The project addresses secondary students of 14-17 who are studying English as a foreign language. The aim is to develop students’ literacy skills with reading, writing and acting out literary pieces of participating cultures. At the same time teachers can share their teaching practices. There are 6 schools in the partnership with different experience in international projects and mobility programmes. The project is a continuation and development of a collaboration on eTwinning: “Our Reading Experiences”. The participating countries have several cultural and historical links so the students can extend their subject knowledge with personal experience. We want to improve the students’ basic language skills: reading, writing and speaking, with exposing them to natural and meaningful foreign language environments. During the work we will use modern technology: web2 tools, social media, electronic devices, thus, make a bridge between traditional a 21st century literacy skills. Some participants bring their experience and expertise into the project while others are extremely motivated and eager to join this multicultural community. Italy has great knowledge in TIC (technology, information and communication), Lithuania has a drama club and Hungary includes drama in the language learning curriculum while Spain involves parents and stakeholders in their storytelling activities and uses CLIL. Turkey has a expertise in organising literature-related activities and competitions. All of them have experience in eTwinning. Croatia expressed their wish to improve their knowledge and skills in using new methods and technologies in language teaching. They have strong connections with local societies and institutions. Both students and teachers will take part in several activities including reading and discussing selected books, writing drama scripts and acting out their play. Other areas of art such as design, illustration, taking photos and shooting films are incorporated in the tasks to deliver. The final products will be annotated book lists, a drama script and performance, a literary magazine, and literacy corners at schools and the establishment of a student volunteer system to ensure the longevity of project results after the completion of the project activities. During their work students will read literary pieces, magazines, write stories collaboratively, share their ideas with presentations, discussions and debates locally and internationally. They will also meet with and learn from local theatres, publishers, and contemporary artists. Students will also explore their European citizenship as they will carry out research about the operation of the European Union and will explore their own and the partner countries' history and role within the EU. They will comemorate important international days such as European Day of Languages, Europe Day and World Book Day. Students will also have the opportunity to take part in non-formal extra language courses with the aim of providing them with extra language practice and help them become independent learners and prepare them for lifelong learning. They will learn how to use European Language Portfolio and Europass documents to monitor their own progress. Parallelly to students' activities teachers will strongly cooperate to share good practices of teaching with a view to strengthening their teaching profession. Throughout the three project years they will continuously take part in joint teacher training sessions, lesson observation, micro teaching and peer-teachig sessions. They will mainly focus on methods, tools and techniques used for developing reading, writing and speaking skills. A special emphasis will be put on incorporating drama techniques in everyday teaching practice. Therefore, throughout the project both students and teachers will take part in drama workshops led by professional educational drama trainers. As a result of all this the participating teachers will compile a handbook of good teaching practices both in English and in the participants' mother tongue. We expect that our students will get confidence in speaking in English, improve their reading and writing skills and communication competencies. While reading and sharing their ideas about books they will learn about and understand other cultures better and discover similarities among people of different nations. In order to reach that teachers will provide practices in reading, writing and speaking skills using methods like dialogic teaching, dramatising, and collaborative tasks. Students’ achievement will be evaluated with several tools such as questionnaires, tests, quizzes, self and peer evaluation sheets, interviews. Products of the project will be available in eTwinning and on the Internet and project activities and results will continuously be disseminated during and after the project in the form of promotional events, trainings and workshops inside and outside the partner institutions.
The aim of the project was to come up with ways to develop students’ literacy skills with reading, writing and acting out literary pieces of participating cultures. There were 6 schools in the partnership with different experience in international projects and programmes. The project was a continuation of an Etwinning project and it was also partially based on a previous professional relationship of three partner schools (Hungary, Lithuania and Spain) made in the course of the implementation of a Comenius project. We wanted to improve students’ basic language skills: reading, writing and speaking, with exposing them to natural and meaningful foreign language environments. During the work we thoroughly used modern technology: web2 tools, social media, electronic devices, making a bridge between traditional and 21st century literacy skills. All participants brought their experience and expertise into the project and were extremely motivated and eager to join this multicultural community. The Italian partner had great knowledge in TIC (technology, information and communication), Lithuania had a drama club and Hungary included drama in the language learning curriculum while Spain involved parents and stakeholders in their storytelling activities and used CLIL. The Spanish partner also uses cooperative teaching method. Turkey had expertise in organising literature-related activities and competitions. Croatia was a newcomer to the Erasmus programme and wished to improve their knowledge and skills in using new methods and technologies in language teaching. They had strong connections with local societies and institutions and severaly local projects that were really beneficial to the partnership. Both students and teachers took part in several activities including reading and discussing selected books, writing drama scripts and acting out their play. Other areas of art such as design, illustration, taking photos and shooting films were also incorporated in the tasks. The final products were jointly written short stories, a drama script and performance, six issues of our project newspaper, literacy corners at schools and the establishment of a student volunteer system to ensure the longevity of project results after the completion of the project activities. During their work students read literary pieces, magazines, wrote stories and drama scripts collaboratively, shared their ideas with presentations, discussions and debates. They also visited local theatres, publishers, and contemporary artists. Students could also explore their European citizenship as they carried out research about the operation of the European Union and explored their own and the partner countries' history and role within the EU. They commemorated important international days such as European Day of Languages, Europe Day and World Book Day. Students also took part in non-formal extra language courses with the aim of providing them with extra language practice and help them become independent learners and prepare them for lifelong learning. They have learnt how to use European Language Portfolio and Europass documents to monitor their own progress. Besides the pre-planned project activities we have managed to carry out several extra tasks. During the second project year students from all partner countries took part in a creative writing competion that lasted for an entire school year, resulting in students' considerable development in written language. They were invited to take part in optional extra reading tasks and most of the students participazed in them. Several project-related activities have been introduced and incorporated in partner schools' curricula, ensuring the longevity of project results. Every partner set up a reading club within their schools, introduced Translation and Reading competitions on local and regional levels, introduced new regular programmes (Europe Day, Reading Day), and every partner incorporated drama techniques in their curricula. All partners that had not had drama clubs and drama performances embedded in their curricula before managed to introduce it to their school programme and will have new classes offered un this topic in the long run. Parallelly to students' activities teachers strongly cooperated to share good practices and they continuously took part in joint teacher training sessions, lesson observations and peer-teaching sessions. They mainly focused on methods, tools and techniques used for developing reading, writing and speaking skills. A special emphasis was put on drama techniques, so both students and teachers took part in drama workshops led by professional educational drama trainers. As a result of all this the participating teachers created lots of teaching materials for lessons, competitions and non-formal sessions and compiled a handbook of ICT tools. Link to project webpage: http://readineurope.weebly.com/ Summary of the project: https://1drv.ms/p/s!AgFprhPXSos_hj67H5IHy91nNkSd