1. Terzo Circolo Didattico di Verbania Primary and Nursery School Web www.terzocircolo.comune.verbania.it e-mail ciaoscuola@tin.it

2. Who we are Terzo Circolo Didattico di Verbania Primary and Nursery School 5 primary schools (about 500 pupils) 3 nursery schools (about 200 pupils)

3. Where we live Verbania is situated north west of Italy, on the shores of Lake Maggiore, near the Swiss border

5. Isola Bella Lake Maggiore

6. PALLANZA

7. THE ROOTS OF THE PROJECT From 2001 to 2004 we worked together in a School Project about traditional celebrations and, while our pupils exchanged information through e-mails, letters and pictures, we started to feel we teachers had a lot of things to learn and to teach each other so we decided to enter a new project on school developement, this project!

8. THE CORE OF THE PROJECT The core of our work has been “ Well-being at school ” Because we do believe that the first step to become good world citizens is feeling well with oneselves and one ’ s friends and learning to accept differences and to reduce conflicts “ at home ”

9. THE FRUITS OF THE PROJECT

10. Staff awareness we have:  started a systematic reflection analysed the ethos in on our own school’s vision our schools and found our own weak and powerful points shared our findings among us and with partner schools formulated an up-to-date action plan for our own school

11. A yoga course for children Our children have attended a yoga course with a trainer specialized in working with children from nursery and primary school Worries, anger and fear, go away!

12. A course on relaxing techniques for the staff... because you cannot teach what you do not know!! The course has been attended by a large part of the teachers

13. Peer massage Thanks to our partners from Top o ’ th ’ Brow, we have learnt some peer massage techniques and we have spread them out in our schools. In one of them peer massage has been insert in the weekly routine and the pupils appreciate it very much, feeling more friendly and relaxed towards each other.

14. Rational Emotional Training We have been working on this area for many years, but this project has helped us to develop further tecniques and new ideas.

15. Understanding of being world citizens Relaxed, selfconfident and friendly, our children could easily feel part of a great world plan to build a new and better society. The pupils from the highest classes have been led to think about the real meaning of being world citizens and their final answers have shown they (and we!) are on the right way. BEING WORLD CITIZENS MEANS FRIENDSHIP

16. A GREAT GROUP OF FRIENDS These years spent working together have created firm bonds of friendship and co-operation among our schools and have surely contributed to improve us personally and professionally. So we do hope we will be able to carry them on in another Comenius Project. Good luck to the new project and Thank you very much to everybody

17. Friendship is the only cement that will keep the World together