Through the implementation of this project, we wanted to encourage our students to spend more time reading books, pay attention to and understand what they read and also critically think about the meaning(s) in a story. Moreover, we wanted to motivate our students not only to write their own stories, thus to express their feelings and ideas, but also to tell stories in front of an audience in an expressive and creative way in order to keep the listener's attention. Another objective was to develop our students’ social skills and to create positive relationships among them through offering opportunities for sharing knowledge, feelings and experiences, but also through collaborative writing, therefore building a common cultural background for them. As Language teachers, we were already familiar with some teaching methods and approaches in writing stories, but we believed that we could benefit from a variety of teaching practices that have already been implemented in other countries and try them in our cultural and school context. The job shadowing activities could therefore provide us with practical examples of using new knowledge and methods, but also finding ways to support our students as facilitators in the learning process in more learner-centred approaches. In addition, we had some basic knowledge of the pedagogical use of ICT tools, but we wanted to improve our digital skills and learn how we could use New Technologies to motivate our students in learning in general and in storytelling in particular. As our school library was recently incorporated into the National School Library Network, we wanted to organize it better and make it an inspiring and creative learning place for students and teachers in our school through reading projects in a cross-curricular approach and through the use of ICT tools. The chosen courses would provide us with knowledge on new innovative educational programmes and applications to be used in cross-curricular projects, therefore contributing to our professional development, improving the teaching quality for our students and modernizing our teaching methods. Furthermore, we wanted to improve our language skills in English as a lingua franca, but also in other European languages as we believe in linguistic diversity. As European citizens, we wanted to meet teachers from different cultural backgrounds and teaching contexts and exchange good teaching practices, thus building a positive attitude to lifelong learning. We strongly believed that meeting and collaborating with teachers from different European countries would improve our intercultural skills in a way that we could also inspire our colleagues and students to be tolerant towards others. More than that and having also the experience of eTwinning partnerships, we wanted to solidify these online collaborations and build up new ones through face-to-face communication.
Teaching at a small school in a rural area and with many of our pupils coming from families with poor linguistic and cultural backgrounds, we thought that an Erasmus+ project in storytelling would first of all improve our pupils’ literacy skills and increase their motivation in reading and writing stories. More than that, and considering the educational value of stories, we believed that stories could provide a rich cultural, intercultural and emotional learning environment, especially for those coming to our school from the nearby villages, who lack incentives, thus providing equal opportunities for all students in our school environment. On the other hand, we realized that the majority of our pupils, despite their young age, are really keen on using mobile phones, tablets and other electronic devices for fun, but not for educational purposes. That is why we decided to inform us better about the use of New Technologies in the classroom and find alternative ways to motivate our students to learn. We also applied for this project because we wanted to become familiar with new methods related to storytelling and reading strategies and try different approaches towards the development of our students’ skills in reading comprehension, narrating and writing stories. Since our school became a member of the National School Library Network, we wanted to encourage our students to use the school library as a learning place as well as a place for self-expression, creativity and socialization, independently of their social and economic background. In that way, we could help our students improve both their literacy and linguistic skills but also motivate them to read more books and express their feelings and ideas through reading stories or through creating their own stories. Through storytelling, we believed that they would develop their self-esteem, critical thinking, empathy and social skills. We also aimed to make our school library a creative place for sharing stories and experiences with our students, teachers and the broader community. At the time of the application for this project, only two teachers from our school had some experience in eTwinning projects and only one teacher in Erasmus+ partnerships, so we thought that the whole of our school community could benefit from our experience if informed about the aims and objectives of such partnerships through dissemination activities and if encouraged to participate directly, through mobilities, or indirectly, through online collaboration and active participation in various eTwinning projects. We believed that our participation in an Erasmus+ partnership would not only develop our language, communication and ICT skills but also contribute to developing our European identity, intercultural awareness, team spirit, tolerance and extroversion and give us the opportunity to find new partners for future activities in a European context. We had heard about different educational systems and we were eager to learn from good teaching practices in other European countries as we support lifelong education and peer learning.