Saint-Didier primary school

Cycle 1 (ages 2-4)

Cycle 2 (ages 5-7)

Cycle 3 (ages 8-10)

Saint-Didier-sous-Riverie School, which has 3 classes and 68 pupils, is a nursery and primary school in France. Though part of the state education system, Saint-Didier differs from the majority of other schools in the following ways:

• teaching methods of various origins have been absorbed into a coherent whole,

• a coherent team of teachers has been formed.

Our school has integrated many different teaching methods, such as:

• an evaluation system using coloured belts to indicate different levels; this originated in what is called “institutional teaching theory” created by Fernand Oury and Aļda Vasquez,

• cooperation between pupils and the creation of a school newspaper and school correspondence, which were founded by the French theorist Celestin Freinet,

• analysis of practice, created by the Hungarian doctor Michael Balint, and introduced to French teachers by the psychoanalyst Jacques Levine, who remains the spiritual father of school philosophy groups,

• the use of experimentation as a way of promoting science learning, inspired by the American techniques “Hands On” and “Inquiry” (popularized in France by the physicist, Georges Charpark),

• the use of LOGO: a computer language for children, conceptualized in the 1970’s by Seymour Papert of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

We also feel that Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory is relevant to us, and we consider ourselves as close to schools that have taken part in the SUMIT project (Schools Using Multiple Intelligence Theory).

Another particular characteristic of our school: a committed and coherent teaching team, a rarity in France, where teachers are appointed on the basis of seniority, which paralyses innovations.

Our teaching methods are described in more detail elsewhere on this site. Please take the time to read about them. We are very keen in having contact with schools or teachers using teaching methods or theories that tend to follow the same line as ours.

This page has been translated from French by Andreas Theodorou.

Discussion


		Last Update :07/29/06