Evaluation

Evaluation

Conference

Speeches of head teachers and coordinators

Speech of the Romanian coordinator, Mrs. Georgeta Tudor

Dear partners, parents, colleagues, students and guests altogether,

I honestly believe that today, May 31, 2014, is a genuine day of feast and accomplishment for the “Elena Vacarescu” Elementary School, for Bucharest and Romania, as well as for the Hidden Talents Project and the participant countries. The overall reason behind my belief is the event today that is the International Dissemination Conference for the outcomes and results of our two years-project, focused on developing new pedagogical methods for uncovering and promoting students’ hidden talents. I welcome all the participants at our conference, where we planed to pinpoint the main activities we have carried on together during the project. I wish to express my appreciation and gratitude to our project partners, for their application and commitment in support of completing with success the project activities. Besides, I hold dear, and I can not forget the hospitality of our partners that welcomed us in their schools, towns and countries. I also wish to thank the Romanian host families, parents and children altogether, for their involvement in the Comenius project, Hidden Talents. The accomplished activities supported our strive to find out unraveled talents and passions both in our students and teachers. Thus, we uncovered and brought to one’s attention students that sing, dance, recite, play theater, are skilled in practicing sports or play various instruments. Accordingly, the school environment turned into a more friendly and attractive milieu for students and teachers. We hope that for some of them this will be a good starting point for their future personal development. Also, the project was a big plus in improving the communication in English, at a high European level, for a significant number of students and teachers in our schools. Moreover, the project was a great opportunity to make new friends and to bolster outstanding cultural and educational information exchanges. I have to admit that it was not always easy to fulfill the activities we initially have planned, especially since one initial partner, that it is the Polish partner, was no longer able to join us. Nonetheless, we all have been driven by enthusiasm and joy to work together to carry on a new project. I wish to express my gratitude for the excellent work of our diligent students. Also I would like to positively pin point the hard work that our teachers have done during the two-years project. Nowadays, we have a successful project to present, and this can be a strong incentive to apply in the future for new projects financed by the European Commission. These said, I declare this conference open. I give the floor to Mrs. Silvia Roye Abschlusskonferenz Comenius- Projekt „Hidden Talents“ I would like to introduce myself. I am Silvia Roye, the German coordinator of a primary school in Halle, Saxony- Anhalt. Its name is Grundschule “Am Ludwigsfeld”. 14 teachers try to give their best to educate 240 students in the age of 6 to 10. Here, at the final conference in Bucharest, we are 3 from the German Comenius- Team and I would like to greet all of you who take or took part, who are interested in the success of the Hidden talents project, who could improve their own talents, whatever it was, also in their names and the other staff members from Germany. We were one of the inexperienced partners at the beginning of this project. Only full with ideas and eager to start and work with our partner schools. It was good to know Hungary and Romania knew each other from former Comenius projects and they opened their arms widely to new ones. All of us got close to each other very quick. Some classes were more involved into national and international activities then others. It depended on the age of students. But I think, we managed it well to organize our tasks in different age levels. E.g. talent- shows, recitation or language contests, sport or music events. We even had letter exchanges between Hungary, Romania and Germany. It was nice to see how proud the students were when they got letters. They tried to learn the spelling or new words. In Germany it is getting more and more a problem to write the words correctly. Students use computer programmers or write text messages. Sometimes they think, who cares about spelling. Now they noticed, how can we as being a native speaker do spelling mistakes. It was a high motivation to work that way, even in their mother tongue. Other really big events were our language contests. We could manage it every time to involve our Comenius partners in oral competitions personally. We used the individual teacher exchanges from England and Hungary for doing interviews with native speakers or foreigners, involved them into our English lessons in class 3 and 4 (the very beginners in Germany) and as an English teacher I realized, they worked harder than before to learn more individual vocabulary. Some students used their knowledge now in other subjects, such as social science or mathematics. I could name many more shining examples but I guess, all in all you will see while listening to other speeches and the performances our international student groups, this project was a success. We learnt from each other, got a closer connection between European teachers, shared ideas and got friends. Thank you for having been our partners, for your patience, for your friendship. Thank you for being a great host, Romania. This special impression here will always be in our minds and soul. Greetings from the German team. We are happy to be a part of this international group and to take part in this final conference in Bucharest.


 * Speech of the Slovak coordinator, Mr. Dušan Tokarčík **

Ladies and gentlemen, dear students.

We have been very pleased to be a part of an international project COMENIUS for two years, from 2012 to 2014. The topic of the project “HIDDEN TALENTS“ caught our attention immediately. We were very pleased that we will be able to open the door to our students and teachers to get know other cultures and school systems. Two years of lasting the project brought very important contribution to us – we visited new places in Great Britain, Germany, Croatia, Hungary and now, in Romania. We have met a lot of great people we would love to meet with, not only during the official occasions. Every project meeting was hold in friendly atmosphere while all the hosts presented the best of their traditions. We were very impressed by the talent shows of all the project meetings. While watching children and students temperament performances and songs of other nationalities, we often had the goosebumps. All the show programs left us memorable tracks, which we will remember for a long time. Even though the fulfilling of the project tasks was sometimes demanding, it was a new experience for us that that helps us to move forward. We hope that such activities will continue in our school in the future.

(Slovak translation) Vážené dámy a páni, milí žiaci.

S veľkou radosťou sme privítali skutočnosť, že v rokoch 2012-2014 sa staneme súčasťou nadnárodného projektu školských partnerstiev Comenius. Hneď v úvode nás zaujala aj téma projektu, hľadanie talentov tzv. „Hidden Talents.“ Boli sme potešení, že budeme môcť žiakom ako i učiteľom našej školy otvoriť ďalšie dvere ku spoznávaniu nových kultúr a školských systémov. Celé dva roky tohto projektu boli pre našu školu prínosne. Naši žiaci a učitelia navštívili nové miesta v Anglicku, Nemecku, Chorvátsku, Maďarsku a teraz aj v Rumunsku. Spoznali sme množstvo skvelých ľudí, s ktorými sa radi stretneme i pri menej oficiálnych podujatiach. Každé stretnutie či pracovné, alebo projektové sa nieslo v priateľskom duchu, kde všetci hostitelia poukázali na to najlepšie zo svojich tradícii. Veľmi sa nám páčili vystúpenia z každého projektového stretnutia - každá Talentová Show. Pri temperamentných vystúpeniach, pesničkách deti a študentov iných národností nám naskakovala často husia koža. Všetky show programy v nás zanechali nezabudnuteľné stopy, na ktoré budeme dlho spomínať. Aj keď bolo plnenie úloh projektu niekedy náročné všetko berieme ako novú skúsenosť, ktorá nás posúva stále dopredu. Dúfame, že takéto aktivity budú na našej škole pokračovať aj v budúcnosti.