Our project "Let's read again" is done by 5 participating schools from Denmark, Spain, Czech Republic, Hungary and Germany. The schools are situated in city and rural areas. The amount of pupils varies from 140 to 1000 and represent different kinds of school systems. In this project we aim to strengthen the students' motivation for reading. It is necessary to improve their reading skills. We want to reach this with the help of European literature. Reading is the most important skill in order to be educated and fit for life. The results of PISA 2015 show a lower level of reading skills among young people in our countries. Surveys of target pupils and our experience as teachers, show the increasing lack of motivation for reading. It has become increasingly difficult for our pupils to comprehend the reading tasks we present them at school and the low reading skills have a negative impact. By working together in this project we will improve our teaching competences in motivating for reading and improving reading skills and open up towards innovative education through the exchange of best practice. All teaching approaches will be based on innovative methods including creative, personalized, cooperative, enquiry based learning. Those will involve the students in discovering and learning with their minds, heart and hands (holistic learning). Our project will be implemented in the following area: innovative methods in reading, reading as a basic skill, literature, foreign languages, ICT. The project has a broad basis and will involve at least 20 linguistic teachers and at least 9 classes of pupils (12-15 years old) at the participants' schools and two local libraries from Barcelona and Trinec. The project is built up by 2 periods, each lasting a school year. The main topic for the first period is "National/local writers", the second is "European well known writers". During the first period we will increase the reading competence of our pupils by using innovative methods which are trained during the transnational meetings. The focus in the second period is the motivation of our pupils to read again. For being motivated it is vital to have basic skills in reading. We hope that working with other cultures’ literature will motivate our pupils. The main evaluations will take place at the transnational meetings, which we will have in the beginning and end of every school year and at the end of the project. The results from the surveys, made during the project, will show the impact of the project among the target pupils. The project will contain activities concerning national literary work, collaborating, work through ICT, introduction to European "Best practice", implementing effective learning methods and individual work with literature. Each international meeting will be preceded in all partner schools by an important phase of preparatory work. During the project, each partner school will make a whole range of products: e.g. book trailers, digital presentations, a printed relay book, written pieces of literature, exhibitions, a common logo, and "The conclusive document". All activities will help reaching our project aim: e.g. with the help of librarians the pupils’ will make a book list, book trailers that motivate the pupils to read a book from another country, investigation of European and local literature, writing and illustrating a relay story that will be printed at the end of the project, a poem-writing competition, digital presentations of our famous writers, meeting authors/ illustrators during the mobilities. Products will be presented on our common website, at exhibitions at the library or local community, during the mobilities, and will also be disseminated at a local and regional level. The general methodology used throughout the project, is to exchange best reading practice at the transnational mobilities and opening pupils’ minds towards interculturalism. Linguistic teachers will participate, so that they can learn from the innovative methods and best practice. Returning to the schools the participating teachers will use their newly gained best practice to the next activity planned in between mobilities. They will implement and disseminate these to other teachers. Through the publication of the relay book at the libraries the target pupils will be exposed as authors. The goal of increasing reading pleasure and motivation by first improving the reading competence coincides with our general goal as an educational institution: - to make the pupils more openminded towards interculturalism, by learning about European literature, so that they feel as Europeans. - to exchange best reading practices and habits from the participating schools in order to innovate our way of teaching and implementing these into our daily educational manners The long term benefits will be achieved by the personal impact that our work will leave on all participants.
In our project "Let's read again" we aimed to strengthen the students' motivation for reading and to show them new methods for improving their reading skills. We wanted to reach this with the help of European literature. By working together in this project we have improved our teaching competences in motivating for reading and improving reading skills and opened up towards innovative education through the exchange of best practice which was introduced during the learning, teaching and training activities and has been trained at the partner schools. All teaching approaches were based on innovative methods including creative, personalized, cooperative, enquiry based learning. The best practice we have introduced were: how to cope with less skilled readers; illustrating workshop ; writing workshop; reading counsellors; Kamishibai Theatre; reading night at school; role play; kahoot; RWCT; visual poems; silent movies ; booktubers; booktrailers; working with reading supervisors and effective use of digital means for presentations like PowerPoint or movie maker. Our project has been implemented in the following area: innovative methods in reading, reading as a basic skill, literature, foreign languages, ICT. The project involved 125 teachers and 370 students (12-15 years old) at the participants' schools and two local libraries from Barcelona and Trinec. The project was built up by 2 periods. 1st: "National/local writers", 2nd: "European well known writers". During the project, each partner school made a whole range of products fulfilling the tasks: e.g. project logo, book trailers, digital presentations, a printed relay book, written pieces of literature, exhibitions, a common logo, and "The conclusive document". All activities helped reaching our project aim: e.g. with the help of librarians the students’ made a book list, book trailers motivated the students to read a book from another country, investigation of European and local literature, writing and illustrating a relay story that was printed at the end of the project, a poem competition, digital presentations, meeting authors/ illustrators/ booktubers. We used the products the students made for exhibitions at our school, in the libraries or local community; we had four surveys about the students’ reading habits and interests; during some of the ltt activities the students worked on visual poems and poetry; in the 2nd project year one country after the other wrote two chapters of a story which was also illustrated by the students and then finalized and printed as our book “This isn’t a book”. We increased the reading competence of our students by using innovative methods which were introduced during the mobilities. The focus in the 2nd period was the motivation of our students to read again. We hoped that working with other cultures’ literature would motivate our students. It was fulfilled by the reading process during the development of the relay story. The main evaluations took place at the transnational meetings. Unfortunately, the results from the surveys, didn’t show the impact of the project among the target students as we expected before. The digital evaluation done at the mobilities showed us that the students benefitted from the best practise. Products have been presented on our common website, at exhibitions, during the mobilities, and have also been disseminated at a local and regional level. Our project got a great feedback from students, parents, teachers and the local community. Many people were interested in our project. We are sure that some students are motivated to read because of the project and the different tasks. Our schools benefitted from a European project and were able to be more international for being a European citizen. The general methodology used throughout the project, was to exchange best reading practice at the mobilities and opening students’ minds towards interculturalism. Linguistic teachers participated, so they could learn from the partners innovative methods and best practice. Returning to the schools they used their newly gained best practice to the next activity planned in between mobilities. They implemented and disseminated these to other teachers. Through the publication of the relay book at the libraries the target students have been exposed as authors. The aim of increasing reading pleasure and motivation by first improving the reading competence coincides with our general goal as an educational institution, which we have reached by realizing our Erasmus project “Let’s read again”. We made the students more openminded towards interculturalism, by learning about European literature, so that they feel as Europeans. The partner schools exchanged best reading practices and habits from the participating schools in order to innovate our way of teaching and implementing these into our daily educational manners. The long-term benefits have been achieved by the personal impact that our work had on all participants.