During this two year project called "The Power of Reading: Elma and the bookworm" we want to develop our students' reading competences which is one of the key skills in school education. Learning by active participation and international cooperation our educational work will get a new international perspective. Reading children's books written by national authors, exchanging experiences, opinions and creative work about them, give us a better chance for deeper and lasting improvements in our education. This is an important cultural heritage we must protect. The partner schools in Scotland, Turkey, Italy and Germany (and the inofficial partner Russia) offer the pupils very different and creative methods to motivate them to read books. The partner schools got to know each other from the current Erasmus+ project and from one eTwinning project. For the new application we could win a school from Italy who is also an eTwinning school, like the primary schools in Scotland and Turkey, and will support the project with knowledges in the fields of new methods for a technology-based learning which is one of the aims of our project. Other aims will be to develop the basic skills of students, focussing on reading and speaking skills. We will analyse our school curricula in oder to adjust the guideline for the improvement in these fields. Our students will get expert knowledge. That means they learn about the creation and production of books, the work of authors (especially local personalities) and illustrators, the way how a book publishing works. They will gain information about follow-up products, like films, theatre plays and music compositions which are all examples for cultural products. A last aim will be to support social and intercultural learning by establishing a tradtion of mutual story reading in the schools. Each school will establish a fixed group of students and teachers who will be the first contact person and will direct most of the tasks and commuinaction at school. They will be supported by lots of students, teachers, school staff, parents, families and of course many external partners. All school partners will include nearly all classes of different age groups in order to implement the reading curricular in the whole school so that all children can benefit from the innovative approaches and activities around the field of reading and intercultural spirit. The focus however is put on students aged 10 to 12 years who are involved in the transnational learning activities. In almost each month there are different project task. The outcomes will be presented on the eTwinning portal, on the project website and school websites. We plan to do four mobilities with six students and two teachers for five working days. During these mobilities our students will work in mixed teams on different reading and writing tasks. For example the partner schools will exchange stories/legends/fairy tales from their country by presenting it in a creative way. Students will also present and discuss their reading habits, skills and their top books. Pupils bring their favourite books, give a summary , show illustrations, talk about the author and explain why they like it.They step into the "Reading Time Machine" and find out about former and future reading habits by setting the "Time Machine" at specific times in the past and in the future. Students will present their literary heroes or heroines in a gallery or show. They talk about the heroes' values, power and deeds. During all these activities students will use English as the project language. Through these different and motivating activities our pupils will improve their own reading skills in combination with other skills such as creative writing in their mother tongues and in English, researching about the project topics, using media, presenting work, producing creatice artwork and drama. We will mostly examine the aims of the project by observing the work progress of every step in the project and evaluate its results. We will get feedback from parents and other interested people. We will ask students, parents and teachers to give their comments. We want to make sure that our project work and results will be used in our schools beyond the given project time because the development of reading skills and other competences related to the project will be relevant for children's education forever. Results will be presented and discussed in classes and be reflected in teacher's meetings, school assemblies and parent's evenings in order to work on the school curriculum. The products of our work will be integrated in our school libraries and in the resources for the teachers. The guidelines and methods concerning reading skills can be used in the future and there will be resources for further development in these fields.
During this two year project called "The Power of Reading: Elma and the bookworm" we wanted to develop our students' reading competences which is one of the key skills in school education. Learning by active participation and international cooperation our educational work, so we hoped, got a new international perspective. Reading children's books written by national authors, exchanging experiences, opinions and creative work about them, would give us a better chance for deeper and lasting improvements in our education. This is an important cultural heritage we must protect. The partner schools in Scotland, Turkey, Italy and Germany (and the inofficial partner Russia) plannned to offer the pupils very different and creative methods to motivate them to read books. The partner schools got to know each other from the current Erasmus+ project and from one eTwinning project. For the new application we could win a school from Italy who is also an eTwinning school, like the primary schools in Scotland and Turkey. Other aims were to develop the basic skills of students, focussing on reading and speaking skills. We hoped to analyse our school curricula in oder to adjust the guideline for the improvement in these fields. Our students would get expert knowledge. Unfortunately it came different. Each school established a fixed group of students and teachers who were the first contact person and directed most of the tasks and commuinaction at school. They were supported by lots of students, teachers, school staff, parents, families and of course many external partners. All school partners included nearly all classes of different age groups in order to implement the reading curricular in the whole school so that all children could benefit from the innovative approaches and activities around the field of reading and intercultural spirit. The focus however was put on students aged 10 to 12 years who were involved in the transnational learning activities. During the first monts there were a lot of different project tasks which the German and the Turkey school did. The outcomes weren't presented on the eTwinning portal, or on the project website or school websites. We planned to do four mobilities with six students and two teachers for five working days, but because of the Corona pandemic we did none of these mobilities. The German school created book worms, discussed their reading habits and talked about their favourite books and authors, and prepared one of the mobilities by reading "Diebstahl im Waisenhaus" by Caroline Flüh. The German group did an Interview with the author. The results are written down. Unfortunately, one partner school after another jumped off, so that in the end only the German school remained. The various reasons for this were discussed with the NA.