Ready, Steady, Play! – Learning English through story-based free play Erasmus Project

Project Title

Ready, Steady, Play! – Learning English through story-based free play

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Research and innovation; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

How can educators promote the use of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) outside of the classroom setting?

‘Ready, Steady, Play!’ is aimed at disseminating our findings about the use of English in free play and how this play can be stimulated and developed through the use of stories featuring monster characters designed by the children themselves. We aim to motivate teachers to experiment with an innovative methodology. This will build upon the results of our first project (Playing Ever After) whose objective was to encourage and support language learning through stories and free play among learners aged 4-7.

Since the impact of the first project on our students, families, teachers and schools was so positive, our main objective is to disseminate the methodology of teaching language through stories and free play to other teachers within our schools and the wider community, by organising training sessions and workshops, and making our cross- curricular lesson plans and resources available and easily accessible to other educators who could implement the activities, test their effectiveness and impact and give us feedback.

The project also envisages the creation of more stories and related lesson plans and resources to add to the bank of resources that we already have from the first project in order to create a comprehensive toolkit for teachers to use. The stories will focus on the following themes: food (set in the Netherlands), the underwater world (set in Portugal) and space (set in Finland). It is hoped that the children will continue to enjoy exploring language along with the monsters with whom they have developed a strong affective relationship, as well as a real connection with the partner countries.

We intend to share the methodology and the bank of lessons and materials so that the positive impact will be extended to other students in other contexts through the teachers who will attend our training sessions or learn about our project through other channels. In this way, the creative, story-based, cross curricular approach to language learning, with an emphasis on play, will have a far reaching influence, hopefully engendering the motivation, engagement and linguistic progress that we have already witnessed among our students.

In each country there will be 3 days of training, following the same framework in all partner countries. Local and regional schools as well as other educational professionals would be invited to attend the first day of the training with the second and third days intended for the staff of the host organisation. The focus will be more tailored to their school given their existing knowledge and experience of the previous project, as well as informing any new members of the staff of the methodology. In this way we could build on the skills they have developed over the past two years. The staff can also share their own experiences and how their professional development has benefitted from teaching English through these stories and play in both this and the previous project. Teachers will also be involved in the creation of new lesson plans and resources to accompany the new stories and encourage free play in the English Learning Areas.

By inviting ‘outside’ schools to take part in the training events we will be disseminating our experiences and the toolkit created within our initial project as well as providing a massive opportunity to receive feedback on the toolkit in general – its user-friendliness and effectiveness within the classroom.

There will also be a workshop element of the training events which will be central to the development of teachers’ skills within the partner organisations as well as hopefully increasing their confidence in using English with their children both in the classroom and out of it.

In a practical sense, we would hope that as a result of the training events and their involvement in the project as a whole, our staff will continue to develop their knowledge and skills. We would also hope to see a further increase in their confidence in using English with their pupils and fellow educators and a sense of real empowerment in relation to encouraging language development through innovative methodologies.

We would also hope that the children’s English skills and confidence to use it would increase as a direct result of the implementation of the project in their classrooms. In this way there would be a lasting impact going well beyond the life of the project in terms of their interest in and curiosity about the world around them and how their future opportunities and experiences could be richer and more diverse through improving their English skills.

The training events will also provide the ideal opportunity for new partnerships to be formed leading to new projects and innovations in the future.

Project Website

https://playingeverafterblog.wordpress.com/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 15950 Eur

Project Coordinator

OULUN ENGLANNINKIELINEN LEIKKIKOULUAVOIN YHTIO & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Kindcentrum Caleidoscoop
• Colégio do Ave, SA