Young Storytellers Erasmus Project

Project Title

Young Storytellers

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: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

Under-achievements in basic competencies but also later on also identified as key competencies has been addressed by the EU as a major area of concern and of strategic importance to further focus on. As the Commission in 2015 puts it; “Europe’s low levels of basic competences hamper economic progress and severely limit individuals in their professional, social and personal fulfillment. To enhance employability, innovation and active citizenship, basic competences must go hand in hand with other key competences and attitudes: creativity, entrepreneurship and sense of initiative, digital skills (including coding), foreign language competences, critical thinking including through e-literacy and media literacy, and skills reflecting growing sectors, such as the green economy. 20% of 15 year-olds in the EU score poorly in reading, science and mathematics; 20% of adults have low levels of literacy and numeracy, and 25% have low levels of digital skills – yet only 10.7% take part in lifelong learning and very few low-skilled adults.” (http://ec.europa.eu/education/documents/et-2020-draft-joint-report-408-2015_en.pdf)

The underachievement in key competencies are linked to foreseen employment opportunities but also linked to tertiary education completion. In a society where more and more low skilled jobs disappear, mainly due to the technical revolution, the decreasing rates of literacy is a challenge to be taken seriously as it so much influence achievements in other areas, both in education and in civil society.
In this project we wanted to test if a book creation project can increase literacy and entrepreneurship in pupils from 6 to 18 years. For the older pupils we wanted to target their interest and capacity for tertiary education as well as their actual literacy and entrepreneurship, also a goal from the EU 2020 strategy. For the younger pupils we wanted to target directly their literacy focusing on their reading and writing skills but also their ability to analyze, discuss and reflect on texts as well as their capacity to communicate and teamwork in their own context but also transnational. We therefore target in this project both the key competencies of entrepreneurship (in this project identified as teamwork skills, capacity to handle uncertainty and capacity to make decisions and take responsibility) as well as the project core, literacy. We aimed to integrate both entrepreneurship and basic competences in this project. This is both a method as well as a desired outcome.
The objectives were: 1) to increase pupil literacy (Reading, writing and communicative skills in national and foreign languages), 2) to increase in pupils the entrepreneurship competencies, teamwork capacity, capacity to handle uncertainty, decision making skills and responsibility, 3) to further strengthen and develop teacher´s capacity to use innovative pedagogical methods.
We were three organisations that participate in this project School/Institute/Educational centre-general education (primary level)
Svartedalsskolan in Gothenburg in Sweden, Osnovna skola Veruda Pula in Croatia and Ies Miguel Sanchez Lopez in Jaen in Spain.
Svartedalsskolan is a primary school with pupils from pre-school class (6 years) and up to year 9 (15 years), the last year of compulsory education in Sweden. The school is considered large in Sweden with more than 770 pupils. The school also has a special needs school integrated in the school.
The school is a public primary school up to year 6 in the city of Pula in Croatia. The school has around 350 pupils and 50 staff of various kinds. The school has special pedagogues and also a music school integrated in the school as we use music as a method for learning. The school also has a sports profile. The school is locted in a lower to lower-middle class area, many parents are unemployed or working in the tourism sector or the agrarian sector. The school has a low level of immigration but the social context is economically challenged. The recent financial crisis of Europe also hit Pula and Croatia hard.
The IES Miguel Sánchez López is located in Torredelcampo, a village 11 km. southwest of Jaén capital in the province of Jaén (Andalusia, Spain). This strategic location is a factor of economic and social revitalisation and makes this village one of the areas with the greatest potential for development within the province. It also makes it attractive for temporary workers and people from other countries that arrive here looking for work during the harves.

In all schools participating in this project, a decreasing literacy rate has been a concern during the last 5 years and different approaches have been tested in order to combat this alarming trend. Unfortunately, none of them had proved completely successful and tests of new approaches are therefore in order.
The main activity was creating books.
We had more then 600 pupils that were involved, 450 books and 6 bookfairs.With this project we managed to increase

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 54265 Eur

Project Coordinator

Svartedalsskolan & Country: SE

Project Partners

• IES MIGUEL SANCHEZ LOPEZ
• OSNOVNA SKOLA VERUDA PULA