Building On Opportunities for Story-Telling Erasmus Project

Project Title

Building On Opportunities for Story-Telling

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: Creativity and culture; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

Literacy is fundamental to human life and is of significant importance for people to have successful and fruitful lives enabling them to contribute to society and their communities. It is of particular importance for young people as, in cases where children and youths have poor literacy skills at a young age it becomes more difficult for them to keep up at school and improve their level of education as they would not have the basic skills needed to keep progressing. In Europe, one in five 15-year old’s have poor reading skills and one in five 16-65 year old’s have poor reading skills. Research notes that there are an estimated 13 million children under the ages of 15 and 55 million adults between 16-65 in Europe who have literacy difficulties.

This project was developed as the partners realised and identified that their is a great need to improve literacy skills among its pupils. The presence of migrant children, disadvantaged children and mixed ability children has heightened the awareness in each school to improve their literacy skills. The participants for this project will undergo an identical activity programme for each mobility so as to enhance so as to enhance exchange of practices and adopt the teaching methods of these schools. The project will include 6 schools from Malta, Ireland, Iceland. Slovenia and Turkey.

This project will act as a follow up to a previous project which involved the Irish, Icelandic, Slovenian and lead applicants as partners titled LITERACY AT THE CHILDREN’S HEARTS (LATCH). LATCH looked at the way the these schools involved different aspects of reading and creative writing to improve literacy in their schools and acted as a first exchange of best practices amongst these partners. For this project the consortium has increased further including a Turkish partner and another Maltese partner to enhance the exchange of practices across a larger partnership.

The objectives of the project are as follows:
– To increase the capacity of 90 teachers when it comes to improving the literacy of children.
– To take part in 5 mobilities to share best practices.
– To increase the networking capacity between 6 schools across 5 different countries.

The concrete results for this project are as follows:
– 90 teachers will improve their competences when it comes to improving literacy in children.
– 6 schools from 5 different countries will improve their networking capacity amongst themselves.
– 1 report on the results of each mobility, lessons learnt and how these can be implemented by the teachers.
– 1 compilation/book of the short stories drafted by the students during each mobility.

The project will involve teachers and other school staff of 6 different schools from 5 different countries. The teachers will change for each mobility so as to increase the effect of the project on the staff of these schools and lessons learnt. It is also necessary that the participants change for each mobility as a lot of these schools have limited number of staff where it is difficult to have the same people unable to teach their subject.

During the mobilities the participants will engage in the following activities:

– Ice-breaking activities.
– Presentation on the School and discussion on the educational system of these schools.
– Discussion on the early literacy approach of the School.
– Exchange of practices in how the school adopts reading and creative writing to improve literacy skills.
– Observation into how the school implements technology and modern tools to improve the literacy pf young students.
– Visit to the coordinating body/Ministry which establishes the countries’ educational policy and discussion on the countries’ literacy strategy.
– Visit and talk with local NGO’s and stakeholders which deal with educational policy and put pressure on government to improve the educational system.
– Teaching through culture, teachers from the host school will discuss with the group how they implement cultural lessons and information about the cultural history of the country when teaching young students how to read and write.
– Classroom visits to see what techniques are implemented to improve student literacy. During the classroom visits the teachers along with students from the school will compile short stories about local culture. These short stories will be compiled in a final book which will include short stories from all the other schools.
– Discussions on how to adapt teaching techniques according to the needs of the students.
– Evaluation sessions.

Impact
The results of the project and expertise gained by the teachers will continually be utilised after the project has ended where the new skills obtained by the teachers will form part of the methods which they use in the classes which they teach. The results of the project will also be formulated in the final report for ease of reference.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 104005 Eur

Project Coordinator

Theresa Nuzzo School & Country: MT

Project Partners

• Stella Maris / St Benild’s Primary
• TOKI ORTAOKULU
• Saint Colmans BNS
• Osnovna sola borcev za severno mejo
• Salaskóli