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Category: Spanish

Published: 31 December 2015

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The Institut Pons d’Icart is a State centre which depends on de Department d’Ensenyament, that is, the Education Department of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Catalan Goverment.

It is a type  “B” centre, that is, it has fom 16 to 21  groups of a lineal structure with three complete groups of ESO ( Obligatory Secondary Education), which means 12 groups divided into the four years of ESO, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th, ages ranging from 12 to 16. There is also a Plan, PIM, ( Intensive Improvement Plan)for those students who have not consolidated the basic skills of Primary School.

There are also Post Compulsary studies, Batxillerat, which cover the range from 16 to 18 years of age and it is a preparation for the University studies. There are six Batxillerat groups, three for the first year and three for the second, with an approximate ratio of 28 students per group.

There are four different branches in Batxillerat:

·         Health and Natural Science

·         Technology

·         Humanity and Social Science

 

·         Scenic Arts

The Institut Pons d’Icart is located in the historic centre of the town, in a very privileged place near all the official institutions and main cultural  places, the Conservatory,  the Library, the Historic Provincial Archive, the Camp de Mart  Auditorium,the  theatres,  museums, old town, Roman buildings, exhibitions, etc., which allows many interesting cultural activities in town , as well as attending  theatre representations and plays, lectures, debates etc.  All these features make our School singular and very convenient.

Foreign languages are a major topic at the Pons d’Icart:  apart from our first two official languages, Catalan and Spanish, the school offers English as the first foreign language and German and French as second foreign languages to choose from.

From the first year of ESO, there is special program called “Push into reading “carried out in three languages Catalan, Spanish and English, this program is sometimes combined with “Reading aloud”, which is trained for competing in a special contest.

There is also a program led both by the department of Education and the department of Health, which takes the name of”Salut i Escola”, Health and School, by which there are weekly visits of a nurse offering her service to the students who want it. Furthermore, the Pons d’Icart works together with the “EAP”, a group of professionals giving psychological and pedagogical advice for students with special needs. Moreover, the Institute collaborates with the Municipal social service in order to prevent early school leaving.

 Our centre is well equipped with a classroom for each group and group splits, , multimedia classrooms, Music Hall, Laboratory of Physics and Chemistry, Laboratory of Biology and Geology, Language Classroom, Art Classroom, Drawing Workshop, Computer room, Technology Classroom, Library, Sports Court and Canteen.

The school  schedule is from 8.30 to 15 from Monday to Friday with a break from 11.30 to 12.00.

 

PONS D’ICART IS OPEN TO THE WORLD

The Strategic Plan of our school is  engaged in a Multilingual Project,   implementing multilingual teaching to our academic activities. The basic idea and target is that both teachers and students improve their general  knowledge and language competence in foreign  languages,  French and German and escpecially English. To accomplish this objective the school  has been applying actions that are all addressed to the same objective. The school wants to give students the capacity to succeed in this internationalized and global society ,both  in their academic as well as in their professional activity .

Our present proposal in the current context is to open to Europe from a methodological, linguistic and curricular point of view. We intend to become a multilingual school in the near future, by teaching a third of the curricular subjects in English. Therefore, new methodological tools are to be acquired and an improvement in the individual competences is to be reached. To achieve this change, we have started to assign some hours to collaborative work  with other countries, giving an intercultural dimension to the teaching process. Here are some of the actions taken for accomplishing the multilingual goal.

• We have started to use the CLIL methodology ( Content and Language Integrated Learning) in subjects such as social science, natural science , mathematics and classical culture within the frame of a Goverment  Innovative Plan, which places our centre as a GEP school(Plurilingual, Experimental Group)and allows students’ exposure to foreign languages to be raised .
• We have also increased the hours of contact with foreign languages both at school as well as out of school:
• Exchange programs with Denmark, Poland and Germany, which promote foreign language learning as well as raising the curiosity for other cultures and human relationship among youngsters , direct contact with other European countries and the verification that values such as equality, democracy and equity are common in our European Union.
• The Erasmus + project, a European Project ,  developed within the Erasmus + program, which involves  four High Schools in Germany, Romania, Poland and Spain.  SOS (Sick or Sound),  a two year project , which aims to enhance awareness of how to live a healthy life and prevent diseases. The Project comprises a series of mini projects such as a multilingual dictionary,body models, a wiki, a magazine, a webpage, etc., as well as four mobilities to the four countries involved, which ensure practical, cross-curricular  learning, language exposure and lots of fun and new friends.
• Our school counts on some conversational assistant teachers who are part of a University program which promotes this assistance with foreign students in Tarragona.

All in all, Our Institute is a very warm and active centre which is willing to welcome newcomers from around the world and offers a wide variety of subjects and activities for every student. The fact of being located in the heart of Tarragona and just ten minutes walk from the beach and sea, makes it even more attractive . So Tarragona and Institut Pons d’Icart is already waiting for you!