded are described in a report on the padlet too and photos or pictures can witness students’ involvement in the activities.

Students were also challenged to build a story to be role-played - Creative Writing -   " From the Page to the Stage". This theatre game integrated some behind-the-scenes exercises, which promoted working together on a shared goal and came out with a final “product” to be shared with everybody.

We created an Erasmus corner at school where our works are disseminated.

There was a workshop on Drama Games with the actor Simão Biernat and as one of the teachers involved in this project is also a drama teacher, she carried out several workshops to develop students’ skills and improve language learning.

There was a workshop on Portuguese Folk Dancing too.

we have used the school web page to let the community know how the project was going on. We made small presentations in classes and workshops for students and teachers, specially those of foreign languages.

We went to the theatre “ A Comuna” to visit the backstage and to see a play  and students could  talk with the stage director and actors.

Students performed a play “ A Fada Oriana” to younger students, whose photos are on the padlet too.

We went to the Puppet Museum to participate in two different workshops:

• The Muppets - a workshop dedicated to foam puppets;

• A Show in Two Hours - students worked the various stages of creating a puppet show.

There were several conferences at school about the Erasmus + Projects running at school.

We wrote all the minutes and created questionnaires, evaluation methods. Some were formal, others more informal in order to check students’ involvement and improvement.