There is also a tendency in our school that the reading ability of the students who enter the school is getting weaker and weaker. It affects their school performance and learning process. The basis of learning of all subjects is reading comprehension and writing. The lack of these skills is a major contributor to school failure and early school leaving. There are obviously many other factors contributing to this failure, but in our project we want specifically focus on developing literacy - and in general, on developing communication competencies. Reading is not a favourite pastime for young people. Longer texts discourage them, while short texts provide superficial knowledge. Reading is time consuming, while in the virtual world of smartphones they can express their feelings and thoughts within a few seconds. The virtual world offers them a "wonderful" world where everyone is beautiful and young, everyone can be a star, there is no need for imagination, words and long descriptions, everything is there with a single click. Accordingly, their view of the world is simplified, superficial and often distorted. Their vocabulary is poor and they find it difficult to express themselves, so they communicate with each other in social relationships very little. They only express their emotions and thoughts through emoticons in their online conversations. In our project, we want to counterbalance this process. Our aim is to raise participants' interest in reading, to introduce them to the process of creating, interpreting, and illustrating texts by creating and presenting innovation activities which -beside getting to know famous national and international literary works- will enable them to express their thoughts , to formulate their own stories, and publish them using the opportunities offered by the Internet. We intend to do all this in the framework of international cooperation, so that the participants can get to know and understand the cultural values of different nations. We would like them to expand their knowledge of other countries, to develop friendly relationships and, last but not least, to develop their foreign language skills intensively. So the project is based on the development of communication competence. Throughout the project, this competence is interpreted as a skill that identifies, interprets and conveys the participants' perception of the world, their own emotions and thoughts, in various forms of communication, visual, verbal, musical and textual. In addition to developing activities, we also aim to raise awareness of the social, economic and wider cultural factors that determine communication. Usually, only traditional school frameworks - coaching - offer little opportunity for developing communication competences, with little developmental impact. That is why we thought that in a project that focuses on reading and writing, and generally on communication, we will combine the subjects in which they are of high importance, such as literature, history, grammar and foreign language. By adding the English language, we want to create a greater motivation base, which also justifies international cooperation. The activities are often based on collaboration - even in a foreign language - so in addition to reading comprehension, in general terms, we are developing their transversal competences. We also want to use the participants' IT skills to achieve our goal, but aim to give a major role in Drama Pedagogy and Music. The activities of the project are based on writing texts by the students, based on predefined basic stories, common historical relations between partner countries, famous literary works and cultural values of the participating countries. We believe that these activities will have an intense impact on the participating students and thus they will improve their literacy and communication skills in a broader sense. As a result, they will be more successful in their studies, have the opportunity for further education, and have greater opportunities in the labour market. In the long run, we aim to provide a framework, also integrated in the school curriculum, based on the experience of the project activities and the practices of the partner schools, providing regular activities and opportunities for effective development work, and providing ideas for other schools with similar problems. The operation of this frame/model depends on the teachers involved in the project, so their training is a key part of the project. They should be engaged in activities that are different from their normal school work, and beyond their English proficiency, they will be motivated to integrate such and similar activities into school life by working together for two years and learning about good practices in partner schools. .
In our school, too, we are increasingly facing the fact that students' ability to understand texts is getting weaker and weaker. And this affects their school performance. The basis of their learning is text comprehension and text creation. Lack of these skills is largely responsible for school failures, early school leaving and dropouts. Many other factors contribute to the failure, but in our project we specifically focused on the development of text comprehension and communication competences in general. Our goal was to arouse the participants' interest in reading and to encourage them to create texts through activities that allow them to express their own feelings and thoughts in addition to learning about domestic and international literary works. All of this was realized in the framework of an international cooperation. We have cooperated with partners who are facing similar problems. The participants got to know the different cultural values of the partner countries, and their foreign language skills improved, as evidenced by the high number of successful language exams. So, our project was basically built on the development of communication competence. During the project, we interpreted this competence as an ability to identify, interpret and transmit the participants' view of the world, their own emotions and thoughts in various visual, oral, musical and text forms of communication. The activities were mostly based on cooperation - also in a foreign language - so in addition to text comprehension, we also developed their transversal competence in general. In order to achieve our goal, we also assigned a serious role to drama pedagogy and music. The activities were based on the preparation of various project products. The participants presented their country, city and school. The shared historical roots of the partner countries were explored. Each partner presented the great figures of their own national literature and their better-known works. Favorite writers, poets and favorite works were also presented. In addition to the presentation of the works, the lessons were often formulated, which generated lively discussions in several cases. Each partner organized the language course in their own mother tongue, and then using the knowledge acquired there, the guest students made introductory videos in the language of the host country. During the project, they also gained experience in filmmaking. The goal was not to develop technical and IT knowledge, but to be able to express their thoughts in visual form. The scripts of the films were written by the participating students. Our most important project products were the literary works. Works were produced in various genres: short stories, short novels, interviews, plays, but a sequel novel was also produced, each part of which was produced by another partner. The goal was not to increase the number of gems of world literature, but for the participants to express their feelings and thoughts in words, i.e. to create texts. Most of the completed works - obviously only the best ones - were published on the website. The completed plays were presented by the participants at the meetings. Part of the work of the project was that the partners organized theme weeks and theme days in their own schools in order to involve the entire school in the project activities. The programs of the theme weeks were various competitions, reading marathons, art presentations, etc. But here the school community also got to know the products of the project. The the great success of the events guarantee that the project activities will continue to be a part of school life in the future. The continuation of the activities is guaranteed by the personality and enthusiasm of the teachers participating in the project. The multifaceted activities and their impact on the participants convinced not only them, but also several members of the faculty that it is worthwhile, and even necessary, to spend time and energy on continuing. The results of the project were reflected in the successful academic results of the participants. In the meantime, most of the participants passed their final exams and most of them entered higher education. The results of the students with lower abilities included in the project, who continued their studies in vocational training, are noteworthy. The results of the younger participants are also encouraging. They will finish their secondary education this academic year. In addition to the academic results, the attitude of the participating students to work, and even to school in general, changed in a positive direction. The teachers of the faculties drew attention to this. So the results of the project prove that our project basically achieved the set goals. Upon seeing the results, the faculties are committed to continuously carry out the activities of the project, enriched with new ideas. In this way, the long-term impact of the project seems to be ensured.