The project in question is mainly focused on promoting literacy, an element of every student´s life that needs to be supported nowadays. It is also meant to boost students´ knowledge of literature and command of spoken English. The project will include 20 students and 3 teachers and their English counterparts. A number of activities will also be organized by other teachers holding specific expertise in such areas. To realize the objectives of the project, the teachers have thought through a variety of creative tasks and activities. Students will keep a reading diary of a selected book and create vocabulary exercises to learn vocabulary from a certain context. As part of the reading process they will read stories out loud to other students. Using their computer skills, they will be asked to make a logo and a bookmark representing the whole idea of the project. They will also take part in a drama performance to enhance their confidence in speaking. Most of the activities will be carried out in a collaborative way. Students will work on the tasks and activities with their counterparts and will also communicate via the Internet while working throughout the year. Such social intercourse will certainly come as an invaluable side benefit. The results and outcomes will be disseminated in various ways. A project webpage will be created and filled in with videos and all the tasks and activities they will have conducted, e.g. their diaries and vocab exercises, bookmarks and so on. The results of the activities will also provide a source of feedback for teachers intending to use literature as part of their lessons and also the related activities could expand the teachers´ repertoire of materials for literature teaching in a creative way.
Our project Grab A Book was designed to foster creativity and encourage young people to promote a lifelong love of reading, to develop literacy, and support learning about famous British authors. We wanted to instill the habit of reading so it became a skill valued across genres, cultures, languages and lifestyles. Twenty pupils and three teachers from Gymnazium Jihlava and twenty students and three teachers from Thomas Deacon Academy were involved in the main activities and pupils exchanges. Pupils were invited to take part or were recommended based on their responses to a reading questionnaire about reading habits at home and at school. Creative tasks and activities were prepared to pupils to encourage them to read in English and learning about famous British authors. There were regular book club workshops incorporated into the school day and pupils kept a reading journal or diary to record summaries of the books they read and the discussions which took place in the book club meetings. They created either vocabulary exercises or quizzes, made a project logo and bookmarks. Drama performances and workshops were also included in the project. Pupils worked on the tasks with their partners and the short term exchanges to Peterborough and Jihlava were highlights of the project. A Twinspace of the project and a project webpage was created and filled in with the main outputs of the project which will be a great inspiration to other teachers to use literature and drama in their lessons.