Agrupamento de Escolas Fernão do Pó
Public school in rural reagon, 80 km north Lisbon and 20 km to The Atlantic Coast.The school has around 1700 students of all levels (from 6 to 18 years old). The school offers basic, secondary and vocational courses.
Most part of the teachers feel the need to develop their students’ soft skills.
Currently, these skills are more and more important in students education and very much appreciated in the job market. However, Portuguese schools are struggling hard to solve a contradition: how to develop students’ soft skills if they are evaluated by their academic learning and, at the end of each school cicle, by theoretical national exams? The promotion of students’ soft skills must fit the goals of a good education and at the same time, the goals and contenents of the different subjects. This work should be done in the classroom and also in extracurricular opportunites offered by the school. Based on the experience of our school, we suggest “Games and Sports” as a tool to develop soft skills: educational and social games, to do in the classroom in order to develop soft skills and sports as a complement for training social skills. Through “Games and Sports” it is possible to develop self-esteem, communication, team-work, creativity, resilience, cooperation, problemsolving techniques and other soft skills. As Portugal, we suggest multiple activities to foster soft skills: workshop of “Yoga for exams”, workshop of “Ice-breaking Games”, workshop of “Social development Games”, Soft competitions of mixed teams in traditional sports (Football, Voleyball, Handball, etc) and sports with adapted rules.
The responsible of the project is a Physical Education teacher with experienced in tutoring students, groups animation and sports management. The psychologist of the school and other experienced teachers are also involved in the project.