Italian Partner

Istituto Comprensivo Statale "S. Quasimodo" is in Gela, an important seaside town in the south- eastern part of Sicily.

The school consists of: infant, primary and lower secondary school. Students are aged 3 to 14. There are around one thousand students and more than one hundred teachers, divided into three different buildings.

Students come from different social and economic backgrounds, but most families take care of their children and follow them in their human and cultural growth.

Teachers are quite young, eager to know new methodologies and above all to improve their skills. All the members of the staff are active and dynamic and strongly believe in the effectiveness of new teaching methods, that we are currently using with our students.

The school is very well equipped with laboratories and ICT tools: there is an Interactive Whiteboard with the Internet connection in each classroom, two I.T. labs, a mobile language lab, an astronomy lab and a modern robotics lab, with different kinds of robots.

Students learn two foreign languages: English and French or English and Spanish. All pupils study English for 8 years and the second foreign language for 3 years. About 70 students have music classes in the afternoon and learn to play guitar, piano, violin or flute. The school has got an instrumental orchestra with 50 elements. In the afternoon there are interesting extra-curricular activities.

The school has identified language training and the use of information technologies as priorities.

Each year about 150 students attend a preparation course for the English language exams "University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations", the school organizes English-language theatre activities with native actors and in summer there is an English Camp, a campus that is a full immersion in the English language, held by mother-tongue animators and teachers.

Our students study coding as a curricular subject and there are different robotics activities. We offer training courses for students about educational robotics, in collaboration with an association of computer engineers, called “Shiplab”.

A special attention is paid to European projects, being the development of knowledge and respect of different cultures some of the main goals of the school curriculum.

The school is carrying out three Erasmus+ projects: a KA1 project (School Education Staff Mobility), for teachers training, and two KA2 projects of strategic partnership.

There is also a good number of teachers working on eTwinning projects, so the students have the opportunity of getting in touch with different cultures, using English in real contexts.

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