Our project, entitled 'Dream a Little Dream: Developing reading skills and inspiring readers in an ever increasing technological world', aims to do exactly this! Inspiration for the project comes initially from a magazine article entitled 'Dream a Little Dream', written by British children's author Michael Morpurgo in the November / December 2016 edition of the ATL teaching union magazine. In this article he addresses the concept of encouraging teacher to give children 'the love of a story first and the rest will follow'. He suggests we 'Invite in parents and grandparents, people from the local community and from the world community to come in and tell their stories..' From this, our project ideas of a transnational project based on reading, was formed. Partners are all in agreement that inspiring children to read for pleasure is essential in the development of this key skill. In the modern world, where technology plays such a part in almost everything we do, we want to explore ways of developing reading skills further and embrace the age of technology in supporting us to do so. This will be at the children's level, in terms of the use of e-readers, apps and computer tablets to inspire reading skills, but also by creating blogs and using video conferencing to encourage and promote 'book talk', and for staff of each partner school to communicate to support each other and share best practice. Three partner schools are involved in the project. The Polish and British partners currently work together on a KA2 Schools only project and have worked together since 2008. The Spanish partner school is new to this particular collaboration but are familiar with working together with other schools local to them who are involved in Erasmus+ collaborative projects. Each school has one named coordinator, in order to provide consistency, and also has an additional named member of staff to ensure sustainability of the project. The project is made up of four classroom-based phases, exploring different elements of reading; Phase 1: My favourite book; Phase 2: Traditional and Cultural Stories; Phase 3: Poetry and Phase 4: Reading and Technology. Transnational meetings are planned in at strategic points, either to evaluate the project so far, or prepare staff for further planned activities, and in many cases, both. Staff will work with children in the hosting school to deliver a range of reading activities and also to write contributions to a joint story book - which will be one of the outcomes at the end of the project. We will also spend time sharing best practice in the teaching of reading and considering how we can each adapt and improve teaching methods in our own schools, within the constraints of specific curriculum requirements. One of the intended outcomes of this project will be the greater enthusiasm that children will show in the discussion of reading and in the development of this key skill, which in turn, will have a positive impact on other areas of their learning. This will be measured in a number of ways, including eading assessments undertaken by individual partner schools, and by staff and children surveys to measure the 'softer' impact on learners. Collaboration with children in partner schools will drive children forward and inspire them further, giving them the platform for communication beyond their own school and local area. The joint ownership of the story book written by staff and children during project meetings, will further inspire children. This book will be available beyond the project to be used by future children of the partner schools, therefore maximising impact of the project as a whole. Online communication between students set up for this project will be continued after the two years is over, therefore providing an additional long term benefit. Teachers will learn from each other in terms of developing their own classroom practice; another example of a long term benefit of our project.
Our project, entitled 'Dream a Little Dream: Developing reading skills and inspiring readers in an ever increasing technological world', aimed to do exactly this! Inspiration for the project came initially from a magazine article entitled 'Dream a Little Dream', written by British children's author Michael Morpurgo in the November / December 2016 edition of the ATL teaching union magazine. In this article he addressed the concept of encouraging teachers to give children 'the love of a story first and the rest will follow'. He suggested we 'Invite in parents and grandparents, people from the local community and from the world community to come in and tell their stories..' From this, our project ideas of a transnational project based on reading, was formed. Partners are all in agreement that inspiring children to read for pleasure is essential in the development of this key skill. In the modern world, where technology plays such a part in almost everything we do, we want to explore ways of developing reading skills further and embrace the age of technology in supporting us to do so. This was at the children's level, in terms of the use of e-readers, apps and computer tablets to inspire reading skills, but also by creating blogs and using video conferencing to encourage and promote 'book talk', and for staff of each partner school to communicate to support each other and share best practice. Three partner schools are involved in the project. The Polish and British partners previously worked together on a KA2 Schools only project and have worked together since 2008. The Spanish partner school is new to this particular collaboration but are familiar with working together with other schools local to them who are involved in Erasmus+ collaborative projects. Each school has one named coordinator, in order to provide consistency, and also has an additional named member of staff to ensure sustainability of the project. The project was made up of four classroom-based phases, exploring different elements of reading; Phase 1: My favourite book; Phase 2: Traditional and Cultural Stories; Phase 3: Poetry and Phase 4: Reading and Technology. Transnational meetings were planned in at strategic points, either to evaluate the project to date, or prepare staff for further planned activities, and in many cases, both. Staff worked with children in the hosting school to deliver a range of reading activities and also to write contributions to a joint story book - which was one of the outcomes at the end of the project. We also spent time sharing best practice in the teaching of reading and considering how we can each adapt and improve teaching methods in our own schools, within the constraints of specific curriculum requirements. One of the outcomes of this project was the greater enthusiasm that children showed in the discussion of reading and in the development of this key skill, which in turn, has had a positive impact on other areas of their learning. This was measured in a number of ways, including reading assessments undertaken by individual partner schools, and by staff and children surveys to measure the 'softer' impact on learners. Collaboration with children in partner schools drove children forward and inspired them further, giving them the platform for communication beyond their own school and local area. The joint ownership of the story book written by staff and children during project meetings, further inspired children. This book will be available beyond the project to be used by future children of the partner schools, therefore maximising impact of the project as a whole. Online communication between students set up for this project will be continued after the two years is over, therefore providing an additional long term benefit. Teachers have learnt from each other in terms of developing their own classroom practice; another example of a long term benefit of our project.