AQUA NARRABILIS (NARRation – Acquisition of Basic skills In LIbraries and Schools) Erasmus Project

Project Title

AQUA NARRABILIS (NARRation – Acquisition of Basic skills In LIbraries and Schools)

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 addressing more than one field

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

The project “AQUA NARRABILIS – Acquisition of Basic Skills in Libraries and Schools” was coordinated by the Austrian institution Lesezentrum Steiermark (Graz), a NGO in the field of library development and literacy education, and consisted of five more organisations from the following countries: Österreichisches Bibliothekswerk (Salzburg, Austria), University of Nicosia – EDEX (Cyprus), Regional Library Varna (Bulgaria), the City Library of Ursus, Warsaw (Poland), and the Polytechnic Institute Castelo Branco (Portugal). Concerning the working fields, the project group was a good mixture of organisations being active in working with and for libraries (Graz, Salzburg, Warsaw, Varna) and teachers as well as in in- and pre-service training (Castelo Branco, Nicosia).

The project was built on two main pillars: the thematic focus on narrative skills and the relation of all produced material to the topic of “water”.

Everybody needs to develop narrative skills for the 21st century, they are the ability to describe things and events and tell stories in effective ways that allow them to state their points of view and be heard by diverse audiences. Thus, they are basic skills and key-competences for communication, which are essential for
* literacy (i.e. the ability to read and write),
* first and second language learning and
* certainly also for active citizenship and participation in democracy (roughly: ‘being able to make oneself heard’).

Methods like conventional story telling (based on books), reading books aloud, PowerPoint presentations of picture books (storybook theatres), Kamishibai (= traditional Japanese wooden theatre), drama theatre, puppet or shadow plays can all contribute to raising narrative competence through specific narrative skills (such as understanding a plot, sequence, characters, fantasy, etc.).

In addition to those four different methods of storytelling (Kamishibai, Drama, Puppet/Shadow Play and Storybook Theatre) and in order to address and to include issues of active citizenship and worldwide concern and to produce comparable material that can be used in all European countries (and beyond), we concentrated on the topic of WATER: all stories, all material and resources are linked to water and its ecological, nutritional, geographical and – above all – symbolic value.

The objectives of the project – producing the materials for teachers and librarians to foster narrative skills in children – were successfully met.

We developed:
* a European Survey on narrative skills (121 resources from 16 countries about narration; including all the produced material: 215 resources)
* a collection of 18 stories about water from all the participating countries (three each partner and translated into all the partners’ languages)
* hands-on and tangible material (e.g. templates and hints for kamishibais, picture book theatres)
* 72 easily accessible and up-to-date open educational activities/workshop descriptions (OERs) in diverse European languages for the use in library work, in schools (age group: 6–12 years) and kindergartens (3 – 6 years), that are based on these 18 stories, as well as
* appropriate models for the pre- and in-service training of librarians and teachers, which consist of two extensive course books in all partners’ languages and in Spanish, and also include a self-study e-learning course (SPOC, small private online course).

A selection of the educational activities was piloted in schools, libraries and kindergartens in the networks of the partner organisations. After piloting and revising the preliminary project results and the OERs (educational activities), everything has been published in the “Toolbox on narrative skills” on the project’s website http://aquanarrabilis.eu that serves as the main storage. The search can be filtered by languages, categories or age of the children.
The material is freely available for everyone in English as well as in the languages of the partner countries (German, Bulgarian, Greek, Polish, Portuguese) and some of it in other widely used European languages (French, Spanish and Italian). The SPOC, the self-study e-learning course, can be accessed here: http://aquanarrabilis.ipcb.pt/

The material that has been produced within the project is now used for example in Austria at the University College of Teacher Education Styria to train teachers in fostering and promoting narrative skills in the classroom, also libraries and the project partners themselves use the resources for their work with children or teachers and librarians, or in other related fields.

The project was also extensively disseminated locally, regionally, nationally, Europewide and on an international scale through seminars, workshops, multiplier events, printed articles, press conferences, project presentations, give-aways, posters, social media and websites, mailing lists and direct contacts as it can be seen in the Dissemination Report (cf. Dissemination platform).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 186636,24 Eur

Project Coordinator

Lesezentrum Steiermark & Country: AT

Project Partners

• Österreichisches Bibliothekswerk
• EDEX – EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE CORPORATION LIMITED
• Pencho Slaveykov Regional Library
• BIBLIOTEKA PUBLICZNA W DZIIELNICY URSUS M.ST. WARSZAWY
• INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DE CASTELO BRANCO