JUST IN TIME FOR NURTURING A LOVE OF READING Erasmus Project

Project Title

JUST IN TIME FOR NURTURING A LOVE OF READING

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

This Erasmus + project aimed to improve the quality of school education, to strengthen its European dimension and promote the improvement of learning through reading. All partners had a common problem, that of students with lack of interest for reading and they also had students who were at the risk of early school leaving because of their low results.
The project ‘Just in time for nurturing a love of reading’ was a 6 school partnership: Romania, Poland, Spain, 2 schools from Italy (Canicattì and Marsala) and Bulgaria.
The Romanian coordinator school was a general secondary school where pre – primary, primary and lower secondary education is provided for a number of 300 children. The school is situated in the rural area, quite far from the nearest city ( 40 km). 80% of the pupils come from very poor families and 33,48% of the pupils are of rroma nationality who are very difficult to be convinced of staying at school and study further.
The students of the Polish partner are from one-parent families and they are at the risk of early school leaving.
The Bulgarian partner is a secondary school with students aged 7- 18 and about 10% of them are coming from jobless families, i. e. both parents are unemployed.
The Italian partners have pupils with attention deficit in classes, students with risk of exclusion because of the great number of absences; students with lack of interest in the learning processes and Spanish partner also has socially and economically disadvantaged students.
The mother tongue plays a key role in a child’s social and personal development, in education and in second-language learning. As reading gets to mental stimulation, knowledge, vocabulary expansion, memory improvement, the main goal of the project was to develop a lasting interest in reading at students in order to improve their school outcomes and test scores regarding basic skills at literacy with the involvement of socially and economically disadvantaged students for avoiding early school leaving.
We organized different book-related activities in classroom and after school (Lecture club once a week, reading sessions at the library ). We encouraged communication by implementing different activities that supposed cultural exchange among children and teachers which were planned to strengthen the international and European character of the project.
The results of our strategic partnership are questionnaires, a logo, a photo exhibition, a website of the project, an ETwinning platform, a T-shirt that pupils and teachers wear during the actions and events of the project, usb materials with photos from each of the events, an Erasmus+ booklet later used for visibility in dissemination activities. We expected and developed a great impact on pupils´ competences: they demonstrated to be more autonomous, self-confident and motivated to learn. They changed their way of thinking to be more open-minded. The progress in learning process was enhanced. Pupils’ managing skills, team work, cooperation and communication were improved as well as relationships with their school. With this project we wanted to develop key skills in pupils´ teaching and reinforcement of motivation for reading both in their mother tongue and both in English. On the parents’ and local communities’ level there were positive changes such as: increasing support and engagement in school’s activities, a positive attitude regarding the cultural, social and environmental acquisitions, a better communication between schools, parents and local community and an ability of the local community mentality to adopt the European values more easily.
The longer-term benefits of the project are that students are still in contact with their new friends and teachers plan to make other projects. Teachers, students and their families promote the Erasmus Plus projects to their friends and relatives, as a chance for a better learning and for a better future to pupils.
The coordinator school in Romania has already organized 3 dissemination activities after the end of the project.On the 12th of October celebrating the Erasmus Days 2018, the school organized more activities to familiarize the European projects with the participants. On the 19th of October, the director of the Romanian school presented the project and its benefits to another school’s students and teachers. On the 27th of October the Romanian school organized a meeting for the directors of the Hungarian schools of Bihor county and promoted the Erasmus Plus project to them.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 76360 Eur

Project Coordinator

Scoala Gimnaziala nr. 1 Saniob & Country: RO

Project Partners

• 2 Circolo Didattico Cavour Marsala
• General Secondary School “Nikolay Katranov”
• Circolo Didattico “Don Bosco”
• CEIP GLORIA FUERTES
• Szkola Podstawowa im. Powstancow Wielkopolskich w Jankowie Przygodzkim