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Hot on the heels of yesterday’s e-mail from CILT about Europe Day (see yesterday’s post), today I received a message from Pamela Powers at the European Parliament about Spring Day in Europe;

Spring Day in Europe was set up to promote learning and debate about the European Union in schools.

As 2008 is the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, “Bridging cultures through dialogue” is the chosen theme for Spring Day 2008. It will be held from 25th March to 30th June, with a special focus on 9th May, which is Europe Day. Schools across Europe are invited to take part.

The Spring Day in Europe website provides teachers and students with ideas for events and activities in the classroom. For further information and to register your school, please look at the Spring Day website: http://www.springday2008.net

Once registered, you will have access to the full package of teaching and learning resources, activities, tools and services of the web portal.

The teacher adviser for the UK is Ian Levinson . He is a contact point between European Schoolnet and schools that register with Spring Day in Europe and is able to advise and answer questions.

Investigating the Spring Day website, it seems that there are various benefits to registering for the day – such as involvement with other classes and schools, taking part in competitions and receiving a certificate of participation for your involvement – always popular in schools with SMT :o)

Content is in 23 different languages, allowing for access to the site in the language studied as well as English, and the ability to compare text (and I assume activities) in different languages. At the same time, the whole day is based on the discovery of other cultures and traditions, thus covering ICU strand. There are online games, ecards to send and podcasts too which make my evolving techie side smile! You can find out more about activities, past events and how to register on the Spring Day for Europe 2008 site.

At the time of writing there are 1113 schools registered – I’m about to make it 1114.

What about you?

Europe Day 08

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I’ve just received notification from Ruth Churchill at CILT of some FREE resources available. Never one to look a gift horse …, I immediately investigated!

Apparently May 9th is Europe Day (I’m afraid this was the first I’d heard of it!) and the European Commission has produced a booklet to promote the day as well as provide information promoting the EU.

Here’s the e-mail:

Representation of the European Commission in the United Kingdom – Passport to the European Union
What do we know about the member states of the European Union? Whereabouts is the statue with more clothes than one would find in any woman’s wardrobe. Did they really use eggs to built a bridge in Prague? Could there still be an island where no female either human or animal is allowed? This and a lot more information on the 27 member countries of the European Union e.g. their size and population, famous citizens etc. is answered in our little booklet “Passport to the European Union” which also includes stickers of coins, flags, buildings and even a map. Children can find places for the stickers in the passport and on the map.

In order to support Europe Day (9 May) activities for young people, the Representation of the European Commission in the United Kingdom is making 100,000 copies of the Passport to the European Union available to UK schools and similar organisations completely free of charge.

You can view the booklet online and then decide if you want to order up to 100 copies per school either from your Europe Direct centre or by filling in a form online. I’m planning on using them for SODA (start of the day activity) and also for incidental work. If every class focussed on a different country, we could share notes in assembly later in the week. Kids love finding things out and with stickers and things too, it’s sure to be a hit (they’ll prefer it to handwriting too!)

So don’t hang around- there are now 100 less copies as my order’s already in!

Here’s a montage of posters used in previous years to promote the day – perhaps it’ll inspire you!

To find out what’s going on in the UK, have a look at the events diary – I like the look of the Giant European Union Pub Quiz in Wrexham! And there’s also a whole page of ideas for how your school might be able to celebrate.

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