SEEDS OF TELLERS, Storytelling for a better oracy Erasmus Project

Project Title

SEEDS OF TELLERS, Storytelling for a better oracy

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage

Project Summary

Seeds of Tellers offers teachers tools based on oral literature (tales, myths and also nursery rhymes etc.) to help pupils master an autonomous, thoughtful and shared language, improve their cognitive faculties and facilitate the learning of reading and writing.

FACTS
19.7% of pupils in the EU had reading difficulties in 2015, compared to 17.8% in 2012 (PISA report). Only 4 Member States reached the reference level of less than 15%. The system has never reproduced social inequalities to such an extent, in the OECD particularly in France and Belgium. More and more children are entering kindergarten with delayed language skills and exposure to screens is making the situation worse. The lack of elaborate exchanges and vocabulary increases the gap between children according to their socio-cultural background very early on.
However, success in learning is associated with mastery of speech, the foundation of all learning.
For the sociologist B. Lahire, the mastery of the spoken word and degrees are the main social organisers: those who have learned to express themselves in public more often hold positions of responsibility.
While 70% of professional speaking time is oral, this ratio is reversed at school: the written world dominates teaching practices. Oral expression in schools is very often directed from the pupil to the teacher, with the use of by heart learning and recitation. Oral presentations and examinations are prepared as if they were written documents. For the school, speech is born of writing.
Today, the question of oral expression is resurfacing with new tests at the end of schooling. In Portugal, orality is emphasised, while in France and Italy a grand oral and a multidisciplinary interview are appearing.

OBJECTIVES
•To encourage self-confidence
•To listen to and respect the word of others
•To promote cooperation
•To develop memory and vocabulary
•To encourage the imagination
•Discover and share the European oral cultural heritage
•To fight against inequalities in learning which have increased during the health crisis.

Training pupils to tell stories orally in class without a written support allows them to become emotionally involved, to experience pleasure and to pass it on in order to assert themselves as individuals and find their place in the group. Our credo: “Listen better to speak better, speak better to think better; because when we think better, we write better.

ACTIVITIES
We rely on oral literature, of which tales are a part of. Structured stories, from a common oral heritage, they offer a framework for reasoning, memory, imagination…
Children’s storytelling workshops have been held in schools in France, Portugal, Italy and Bulgaria.
We have created www.seedsoftellers.eu, which gathers the 6 productions of the project (see results). Videos of adults telling stories have been made to inspire teachers.The resources are available in each language of the partnership as well as in English and meet accessibility and inclusion standards.

TARGET GROUPS
Through the teachers we target students from kindergarten to 6th grade.

PARTICIPATING ORGANISATIONS
6 partners, 5 countries: 2 storytelling specialists (D’Une Parole à l’Autre and Grimm Sisters), 1 agency specialising in the creation of educational platforms (Les Apprimeurs), 1 organisation specialising in specific learning difficulties (Logopsycom) and 2 schools (AEPROSA, L. KARAVELOV)

RESULTS
O1-Pedagogical guide to set up oral storytelling workshops “Storytelling at school to master speech” (40 pages)
O2-Multilingual library: more than 300 stories from oral literature to tell in class
O3-Webradio: more than 110 audio recordings of students telling stories
O4-More than 20 videos of children and adults telling stories
O5-20 Educational kits linking the themes of the school curricula to the stories
O6-23 Pedagogical sheets to accompany teachers in the implementation of storytelling workshops in class
Under the aegis of the National Education and the City of Paris 14th, “Storytelling Week” enabled more than 120 teachers and 2500 students to participate in a storytelling circle
Following this event, a project to train teachers in storytelling is planned. Financed by the French Ministry of Education, it concerns the Priority Education Network schools in Paris 14.
Libraries, storytellers, teachers… spontaneously wish to contribute to the project, which we will run for at least 5 years.

LONG-TERM BENEFITS
•Fight against illiteracy, give a taste for learning
•Reduce inequalities in learning
•Increase listening, dialogue between individuals and cultures
•Preserve and transmit European oral culture at school. To get to know traditions, peoples and the world better in order to prepare the future
•To raise awareness in Europe of the importance of learning to master structured and autonomous speech.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 298461 Eur

Project Coordinator

D’Une Parole à l’Autre & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Les Apprimeurs
• SCS LogoPsyCom
• Osnovno uchilishte “Lyuben Karavelov”
• ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE GRIMM SISTERS ETS
• PROJETO SCHOLE LDA
• AGRUPAMENTO DE ESCOLAS PINHEIRO E ROSA