Agrupamento de Escolas Gardunha e Xisto, Fundão is a public school in a smalltown called Fundão in the centre of Portugal.
Fundão is located in a valley called “Cova da Beira” in Castelo Branco district between two mountains Gardunha and Estrela (the highest mountain in Portugal).
Agrupamento de EscolasGardunha e Xisto, Fundãoisa set of schools which are run by a main school (EB Serra da Gardunha)since 5th July, 2003. The main school was first established in 1995 due to the large number of pupils atEscola BásicaJoão Francoand moved to its present site in 1996 which is situated right at the foot of Gardunha Mountain.
Its teaching levels rangesfrom Preschool to MiddleSchool (3 – 15 years of age),covering a total area of 700,20Km2, with 29 213 inhabitants.There are11 kindergartens, 13 primary schools, 1 Bilingual Primary school and 2 middle schools. It alsohas three Special Need Departments. Currently it has 1300 pupils, 135 teachers and 72 staff.
Every school year severalschool projects are developed and some of them have won regional and national prices. Ithas also participated in EU funded projects like Comenius /Life Long Learning Programme,and Erasmus Plus.
The pupils are given a solid grounding in the core subjects and they have the opportunity to be involved in a variety of activities including projects, clubs, debates, music, drama, sports, ICT, field work and educational trips. Parents always participate in school projects and activities.
Through the year the school library has several interesting activities for the pupilsin the different school levels. Authors, illustrators, journalists, politicians and othersoften cometo school and work with the pupils.
Since 2011/2012 EB1 NossaSenhora da Conceição has been a Bilingual Primary School. It has currently got 96 pupils enrolled, 8 teachers and 2 school helpers. English is taught through the Social Studies and Art/Craft curriculum using the CLIL methodology. All the teachers involved in this bilingual project have done teacher training courses in CLIL.
Strategic Partnerships (Key Action 2) - Project number: 2015-1-IT02-KA201-015017. This publication was supported by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.