Nästegårdsskolan is a school in Kvänum (around 1200 inhabitants) in the countryside about an hour away from Gothenburg. The students are aged 6 to 16 – preschool class to year 9. We have 20 classes, around 400 students and 40 teachers. Year 7-9, where we will have this project, now have 166 students and 24 teachers. Most students come by bus.
The six language teachers will be involved in the project. Apart from English, we teach French, Spanish and German and Swedish as a second language and have newly arrived students. The next school year (2019/2020) there will be a new organisation where the school will be divided into two schools. One for the students 6-12 and one for the students 13-16. There will be two head teachers. From 19 May Annika Berg Svensson will be the new head teacher for year 7-9. Some teachers (e g Music, Handicraft, Food Technology, PE) will work with all ages and the other teachers for just one age group.
In our school, all students from year 4 has their own computer (year 1-3 ipads) and to learn more methods how to use the computers in a pedagogical way all teachers who teach year 7-9 has raised their pedagogical ICT competence by studying (everyone studied a book about learning through ICT), trying out different tools and discussing together.
We have experience of working in international projects, since we
have had three Comenius projects, one Nordplus and one Atlas project for three years. The key people in the project will be the six language teachers in year 7-9 and the head teacher. The contact person is Evacaisa Arvidsson, English teacher, (and in case she will leave the school Linda Larsson, French teacher, will take over and so on). Evacaisa has worked in many projects before and is used to doing that. She also uses ICT in her teaching on a regular basis. The other language teachers also use ICT in their teaching and feel comfortable about that and thus able to share their experiences. There will be around 165 students involved in the project. Learning a language is not important for
many of our students. They don’t have many international contacts and therefore don’t see the need of another language beside their own mother tongue. The education level among the parents is also quite low, so giving the students an opportunity to learn a language by using it in real life is important. If the students cooperate with students from other countries and use a language in real life, together
with students in other countries, we are sure it will motivate them to learn more than basic skills. To start the work with motivation of students all English teachers will take a course at the end of March where motivation of studying English is one of the lectures. The language teachers have worked for many years, but want to improve their lesson activities and to vary the teaching to make the students more motivated to learn a language. By sharing ideas with colleagues from other countries we will increase our teaching repertoire.
The Swedish school system: https://www.skolverket.se/download/18
Power Point Kvänum(PDF file)
