Fairy Tales 21st Century Erasmus Project

Project Title

Fairy Tales 21st Century

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

Once upon a time there was a Serbian teacher who went to an EPOS contact seminar in Antwerp. She had no experience in Erasmus+ projects. However, she knew what she wanted: according to her, the pupils of Primary School “Starina Novak” in Belgrade deserved a chance to discover and experience the pleasure of reading in another level, while thinking creatively and breaking stereotypes. But Mrs. Natasa Mugosa also had a plan: “If Disney and Pixar studios around the world made success with classic fairy tales, we can also use them to achieve our goals”. And, as is often the case in fairy tales, the good fairy Natasa told her story to Evy Sierens and Philippe Noben who invited guest speakers and represented a project in motion in their primary school GO! De Driesprong in Maldegem/Belgium. They immediately believed in this project: they recognized lots of benefits for their pupils, improvement methods and they tackled some of the needs the school has: promoting reading, innovative use of ICT, critical and creative thinking and discovering own and foreign cultural heritage. Hence, having experience as a partner in a KA229 project, they wanted to give it a try to coordinate a project themselves, on condition that an even more experienced partner would help them with this. So, they asked Mrs. Gema Lopéz Luengo, director of CEIP Arcipreste De Hita in El Espinar Spain, to participate. Since she strongly recognized the motivation and as she was excited about the various outcomes of the project, she was happy to join us. During a preliminary visit of the Belgians in Belgrade, there was a lot of skyping with Spain, and this wonderful project was born in which (+/-) 12 year old pupils from three schools play the main role. The planning of the project is as follows. The classes with 12-year-olds will hear a classic fairy tale from one of the partner countries, and change it through creative thinking and with the addition of obligatory elements such as humor, 21st century technology and current social and political reality – and with the addition of elements from their own cultural heritage in a new contemporary version of that fairy tale. To this end, we provide the environment with activities that require creativity and communication within the classroom (creative thinking, discussion, brainstorming, reporting…).This way, each partner will have their own new version of that classic fairy tale. For each partner school, these pupils have to make this story into a digibook on tablets and add stop-motion videos and illustrations to make it appealing. Then they show that story to a ‘live audience’ of 5-year old preschoolers in their own school and have a brief discussion in class. In this way we achieve a form of internal dissemination to parents and stakeholders within the school. Then they turn the ‘new fairy tale’ into a 5-8 minutes long ‘theatre play’ and rehearse it. This outcome is the basis of each of the three mobilities. Each school team first rehearses its own performance during the mobility. The final performance is each time performed in front of a large audience of stakeholders. Pupils have to develop speaking skills in another language and dare to perform in front of a foreign audience. Then there are numerous workshops with students in which the cultural similarities and differences are emphasized. This process is repeated three times, each time based on the input of a classic fairy tale by one of the partners. Three times selecting a fairy tale, three times the internal processing ‘in the home school’ including the cross-over to the kindergarten, three times the mobility to the partner schools, live performance, the workshops and the feedback and feedforward. In addition, each mobility points out one element of the cultural heritage of the partner countries. The goals we want to achieve with this project are multiple and all fit seamlessly with Europe’s priorities in Education – a range of key competences are trained, as well as all elements of creative language proficiency in one’s own and a foreign language. In order to prepare the supervisors of the participating schools for this project, a teacher training is planned first: eTwinning, a language session in English, a training for dealing with ICT, use of the Mobility Tool, a workshop drama and a workshop on the three aspects of cultural heritage that will be addressed in the project (dance, music and food). This project will certainly have an impact on pupils, supervisors and teachers and the participating schools. The partners will support each other during the process of this project: the experienced Spanish school can share the experience as coordinator and the inexperienced Serbian partner will have the opportunity to grow in Erasmus+ and to set up their own projects after this one. And the students who took part? They lived happily ever after, but with many more skills skills and all kinds of European experiences than they had before the project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 67440 Eur

Project Coordinator

GO! basisschool De Driesprong Maldegem & Country: BE

Project Partners

• OŠ “Starina Novak”
• CEIP Arcipreste de Hita