Lower Secondary School
February 3, 2022 2023-03-08 14:09Lower Secondary School
The lower secondary school offered by the Educandato SS. Annunziata boarding school includes programs that aim at increasing the students’ learning capabilities and knowledge. Within this context, the curriculum’s activities and contents are declined by following the national guidelines as well as by incorporating projects that can better respond to the students’ learning and maturation curves.
The primary objective is to guide the students in concentrating on their learning method so as to help them ‘learn to learn’, encouraging the acquisition on their part of a basic widespread culture via the use of curricular and extracurricular activities, workshops, remedial and in-depth study sessions.
The additional and extracurricular activities allow the children to expand their field of experience and to address broader cultural and social issues.
The use of a didactic orientation, moreover, allows the students to better identify the path towards the development of their personal identity.
The teachers and educators accompany the students in their growth at such a young age in which the need for protection must equally meet the need of autonomy.
Activities and Projects
The school organises curricular and extracurricular activities made to supplement the teaching program, enriching and stimulating the children on the cultural, human and social levels. The activities are divided into subject areas and can take place in school or outside the school, especially on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 2 to 5 p.m.
The main activities are the following.
Orientation project
Orientation meetings for prospective students are aimed to provide useful information about the school’s educational and didactic proposals and about how it is organised.
As for outgoing orientation, the aim is to guide the students towards choosing according to their personality and life plans and make the transition into one of the upper secondary school curricula as easy as possible.
Welcoming project
The school is firmly founded on a philosophy of inclusiveness based on an educational per-spective that believes in learning-teaching from the differences present within a class group.
To this end, the school deploys potential facilitators to remove the barriers that prevent the full access of a part of its students to learning.
Humanities
Teachers of humanistic subjects guide and stimulate the students through educational pathways designed to help them achieve the language skills they need to tackle any future paths in all subject areas, upper secondary school studies included.
To help them acquire specific critical skills, special care is taken in choosing reading material and cultural events to participate in that are suitable for the various ages of the children.
Arts
“My Poggio”
The project intends to propose a new way of learning about the national artistic heritage by starting from one’s own school, namely the Villa, by actively involving the children in an edu-cational, cultural and civic experience. The project cultivates interest in the school as a space in one’s life but also as an artistic asset to be appreciated, loved and advertised, favouring al-so the involvement of the families in the process of intellectual growth of their children and educating the students about beauty and teaching them to respect their artistic heritage.
The project is part of the “ADOTTA I MEDICI” (Adopt the Medici) initiative based on the vir-tuous adoption of the precious art in the Villa.
Find more info at the link: http://annoeuropeo2018.beniculturali.it/eventi/mypoggio/
Musical Instrument and Choir Lessons
The Educandato boarding school offers students the chance to study a musical instrument, in afternoon hours, with music teachers specialised in various instruments, such as the guitar, piano, violin, flute and drums. The lessons, held in school, will start only if a sufficient number of children sign up.
Activities may also include educational outings to visit museums and temporary exhibitions and to see theatre performances and/or musical concerts.
Languages
Preparing for Cambridge ESOL and Trinity certifications
The school has been using native English speaker teachers for years to organise courses that prepare students to pass Cambridge ESOL and Trinity exams. The students are divided into small groups following an evaluation test, and on one afternoon a week they attend a two-hour lesson that will enable them to get the following language certifications:
Trinity Grade 2 (Level A1)
Trinity Grade 3 (Level A2.1)
Trinity Grade 4 (Level A2.2)
Cambridge KET (Level A2)
Cambridge PET (Level B1)
Language study abroad in English-speaking countries
Language study abroad is a considerable educational opportunity as it offers students the chance to gain college education experience for the duration of two weeks during the sum-mertime.
Sciences
Coding-Robotics
In the future, our students will be asked to collaborate with colleagues in tackling complex problems, to propose multi-tasking solutions providing clear and timely description of the strategies they have chosen.
This is why the Educandato offers pathways such as ‘Programma il Futuro’ (Program the Fu-ture) (carried out on the Ministry’s online portal), introduction to Coding courses (teaching them to find an algorithm to solve a problem), Educational Robotics courses and activities such as ‘L’Ora del Codice’ (Code Hour) in order to achieve the afore mentioned objectives.
Mathematical Games
Participation in:
Rally Matematico Transalpino (Trans-Alpine Mathematical Rally) – Team games designed to develop teamwork skills, the capacity to relate with others and to exchange solution ideas and strategies, promoted by the University of Siena
Kangourou della Matematica (Mathematical Kangaroo) – Individual games designed to spread the culture of mathematics, promoted by the University of Milan.
Computer sciences
The students are introduced to the use of and navigation in the Web so as to delve into infor-mation and become able to find good quality scientific and cultural info. This knowledge will become useful in later school years with the development of their critical skills.
Physical activity
Over the years, the boarding school has participated many times in out of school sports events, such as school track & field sports races and championships.
During Day Boarding hours in school, sports activities such as athletics, volleyball, fencing and tennis can be organised (when a sufficient number of students enrol to participate).