Baħrija Primary School, which forms part of St. Nicholas College, joined the eTwinning programme during the last scholastic year.  This project aims to widen the boundaries of the classroom to a European dimension.

The Year 1 class together with their teacher Ms. Anna Vassallo, worked on two projects.  The project ‘A Monster at School’ was founded between two partners, that in Baħrija, Malta and a primary school in Frontenac, a village near Bordeaux in France.  Both classes were bound to create an original story about a monster who wished to go to school and with the children’s help, make his dream come true!

The pupils in Malta met a monster softtoy and they themselves came up with the ideas and sentences for the story.  Each pupil had to prepare his/her own page of the story using their real name.  Photos of the objects mentioned were taken by the pupils themselves in the school and the surrounding area.  The photos were taken with a digital camera awarded by the Maltese eLearning Centre for being one of the first twenty five projects to be enrolled during the year.

Photo images were cropped and embedded together with a digital matchstick figure with the pupils’ own portrait photo on a blank sheet for the pupils to colour in.  Background colouring of the pages followed the rainbow order.  Pupils were recorded recounting the story in two versions (English and Maltese) using the Photostory software with the help of the eLearning peripatetic teacher Ms. Laura Schembri.

The English and Maltese stories were then published on an internet blog, http://montythemonster.blogspot.com

The pupils in France initiated the story from a drawing of a monster presented by their teacher Ms. Karine Farges.  The pupils were recorded recounting the story in English.  Photos of the pupils taking part in the project were taken in the school and the surrounding area.  A copy of the storyboard created by the pupils was sent by post to the Maltese school.

The Maltese project did not remain an individual classroom project - Monty was adopted by the whole school.  The softtoy was the starting point of a dramatised story written by the Year 5 and Year 6 pupils and coordinated by the Drama peripatetic teacher Mr. Bernardo Riolo.  The play was performed during the prize giving ceremony at the end of the scholastic year 2008-2009.

An adaptation of the eTwinning project ‘A Monster at School’ was presented for the  eLearning project awards.  Pupils themselves prepared drawings of the same story using the TuxPaint software and the story was then created using the Powerpoint software.  The project came among the finalists in the eLearning awards given at the end of last scholastic year.  Click on the link below to view our Powerpoint Presentation:

PPT - A Monster at School

Our eTwinning project was awarded the:

• eTwinning certificate in October 2008
• Quality Label awarded by Malta in May 2009
• Quality Label awarded by France in June 2009
• European Quality Label in October 2009

For us at Baħrija, the main aim of this and other eTwinning projects is that our pupils do not use their abilities only for academic learning but in partner projects away from the classroom and from our island.