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These are our schools (country alphabetic order): Belgium, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Spain
Belgium
Belgium
The ‘Vrije Handelsschool’ is located in Sint-Niklaas between two major Belgian cities, Antwerp and Ghent and near the highway E17. That is why a lot of factories and firms have an implant in the area around this highway. Therefore it is logical that a trade school like ours is located here with departments like Trade, ICT, Secretary-Languages and Accountancy. Several students work in those firms as a trainee. The ‘Vrije Handelsschool’ is part of the campus BROEDERS HIERONYMIETEN with a kindergarten, an elementary school, a vocational and technical agricultural school and a general secondary school. They have the first grade in common. These schools work very closely together in sharing experience and know how. The ‘Vrije Handelsschool’ is a technical and vocational school which means that the approach to students is more practical. Our school has about 85 teachers and other staff and 485 students. Our students are 14-19 years old. We have a Commercial and Secretary-Language department. We also have two ICT departments where students are well-educated in ICT, also on a practical level and two Vocational departments ‘Office&Retail’ and ‘Logistics’.
Our motivation to take part in this project is based on a long tradition of international cooperation and working together with other schools in several Comenius and Erasmus projects. Furthermore, we would like to share our experience and expertise: for four years now we have had a tablet workgroup in our school. Each teacher of that team received a tablet to experiment with and use in the classroom. Each member had to follow some digital courses to become MIE-expert (Microsoft Innovative Educator). Since then we have been using Microsoft Teams in our classrooms. On regular base we still come together to experiment with new apps and in doing so we learn from each other. With the acquired knowledge we want to work together with our partner schools in improving the quality of our lessons
ICT is not a goal but a way to become better teachers and enhance our education. We use Microsoft products and other apps to achieve that. By internationalising we hope to get inspired to work with innovative and creative ways that will motivate our students to read in their own and foreign languages. We want to share and exchange good practices with the systems and devices students use and see how we can implement them to help our students enhancing reading.
We are a team of two teachers, one of the 2nd grade and one of the 3rd grade, working closely together coordinating this Erasmus+ project and we are supported by our colleagues working with us in this project. We are fully supported by the team of headmasters and coordinators who will definitely find someone taking over the roles of persons who might leave.
Germany
Germany
Our school is called Schule am Schlossplatz. We are located in Limbach – a village with a population of about 4000 inhabitants in Baden-Württemberg, in the south-west of Germany. Our school is a so-called Gemeinschaftsschule. That means we are a comprehensive school that caters for all students‘ needs from Year 5 to Year 10 – whether they are especially talented and hard-working or need more support to solve their tasks. We have 229 students at our school. They are from ten to 16 years old. Our staff comprises 23 teachers, two social workers, one trainee teacher, two secretaries and two caretakers.
We want to participate in this Erasmus+ project about reading promotion to increasingly motivate our students to think of reading as a fun and worthwhile pastime. Reading promotion is important to us. It is our opinion that our students could improve not only their literary skills but also their general knowledge and much more by taking part in this project. Our language teachers often notice that the majority of our students are not able to adequately express themselves, e.g. to use paraphrases or write in an appropriate style. To get them to read more and to motivate them to include reading in their daily lives would be a big step towards tackling the aforementioned issues.
The reading promotion project would be a huge help in this respect. The implication of the project’s idea to reward students for their own reading activities would help us to further individualise the work with our students.
We believe that when students feel that we see them and work with them as individuals, they are more satisfied and more eager to learn and make progress. So, we think that we could really gain a lot from implementing the project at our school.
We think that we will be an asset to the other members of the school. Three of our teachers manage and take care of our school library. They are looking forward to supporting us with their knowledge concerning all aspects of reading.
Two of them are currently taking part in a pilot scheme called ‘Reading makes strong’. This federal scheme lasts from 2018 to 2021. Both our groups of Year 5 students are taking part and similarly to our reading promotion project, they will try to improve the students’ literary skills. There will be differentiated input and they will be doing tests to check whether the programme is effective. We believe that the two projects could benefit from one another and be an enrichment for all participants.
Lithuania
Lithuania
The school is sixty-five years old. It offers students primary and basic education. There are about 550 students at our school, from 7 to 15 years old. Our school is a public basic school and we have grades from 1 to 8. Some students of primary classes have extra music lessons, elder students attend sports. Our students are keen on participating at various types of contests and events, both in our town and nationwide. At the end of year 4 our students have primary school leaving Standard tests and at the end of year 8 they have specialized tests of basic education. After leaving school students usually enter gymnasiums or vocational schools. There are 55 teachers and specialists, who work with special needs students. We have 7 teachers‘ assistants in the primary and older classes. Our students are mainly Lithuanians with some ethnic minorities - Russians, Gypsies, Italian, etc.
Today, students prefer to use information technology rather than a book. Reading affects improvement of children's linguistic and speaking skills, writing skills and overall development. We believe that participation in this project would encourage students to read more, improve their reading skills, and help them to enjoy reading pleasure. While reading, children develop their creative powers and improve their critical thinking skills. When students actively participate in various project activities, they learn to share the impressions of the books they have read, learn to recommend a read book to a friend. It is important to involve the entire school community - pupils, teachers, parents - in reading activities, and expand the boundaries beyond the school, in collaboration with various partners: libraries, museums, theatres. We believe that a positive example plays a very important role in reading stimulation. The promotion of reading in our school is very important for all teachers.
The librarian, languages teachers, etc. are happy to get engaged in such type of activities. The project coordinators in our school will be an English teacher and the Deputy Director for Education. Key persons involved in projects are mother tongue and foreign language teachers, special pedagogue. Their skills are knowledge of foreign languages, IT skills, international communication experience. The other teachers are experts of their subjects and they willingly participate at different activities required by the Project plan.
Klaipeda Vite progymnasium has a rich experience in carrying out multilateral Comenius and Erasmus+ projects as well as afternoon activities (after-school clubs) that have always been popular with our students. Being our moto "Learning-Creation-Expression-Cooperation" we can contribute with all this expertise to this project.
Poland
Poland
Academic Secondary School affiliated to the Silesian University of Technology is a new public secondary school, which is operated by a technical university. The school started its activity in September 2018 and opened two forms for 25 students each. They follow the architectural and technical profiles. For this reason, students who have chosen the school can be characterized as having specific technical interests and highly motivated to pursue STEM education.
The school employs 22 teachers, including a pedagogist/personal tutor and a librarian. 14 teachers hold a doctorate in science or humanities. The Silesian University of Technology closely monitors the teaching programmes of the Academic Secondary School. Senior lecturers of the Technical University teach leading subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science and programming.
Our students prioritize science and STEM over humanities and this is the particular reason why we find it so important to provide them with a programme which would complement this missing literacy competence which broadens their literary skills and interests. We believe that the overall education provided by the secondary level cannot be out of balance. Our students’ future success in technology is equally hinged on the their creativity, their ability to think out of the box and a skill to merge apparently differing spheres of literature and science. It is our presumption that reading opens minds and imagination, even if this imagination should be engaged in technical and scientific tasks.
What makes the project even more fascinating is the gamification which turns the reading experience into a challenge and gives it a competitive edge. Teenagers are very keen on participating in contests therefore linking reading with a game scheme should be very attractive to our students.
The project coordinators in our school are the Headmaster and an English teacher. They speak foreign languages and have experience in international didactic projects. Our English teacher also teaches American contemporary literature part time at the Silesian University of Technology (Foreign Languages College). Other person involved in the project is our French teacher, who has earned her PhD at French linguistics and studied the theory and practice of gamification. She works at the Silesian University of Technology (Foreign Languages College). She was also an Erasmus coordinator at the University in the past. Next year she is going to run our library part time. Other people supporting the programme are the mother tongue, foreign language and IT teachers, as well as a pedagogue. They all possess communication skills, knowledge of foreign languages and IT skills. In the unlikely event of leaving their posts, the programme will be carried out by the new teachers in the same department, as this is a school project.
Slovakia
Slovakia
Our school is a public school base. Provides education for children between 6 and 15 years of age. The size of the school belongs to small schools. We have 82 pupils and therefore teachers can individually access their pupils. There are 13 teachers working together at the school. The school is located in Pribeta, Komarno, Slovakia. Although our school is a Slovak primary school, it is attended by many pupils of Hungarian nationality. Therefore, we place great emphasis on reading, reading literacy and communication skills.
We teach children to love books and we practise reading comprehension, both in national and also in a foreign language. We have collaborated in a previous reading project because we believe that reading and familiarity with books is a gateway to the world of knowledge, fantasy and cooperation. We have built a school library that is used by pupils during the school hours. Apart from teaching, pupils go to the library to read, write assignments, work on projects, etc. We can put all this expertise in benefit of the other partners
Besides helping promote reading skills, and therefore, increasing reading literacy, we want to take part in this project because it can help improving the quality of education, acquiring new knowledge and teaching skills, which will also boost the reputation of the school. Participating in this project we will get increase our network of contacts and our students will experiment the recognition of new cultures, as one of the objectives of these sorts of projects is to work elements of tolerance, empathy, diversity and openness to other nationalities and cultures.
Being the school small, the project will be implemented by most of the teachers, however the leading role will be held by the school librarian, who is also the Hungarian teacher and even helped build the school library mentioned above and the English teacher. Both of them are really interested in reading promotion and literacy, therefore the project will help fulfil one of the main objectives of the school. In the unlikely event of them leaving their post, the project would be continued by the new teachers in the same post. As this is a school project, the rest of the staff will help them catch up.
Spain
Spain
Our institution is a school for students from 3 to 16 years old, teaching at infant, primary and secondary levels, although the project has been designed for the Secondary Education level (students aged 12 to 16 years old). We will be leading the project in the role of "coordinator". Our school has around 920 students (325 in secondary) most of them from middle-low social classes in a town with 100.000 inhabitants.
In the school year 2017/18 we were authorized by the educational authorities (Junta de Andalucía) as a bilingual school, one of the requirements being to carry out a linguistic project to develop language skills both in native and foreign languages. One of the elements of this linguistic project is to develop a reading promotion programme. Some years ago we already had a reading promotion programme, but it was left behind as some other points of interest arose, such as the implementation and use of new technologies. Getting involved in a project like this will help us focus again on reading and literacy skills, and we consider that participating in an Erasmus+ project is the best opportunity to learn from other schools with the same interests, sharing gamification techniques as an innovative approach, in order to make reading fun and entertaining for our students. We believe that improving reading skills also improves creativity, critical thinking, comprehension, therefore boosting students literacy levels and helping prevent school leave.
There are around 60 teachers in the staff, of whom 22 of them teach in the Secondary level where the project will be implemented. 12 of these teachers belong to the Erasmus+ team.
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