Closing the Word Gap Erasmus Project

Project Title

Closing the Word Gap

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: Pedagogy and didactics; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

The issue of a good start to education is an EU priority. In its policy statement on ECEC, the Commission states that ‘Quality early childhood education and care can lay the foundations for later success in life in terms of education, well-being, employability, and social integration, and is especially important for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. High-quality early childhood education and care is therefore an efficient and effective investment in education and training.’ This project specifically addresses this priority and target groups, focuses on those foundations and provides the investment in the future. It builds a partnership of 4 schools from 4 countries, UK, Italy, Spain and Latvia and focuses on initiatives used to support disadvantaged young pupils who arrive in school with a language deficit. It will use as its base model an initiative led by the UK partner called ‘Closing the Word Gap’ and targets pupils in the 4-7 age range.

This project addresses the Horizontal Priorities of…

• supporting individuals in acquiring basic skills and key competences in order to foster social development
• developing social inclusion by promoting equality of disadvantaged learners

and the Erasmus+ School Priorities of…

• strengthening the profile of the teaching profession by enhancing professional development, facilitating teacher mobility and developing innovative teaching methods
• enhancing the quality and provision of early childhood education to ensure a good start in education for all

The objectives of the project are to:

• analyse and share existing strategies and resources for improving oracy to close the gap between disadvantaged learners and their peers
• identify common areas of strength and priorities for development
• undertake study visits to partner schools to investigate the policies and practice in the context of those schools
• use the outcomes of the study visits to improve provision and practice in identifying and addressing oracy disadvantage
• produce a report on the outcomes of each study visit, sets of case studies and recommendations for school policy
• disseminate the outcomes widely

The planned activities of this Strategic Partnership will….

• strengthen the cooperation and networking between organisations
• exchange experiences and good practice, through peer learning activities and workshops;
• better prepare professionals to identify disadvantaged young learners and address individual needs
• facilitate the school’s capacity to improve oracy provision in early years

and the methodology to be adopted will run 4 sets of mobilities, each hosted by a partner school. These will involve workshops of 5 teachers and/or teaching assistants per partner to share practice and review procedures on following topics:

• explore current practice in basic literacy strategies in schools in 4 countries.
• explore current practice on identifying and targeting disadvantaged groups in the partner schools
• explore the ‘Closing the Gap’ model and specific vocabulary focused interventions to develop the oracy levels of EYFS pupils

The outcomes of these workshops will…

o enhance the understanding of the nature of disadvantage and identifying priority disadvantaged groups in each of the partner schools
o develop practical strategies to improve oracy in the target groups including differentiation, whole class and group work, targeted intervention and parental support
o develop strategies for measuring impact including the use of data to monitor progress and set targets

Partners will also evaluate the outcomes of the workshops and implement in-school initiatives where relevant and disseminate the final outcomes widely

All workshops will involve school visits, classroom observations and discussions with key teachers and pupils. The workshops will facilitate the sharing of expertise and peer learning but also develop potential joint curriculum activities to address the specific workshop topics. This will enable the teachers concerned to continue to share their practice and at the same time develop additional resources.

The project will develop a set of case studies covering the different topics related to early literacy intervention and these will be widely disseminated both internally and externally. This will enable the partnership to achieve its objectives of better preparing professionals to intervene in the early years and will also produce an example of how the strategies can be embedded into school policy. The project will produce a model that could be adopted beyond the partnership.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 71310 Eur

Project Coordinator

Tranmere Park Primary School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Direzione Didattica C. Maneri – Ingrassia
• Livberzes pamatskola
• escola Joan Rebull