Puppet theatre "Johhny´s 7 Friends"

PARTNERSHIP CONTENT and ORGANISATION

During our project we make a puppet theatre in suitcase with a little boy Johnny (Jussike, Giovanni etc. different equivalent names in partners languages) as the main character, who travels, meets other people and makes 7 stops during his journey. During this journey he introduces his country (most famous sightseeings), symbols and culture. Johnny meet 7 different characters, gets new friends and through this Johnny grows and gets better person.

With the handmade dolls made by our students we enact plays written by our students in our schools, but also in schools, youth-centers, libraries, kindergartens and children´s hospitals in neighbourhood. We collect plays translated into English from every country into book and add to them small vocabulary of partner languages. With smaller pupils is good to make a pictionary (dictionary, illustrated with simple pictures). So we can disseminate results of our project and have bigger impact. Also we reflect our project work in collective blog – so everybody has access to information about our activities in internet.

Project has cultural approach and we concentrate on basic values as friendship, respect, coherence, understanding, honesty and diligence. Aim is to motivate our students of every level by doing something creative, innovative and exciting. We want to learn, teach and discover cultural differences between European nations and mark how important is to grow with positive sharing values.

For us it is important to use effectively IT resources for communication and sharing information with partners, for perpetuate project work. Through Partnership we develop foreign language skills, practice international cooperation and acquaint our school to other schools in Europe.

Schools´ role is to encourage teachers and students to take part in project activities and use project work opportunities for develop creativity. Every school makes puppets and dolls, knocks up theatre stages, paints decorations, organizes writing plays, enacts plays in schools, youth centers, libraries, children´s hospitals and kindergartens, takes pictures and videos and reflect project work in collective blog, translates plays into English and works with vocabulary. Playwriting competitions, painting, handicraft and drama workshops take place in partner-schools.

We want to involve professionals in our project. In the beginning of our project we invite to school famous actors of local puppet theatre, who teach our students how to make puppets. We share our experiences in blog with each other.

Posts in our blog will be done at least once a month by every school. Also students write their own diaries and in the end of project we can show them on the exhibition.

Active involvement of pupils and staff:
- pupils are playwriters, actors, artists,constructors, judges, journalists;
- teachers give to children experience and cognition of European common citizen by developing their personality;
- school leaders bring to attention social behavior and spread project products in the neighbourhood.

We integrate partnership activities into the curriculum so as project work will be introduced and used in the arts and crafts, music, mother tongue, pre-English and English, geography and computer classes in the curriculum of the participating schools.

Our partnership project concerns intercultural dialogue, because at the end of his journey our main character Johnny will have friends from different countries, cultures and languages and so do our students.

We have chosen the main character of our drama-project little boy, because we want to pay more attention to boys by giving them opportunities to take part of project work (handicraft, drama) - we want to offer boys emotions of success. But also we offer to children to do handicraft work of opposite sex (knitting, sewing, sawing).

We can also involve pupils with special needs in Partnership activities by playing and simple activities. So we tell and act the stories and draw pictures about words, what we have used. Pictures will be collected into addition of our book as pictionary of different languages.


Project coordinator
Tiina Erala
kaksiktiina@hotmail.com
+372 55608068