Storytelling for Cultural and Language Development Erasmus Project

Project Title

Storytelling for Cultural and Language Development

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: Research and innovation; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

The innovative aspect of this project is that cultural and language learning, will emerge not only from visiting foreign cultures first hand but also via interaction with the local elderly persons who will relate their untold tales of the past bringing out the tradition and culture of their land. The students will translate the oral into text. Activities will include visits to elderly care homes or elderly people are invited to the school where they are asked to tell stories from the past. These stories will be documented and the language teacher will modify to make them interesting for children. The art teacher will make illustrations to accompany the stories. Throughout the project 10 stories from each country will be collected where text will be accompanied with questions which can be used to test language understanding. The stories from all the 6 countries will be collected in a book. During the activities children from the different countries will be split into groups and the children will practice story telling. The children will narrate the stories to the other children so all the children hear different stories from different countries. The elderly people who help will feel acknowledged for their contribution.

This project will involve 6 schools from different EU countries and will consist of 3 transnational meetings each involving 2 teachers from each country. Activities involving 5 students and 2 teachers from every country will be held in 4 hosting countries. Activities will consist of educational tours that have the objective of enhancing the cultural and language development of the participants. At the transnational meetings there will be a storytelling course, so teachers can combine and consolidate the work carried out during the project so that the final meeting will consist of a conference that will launch the book produced by the participating members of this project.

In the process of conducting their activities, as a result of the visits to gather stories, our children will have had the opportunity to spend time with elderly people who are sometimes very lonely therefore another beneficial effect is generated. The elderly people will be willing to share with us about the past whereby this will be for them a valuable experience because they will feel valued and useful. Apart from offering the companionship, our children will be giving the indication to the elderly persons how cherished and treasured their input will be in that it will be taking the form of a document that will be disseminated throughout the EU and that furthermore it will be a contribution to the European cultural heritage. From their end, the children will be enriched with a first hand learning experience that will enrich them not only from the academic point of view as the oral is translated into text, but this will enhance the childrens’ values and sense of belonging. Through storytelling this project purports to describe the social and cultural activity on an EU level by sharing stories. Every culture has its own stories or narratives, which may be consequently shared as a means of education, cultural preservation or instilling moral values.

By means of this project we will not only create more cultural awareness but will produce teaching/learning material that will be utilized by students EU wide. The resulting output in the form of a published and an ebook, is intended to provide for a tool for the improvement of cultural and language development, both for the participating members and equally the other students who will be sharing the wealth of information produced. This project will ultimately also benefit migrants in that they will be provided with the means to understand better the history of the city they are living in and this should help them integrate better. As a final task, the comparative perspective will be brought out between the participating countries so that the stories are used as a basis to discover tradition and culture with a view to bringing out a common European element.

Following this unique experience the schools will have built and gained newer concepts so they can not only share and disseminate the new ideas but also open up for more diverse situations as those encountered on a EU level rather than the more restricted national level. The schools will gain the ability to guide future learners with the required information on the practices and culture of other countries. On a national level, this experience will allow the schools to interact more positively with an ever growing diverse learner base. On a European level, these schools would be more equipped in their EU-wide prospects due to their experience in other EU member states, other than their mother country. In addition, this experience will diffuse potentially new learning practices based on integration via the cultural and language enrichment. This would, undoubtedly, encourage and increase mobility within the EU.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 111503,42 Eur

Project Coordinator

Newark School & Country: MT

Project Partners

• Gymnaseio Lykeiakes Taxeis Makrychoriou (Highschool)
• OOU Mirce Acev Gjorce Petrov Skopje
• Institut Carles Rahola i Llorens
• Scoala Gimnaziala Romanu Braila
• Szkola Podstawowa nr 10 im.Janusza Korczaka