The project 'Story ID’ is aimed at bringing together stories and identity. It is a project involving 6 different secondary schools, situated in Italy, Portugal, the U.K., the Netherlands and Belgium. In recent years, a drastic fall back in students literacy skills has been noticed at different levels, European and national alike, in primary and in secondary schools. Youngsters don’t like to read anymore which causes their reading and writing skills to deteriorate and reduces their chances in future life. Moreover, we also notice that these same young adults are struggling to define who they are, who they want to be and how they can identify with the society that surrounds them. All the partners involved in this project wanted to counter these current tendencies and work on increasing the well-being and core skills of their students. The project ‘Story-ID’ takes stories and storytelling as a starting point to define identity and to turn schools into reading hot spots in which the students feel at home. In the first year of this project, focus will lie on getting to know your own and each other’s cultural heritage by reading stories connected to the respective schools, cities, and countries represented in this project. Students will perform research to find out about their own national stories, they will work together with their foreign counterparts through eTwinning to get to know other European stories and they will eventually meet to create stories together, stories that represent the common ground they experience between their cultures. In the second year, the focus shifts to using these stories to develop identity in a secondary school and to set up some common initiatives to turn a school into a true place for reading, a place where the library isn’t just something you have to go to, but where you can get lost in books, a place where stories come alive and where you feel at home. We aim at involving as many students as we can in internal actions and on eTwinning. Their ages will range from 13 tot 17 years old and at least 10 students of every school will travel abroad every year. The exchanges will be organized in such as way that these student will have the opportunity to visit 2 other schools during the project. In these exchange weeks, students will work together in mixed groups to write stories, develop reading tools and discuss plans and ideas. This project will enable close cooperation between students and teachers online and face to face, but it will also result in a number of products that will be longer lasting. Students will develop reading places, reading initiatives and they will organize a book fair day that will bring their stories and our common cultural heritage to live in each of our institutions. Because, as Steven Moffat said it: “We are all stories, in the end.”
The project was aimed at encouraging students to take stories and storytelling as a starting point to define their own identities and to turn schools into reading hot spots in which the students feel at home. The focus of this project was twofold: in the first year of this project we focused on cultural identity and storytelling, while in the second year we focused on reading promotion. As a first step we focussed on identity through the social and cultural heritage of our countries and schools and by exploring each other’s cultural and literary traditions. We achieved this objective by creating surveys about identity, school identity, national identity and literary identity. A broad audience from all the different schools participated in this survey. The students participating in the exchange weeks used this data to talk about stereotypes and traditions. Each school focused on literary tradition and identity belonging to its home country, taken as a center point for the student activities.It was their starting point to create stories. The exchange weeks and assignments in online projects gave a deeper understanding of the different school systems, national identity, literary tradition, heritage etc… Next we wanted to increase the literacy skills of our pupils. Pupils were asked to read and discuss national and international stories, get into contact with storytelling traditions and write their own stories and in a personal way, so as to exercise their skills intensively. We achieved this by having our students participate in online projects (etwinning) on different genres and storytelling. During these activities we discussed fairy tales, urban legends, etc… and explored the differences between the countries. Students took on an active role by creating their own stories. One of the criteria for the application for the exchange weeks was the creation of a story in which the students reflected on their cultural identity. During the exchange weeks different kinds of storytelling workshops took place. For example: creative writing, creating writing, creating short movies… By combining storytelling with identity, this project has facilitated a broader integration in the whole organisation of each school. Students felt more connected to their institutions and their country and had a more outspoken role in 'making' their school. During this first year these concrete results were achieved: we assemble a selection of typical stories for each country and analyse their value for cultural heritage, we created a story specific for each country/city/school that illustrates its identities, we wrote a common story by a team of pupils from mixed origins, based on these specific stories and common european values. The second year of our project we wanted to transform our schools into reading hotspots. We took inspiration from the good practices that were already in place in the partner schools. We presented these initiatives during teacher meetings and we created shared tools to increase reading motivation. (Flipgrid - Reading posters - Literary maps - Meeting the writers…) We organised a book day / book week in each school. We made reading visible, we organised book clubs, we created a reading room and we organised a collective reading moment. Through all these activities we managed to turn our school into a book-friendly environment. We planned to carry on all these activities during the second year’s exchange weeks, but due to Covid-19 a lot of the exchange weeks couldn’t take place. That’s why we chose to organise a three-day online event in March 2021 with students from different countries discussing reading and identity and writing joint stories. The project aimed at a more intense relationship with European partner schools and/or external organisations, e.g. storytellers or reading promotion organisations. Unfortunately, many already planned activities and meetings had to be cancelled or readapted due to the covid restrictions. Students have learnt how to work in groups, have developed imagination and creativity; have fostered critical thinking and problem-solving skills; have also enhanced communicative skills and increased their self-esteem. In order to develop the project a participatory and cross-curricular method has been used mainly focusing on the cooperative learning approach. Since students have participated in different tasks to develop individually and/or in groups, they have been involved in activities that go beyond traditional classroom work; they have improved balance, self-awareness, confidence, self-discipline and communication skills.