Scuola Secondaria di 1° Battisti-Ferraris

The Junior Secondary School “ Battisti – Ferraris” is a school born in 2013 through the unification of two Junior Secondary Schools which had existed in the town of Bisceglie for several years (Province of Barletta-Andria-Trani). It consists of three seats named respectively “Battisti”, “Ferraris” and “Cosmai”. The first two are located in “via Pozzo Marrone” and the last one in “corso Cosmai”. The social background is mixed. It means that as far as we know a great part of parents got a junior secondary certificate, others have an upper secondary diploma and others have got a degree. In the school there are 905 students, divided into 13 first year classes, 14 second year classes and 13 third year classes. They are between 11 and 14 years old. We have about 45 “DSA”, which stands for “Learning Disabilities (LD) students” and 12 certified “BES”, which stands for “Special Needs” students. There are 90 teachers of different subjects as follows: 24 Teachers of Italian; 14 Maths teachers; 7 Teachers of English; 4 P.E. teachers; 4 Technology teachers; 4 Art teachers; 5 Music teachers; 2 Teachers of French; 3 Teachers of Spanish; 21 Back –up teachers; 2 R.E. teachers. The teaching staff is composed of different areas: - language area; - technological- scientific area; - expressive area, including musical – artistic – physical education; - back up area (for handicapped – LD and Special Needs students). As far as the target group is concerned, the essential aim of the educational deed is to foster the development of the personality. The student is the centre of the educational action in all his/ her own aspects: cognitive, affective, relational, physical, aesthetic, ethical, spiritual and religious ones. You encourage learning across a transversal and specific dimension of each subject. In educational paths, one of the central aims is the development of competences related to active citizenship such as the understanding of the importance of rules for the coexistence in society. The school gives particular attention to back -up teaching comprising different forms of handicap, disability or disadvantage. Regarding the LD and the Special Needs students, our aim is to reduce the relational and emotional troubles in order to ensure equal opportunities of development of abilities for each student. For this purpose our staff studies and deepens themes linked to “Learning Disorders”. The following subjects are taught: Italian – History – Geography, Math and Science, English (as a first foreign language, 3 weekly hours), French or Spanish (by choice, 2 weekly hours), P.E. Art, Technology, Music and R.E. The disabled students attend their respective class groups and are integrated and well accepted within them. According to the choices of the teaching staff, which help determine our educational syllabus, during the second part of the school year our school starts projects and extracurricular activities in several fields. Moreover teachers develop, during their curricular activities, ongoing institutional projects of particular interest which are connected with our educational syllabus: Unicef , FAI (Italian National Trust) projects and national competitions. Disabled students are also inserted into planned activities even though exclusively in the morning. By developing activities which enhance independence and manual skills we make any possible effort to encourage their inclusion and integration. Our school is divided into 4 departments aiming at running our formative offer and at ensuring its good management: 1. Formative offer policies and support of teachers’ work as well as self-analysis and self- evaluation of the school. 2. Services and aid to students; services aiming at ensuring continuity from primary to secondary school and at helping students’ choices for their future studies. 3. Services and assistance to teachers, ICT and website maintenance; 4. Implementation of educational projects in partnership with bodies and institutions outsi