Great Masterpieces of the European Literature Erasmus Project

General information for the Great Masterpieces of the European Literature Erasmus Project

Great Masterpieces of the European Literature Erasmus Project
July 7, 2020 12:00 am
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Project Title

Great Masterpieces of the European Literature

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 for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

This project has been carried out in a context where students from very different backgrounds and cultures have worked together in order to produce a bilingual illustrated ebook with literature masterpieces of their own countries. The differences amongst partners, specially in culture and customs, were one of the incentives to work together as we all understood those differences as an opportunity to learn from each other. It has been exactly the same in terms of backgrounds. All the schools come from very different backgrounds, with many differences in terms of size, premises or even curriculums. These differences went from the German school with more than 1000 students to the Spanish school with less than 100 students; or the high technological level of the Estonian or Turkish schools against the more modest schools in Spain and Greece. We were quite ambitious when designing the project but we always relied on the variety of our expertise as our schools and students had previously worked in very different fields. For example, while Slovenian partners had experience in theatre; Germans had experience in music; Estonians were experts in educational projects; Greeks and Spanish in organising cultural and literary routes and our Turquish partners had experience in ICT programmes. All those qualities together have helped to the success of our project as we have been helping each other whenever it has been necessary. Basically, we saw that we could complement each other.

The main objective of this project was to help students to improve their communicative competence, although it wasn’t the only objective. Other important goals of the project were to foster team working; to offer students real contexts to communicate with other students form different cultures and learn from each other; to work specific contents from the national curriculums in a more motivating way applying their knowledge to real situations. We can assure that all those initial objectives have been fully achieved as students were able to work with people their age and communicate in many different situations along the two years that the project lasted. Students worked in a collaborative way using online tools like Twinspace, Drive, emails or Edmodo where the vehicular language was English.
Even though the number of mobilities financed were 21, we managed to get 152 students participating in the mobilities thanks to external funding. The profile of the students participating in the different mobilities varied according to the specific mobility. So, students participating in the meeting in Celje were those students who had adapted the national masterpieces and helped to the translation into English; students with a musical profile participating in the gathering in Greece; or those with more experience in acting went to Germany. We can say the same for the teachers who participated in each of the mobilities as students travelled with their English, music, Art and Drama teachers.

We can divide the different activities into those specifically needed for the final product, i.e. our ebook; those carried out via eTwinning and those carried out during the different gatherings.
For the first group of mentioned activities , students worked together to select the national masterpiece that would be adapted to an A2 level; they translated the adaptations into English; they drew illustrations for the final ebook, produced music for the ebook and recorded themselves reading the different ebooks in a way that each book has been read by students from different nationalities. Once the students edited and published the ebook, we continued working on the adaptation of the masterpieces to the theatre. Apart from uploading the mentioned activities to Twinspace, students shared in eTwinning other activities like video presentations of their schools; online presentations about their masterpices; video presentations with their progress while drawing the illustrations, etc.

The third group of activities undertook by our students were the ones carried out over the mobilities. Amongst these activities it is worth mentioning the Reading event in a public library in Slovenia; the exhibition of the illustrations and drawing of scenaries for the different masterpieces in Estonia; the concert in Greece and the theatre performance in Germany.
As mentioned above, the main result obtained has been the audio-book, although we have had many other products along the way. Some of the products that helped us to achieve our goals have had the biggest impact in our students. Special mention for the public concert that our student gave in Greece and their performance in Germany. without a doubt, for many of our students, a range of unforgateble life and travel experiences had the biggest impact.

In terms of longer benefits, students from all over Europe can use our ebook, plays or reading games in their English or drama classes.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 122070 Eur

Project Coordinator

IESO Juan de Valdes & Country: ES

Project Partners

  • Paikuse Põhikool
  • 2nd Gymnasium Kavalas
  • Ozel Gaziantep Bahcesehir Ortaokulu
  • OSNOVNA SOLA FRANA ROSA
  • Grundschule Kerschensteinerstrasse
  • Staatliche Gesamtschule Hollfeld