Project Once Upon A Time via ICT originated from the feeling that nowadays children don´t read enough and that their reading competences are getting worse. As reading competence is a very important skill and plays decisive role in the process of education, we decided to help our students to improve this skill. As children rather spend their time in front of the computer, tablet or with their smart phones than with a book, we decided to interface the old fashioned books with modern ICT techologies that are so popular among children. As one of our main objectives is to draw our pupils back to national heritage, we decided to translate four national fairy tales and legends into easy English because these stories build our national consciousness. Our pupils will hopefully discover beauty of our national fairy-tales and legends and will be able to understand and appreciate fairy-tales and legends of other countries. We believe they will find reading and writing interesting activity that brings pleasure and develops imagination. Finally, we hope our students will get positive experience with meeting different cultures, they will open their minds to diversity and understand what it means to be a European citizen. There are six partner countries involved in this project, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Turkey and Lithuania. Both, teachers and students from 6 to 15 will participate in the project. We will also involve people from public, such as parents and writers and illustrators. Important partner from outside will also be students of comprehensive school for bookbinders in Lanškroun, who will help us to create our printed book. During the two-year project we will work on wide range of activities leading to our main objectives. We will produce a collection of national fairy tales and legends from six countries that will be formed in eBook, audio book and printed book. The stories will be accompanied with illustrations of students realized in the illustration competitions. We want to engage all the students at our schools into the project, so all the students will have a chance to take part in the competitions and they will also be the voters for the best illustrations. The book will be supplemented by a workbook consisting of worksheets that the students together with their teachers will prepare for each story in the book to develop reading skills. The worksheets will be examined during the project by students and teachers in English lessons. Each story included in the book will also have at least two learning resources such as flashcards, matching games, colouring pages or dominoes to help reinforce new vocabulary or grammar structures. During working meetings chosen students will read the stories, work with the texts, do the worksheets and also write new stories set in the host country. Each host school will prepare a theater performance for their guests where one or more fairy tales or legends will be performed as a theater play. In Lithuania a special method called Theater Forum will be introduced to mobility participants. This method will enable to put fairy tales and legends in the context of contamporary social issues such as gender and human rights. While working on activities, we will rely a lot on using ICT technologies. All the key teachers will have a course on how to use web 2.0 tools for creating various kinds of learning materials. They will then transmit their knowledge to their colleagues and students. A wide range of activities enables us to use different approaches, students will work individually, they will work in pairs and in groups. They will be allowed great deal of autonomy to decide what and how they want to do when creating learning mateirals for stories. Thus they will have to analyze, use their critical thinking, be innovative and use their creativity. They will also need to express and justify their opinion or decision. The eBook, audio book, workbook and learning materials will be shared as open teaching resources on project web page, school web pages, at Erasmus+ Project Result Platform and School Education Gateway. The printed version of the book will be stored in school libraries for students and teachers to borrow. From long time perspective the teachers will benefit from the acquired knowledge of using digital technologies and having new teaching materials for their classes. They will get inspired by new teaching methods they will experience on their mobilities. Students will also benefit from improved digital skills, as they can help them in their future carriers. Developing of writing and reading skills should help prevent our students from early school leaving, because who can read and write well can do better at all kinds of schools.
Project Once Upon A Time via ICT originated from the feeling that nowadays children don´t read enough and that their reading competences are getting worse. As reading competence is a very important skill and plays decisive role in the process of education, we decided to help our students to improve this skill. As children rather spend their time in front of the computer, tablet or with their smart phones than with a book, we decided to interface the old fashioned books with modern ICT techologies that are so popular among children. As one of our main objectives was to draw our pupils back to national heritage, we decided to translate four national fairy tales and legends into easy English because these stories build our national consciousness. We hoped that our pupils then will be able to hopefully discover beauty of our national fairy-tales and legends and will be able to understand and appreciate fairy-tales and legends of other countries. We also believed they will find reading and writing interesting activity that brings pleasure and develops imagination. Finally, we hoped our students will get positive experience with meeting different cultures, they will open their minds to diversity and understand what it means to be a European citizen. There were six partner countries involved in this project, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Turkey and Lithuania. The students participating in the pproject ranged from the age of 6 to 18. Our project also involved people from public. Parents were the most important people who fully supported the spupils and schools, helped with the programme and were great "new families" for the students staying at their homes. Each country invited people from outside to come to schools, meet students and teachers from other countries and prepare workshops for them. Thus there were writers talking about their books and passion for writitng who motivated children to read and write. There were illustrators who taught the students and teachers different kinds of techniques such as comic, sgraffity, wall painting, and marbling art. During the two-year project we work on a wide range of activities leading to our main objectives. We will produced a collection of national fairy tales and legends from six countries. THis collection is realised in three formats: eBook, audio book and printed book. The stories are accompanied with students´ illustrations. The book isaccompanied by a workbook consisting of worksheets for each story included in the book to develop reading skills. As we wished to raise digital competences of our teachers and students, we created at least two learning materials for each story.Most of them are on-line materials but afew are board games. During working meetings students worked with the stories and tried to fill the worksheets they also tried to write new stories set in the host country. All the participants of LTTA had a chance to visit places connected to the legends and fairytales iuncluded in our book. Some of the countries prepared theater performances of their legend or fairy-tale. In Lithuania a special method called Theater Forum was introduced to students and teachers. It was a very unique experience and inspired especially teachers for their work with problems they have to face in their everyday life at shcools. While working on activities, we tried to use various ICT technologies. All the key teachers were introduced web 2.0 tools for creating various kinds of learning materials.They then transmitted their knowledge to their colleagues and students. During the whole project students had a chance to work on a wide range of activities. They could work individually, in pairs or in groups. They were allowed great deal of autonomy to decide what and how they wanted to do when choosing the stories, creating presentations, videos, exercises and learning materials for the stories. Thus they had to analyze, use their critical thinking, be innovative and use their creativity. They also needed to express and justify their opinion or decision, negotiate and reach compromises. The eBook, audio book, workbook and learning materials are shared as open teaching resources on our project web page, school web pages, at Erasmus+ Project Result Platform and School Education Gateway. The printed version of the book is stored in school libraries for students and teachers to borrow. From long time perspective the teachers will benefit from the acquired knowledge of using digital technologies and having new teaching materials for their classes. They were inspired by new teaching methods observed on their mobilities. Students will also benefit from improved digital skills, as they can help them in their future carriers. Developing of writing and reading skills should help prevent our students from early school leaving, because who can read and write well can do better at all kinds of schools.