Today a reader, tomorrow a leader Erasmus Project

Project Title

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader

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: Creativity and culture; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

The Erasmus+ KA2 project “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader” took place in 2016-2018. The main goals of that project were to arise students’ interest in reading, develop their reading comprehension and expand their horizons.
There were 5 partners included in this project. The coordinator of the project was Võru Kesklinna School and the project partners were Escola Pericot, Zespol Szkol w Ostrowku, Zakladna skola s materskou skolou Milana Rastislava Stefanika, Budimir 11 and KORH – Basisschool Scharrel. The age of students who were involved the project was 3-16, it depended on school.
In our today’s fast and digitalized world students do not master reading skills very well any more, nor is reading considered attractive enough. Active communication in social media has influenced students’ language – they have acquired the type of incorrect language used in this environment. Students face serious problems when reading task instructions and texts. Due to the fact that students do not read so much fiction (as showed by international studies PISA and PIRLS ) any more, their vocabulary has become poorer and their self-expression is poor as well. There are more and more students from multi-lingual families in our school who have problems with understanding basic as well as literary texts. This problem concerns students in all levels. It is a topical problem in other countries as well problems due to the quick global digitalization. These were the reasons why this project was initiated.
This particular project was oriented to introducing a wide range of literature to students. It developed students’ reading skills, enlarged their vocabulary as well as fostered their moral beliefs and developed their way of thinking and the sense of the world. The project also introduced students both the national literature and traditional culture and the ones of other countries.The goals of the project were: to motivate students to read and get interested in the literature proper for their age; to develop reading comprehension skills; to develop speaking skills; to develop public speaking skills.
To achieve the goals, there were the following activities: mapping the students’ reading habits before and after; mapping the book rentals in the school libraries at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the project; making up a “Reading Tree”, which shows how many books have the students read during the project; presenting teachers’/students’ reading recommendations on project’s homepage; making a commercial to support reading; reading to playschool children twice a year; introducing one’s favourite book; choosing the most popular internationally known book among the project countries; making a display or a poster of an internationally known writer and presenting it in a public place; acting out a short play at the book festival; celebrating the International Book and Rose Day, making and playing the orienteering game on literature; choosing top 10 favourite books in each country and making a poster, writing a book in six languages where main characters travel through these countries which have involved the project, meet local book-characters there and visit famuous sightseeings of theses countries.
The following methods were used to carry these activities: questionnaires and their analyses, comparisons; readings, presentations, illustrations, a dramatization, making a film, writing a book. The project can be followed on project’s homepage http://bookleaf.weebly.com/ .
The main aim of the project was to influence the local target group (students and playschool children). The impact of the project was that students’ interest in reading and the popularity of reading has increased during the project. According to statistics it’s possible to say, that the students started to read more and they visited libraries more often and rented books from there. Students know the writers and their most popular books of different countries more than before. Thaks to reading to playschool children students are better at public speaking and self-expression. The students’ reading skills, self-expression and text comprehension developed and they made progress at school. Reading to playschool children arised also playschool children’s interest in reading. There was a good cooperation between children in different ages. Students who were involved in the project showed interest in the culture and literature of other countries, they started to read the books which partner schools’ children have suggested and read. The impact was measured through questionnaires about studets’ reading habits, statistics about book rentals in the libraries and analyzing the results of the “Reading Tree”. During the project the students who were involved have read 9192 books – about 2 tonnes of books.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 86150 Eur

Project Coordinator

Võru Kesklinna Kool & Country: EE

Project Partners

• Escola Pericot
• Vrije Basisschool Scharrel
• Zespol Szkol w Ostrowku
• Zakladna skola s materskou skolou Milana Rastislava Stefanika, Budimir 11