Projects at Cygnaeus School

Building a School Community that Reads More
Emphasis is on reading at Cygnaeus School this year. Throughout the year we will have all kinds of activities to encourage reading. Book certificates will be awarded at various grade levels, frequent visits to the library will be part of the plan and people who know to recommend good reading will visit classes to help us to choose books that we can surely enjoy.

Cygnaeus School participated actively in National Newspaper Week sponsored by our county newspaper, Satakunnan Kansa February 3 - 7, 2004. In fact, one of the many several classes that participated in a raffle by answering questions relating to each issue of the newspaper that week won a free concert for the entire school!

Multicultural Awareness
Kanako Kanako Maruyama, a Japanese teacher intern, came to Cygnaeus School in November 2003. She will stay here for one year. Kanako is sharing her culture with all the pupils in the school by giving lessons in origami, painting Japanese characters and doing Japanese dance. Kanako already has learned to speak very good Finnish in the short time she has been here and she has no difficulty at all explaining some of the major differences and similiarites between our cultures.

SataGlobal
Cygnaeus School is one of several schools in the district participating in the Sataglobal project. Sataglobal is a project that began in 2002 and will continue until 2005. The purpose of the project is to create and maintain a network of schools within the county of Satakunta who co-operatively share information and ideas related to other cultures. This multicultural networking will promote more interaction with non-Finnish cultures.

Environmental Art Project Art Here, There and Everywhere
Three classes at Cygnaeus School, two classes specializing in art and the International School, Cygnaeus class, have been participating for a couple of years in an exciting environmental art project that is coordinated by the Pori Art Museum and the Pori Department of Education. Pupils from other schools, along with student artists and professional artists, also participate in this project. Altogether there are about 120 of us in Pori that are actively involved in this project.

In the Autumn of 2003 participating pupils made chairs to represent the basic rights of children according the the UN's Declaration on Universal Children's Rights. This project was called The Chair Was There (TUO OLI TUOLI) . These chairs were on display, along with chairs made by pupils from other schools, at a shopping centre in downtown Pori. In fact the chairs themselves were so interesting that they became the subject of a set of Memory Game cards that are sold by the Pori Art Museum.

Sister School in Riga, Latvia
We have sister-school relationship with Riga Centre Primary School (RÍgas Centra Sâkumskola) in Riga, Latvia that provides lots of new experiences for both schools. In the spring of 2003 an exhibition of craftwork by pupils at the Riga Centre Primary School was on display in Pori at the Satakunta County Library in the children's department. A few teachers and a few pupils, too, visited us from Riga, Latvia for the opening of the exhibition at the library and to plan how we can develop our sister-school relationship further.