Make books, build theaters, tell stories Erasmus Project

Project Title

Make books, build theaters, tell stories

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The background of this project is the observation that in the partner schools due to current, but also former conditions, teaching and school learning take place in heterogeneous environments. The cultural, social and linguistic requirements of the students are characterized by diversity in qualitative and quantitative terms. In many cases, learning groups change in composition and performance within a few months. Sometimes the children and adolescents know the things and the subjects, but can not name them or find obvious connections; the language of instruction and education varies in different ways.
Experience has shown that holistic instructional and extracurricular activities using elements of formal and non-formal education are successful in activating and motivating students in heterogeneous learning groups, if providing opportunities for each individual of the learning groups according to their own abilities and prior knowledge to contribute to the joint project. Such a possibility offers BTG.
The children and adolescents learn to activate and train their creative and craft skills by making paper, designing and building backdrops and scenarios with self-made paper and other materials, by crafting small wood and paper theaters in which they work present existing stories orally, write them down in their origin or native language or write stories by themselves, and write them down and / or play them. too. The path from the beginning to the finished (joint) product, the design of the scenes and characters, the choreography and digital learning processes are accompanied and documented digitally. The possibilities and (technical) prerequisites of the individual partners come into play.
The teachers and students of the partner schools introduce their institutions and explain the special advantages and possible handicaps. The partners create by consensus a common portfolio concept for the institutions, the involved learning groups and the learning individuals. They announce their specific resources, assign the subjects and project approaches to the individual activities and invite each other to the workshops and the lessons. The workshops have an exemplary character and are designed to be tested and modified by the partners. The holistic character of the activities is an important criterion. The pupils, but also the teachers, have the opportunity to make their own intercultural skills and creativity available to the common project objective. In addition to the common project language, the origin and the target languages should lead to the common cause, the productive process, to the project goal. Products of the project are the holistic lessons and project activities that are carefully documented, are the books, the scenarios and small theaters. The methodological approach of holistic teaching as a workshop can be distributed using the manufactured products, digitization and documentation in the institutions themselves and, moreover, in schools and institutions with similar conditions.
The project implementation was essentially successful in the manner described. The corona pandemic, which was rampant across Europe in 2020, meant that the meeting planned as a school encounter in Trikala / Greece and the final teachers’ meeting in Bonn had to be canceled. The project was extended by one year upon request. Unfortunately, the on-site meetings could not be held as planned. They have been replaced by virtual meetings. Although the original appointments for the meeting in Greece could not be kept, the workshop character and the thematic context were also retained in the virtual event. The final teachers’ meeting focused on the evaluation and documentation of the project, which was also achieved virtually. Only the planned advanced training character of the event had to be canceled because no coaches were available on the thematic context at the time.

Project Website

https://erasmusbookstheate.wixsite.com/bookstalestheater

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 79424 Eur

Project Coordinator

August-Macke-Schule -Europaschule- Gemeinschaftshauptschule der Bundesstadt Bonn -Inklusion & Country: DE

Project Partners

• GYMNASIO VALTINOU
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Maximinos
• Scoala Gimnaziala “Alexandru Stefulescu”