Sharing Legends and Myths

Literacy skills of students in primary and middle school development was the main objective of our project . The project partners had agreed that it was an important issue and had been aimed to develop skills, transferable in comprehending written text, processing it and using the reading material to give a creative output. The participants of the project were: Sakala Eragumnaasium (Tallinn, Estonia), Hristo Botev Primary School (Sliven,Bulgaria), Scoala Gimnaziala Nr.1 Gura Humorului ( Gura Humorului, Romania), P.E.I González Valverde S.L.L ( Murcia, Spain). The schools involved in the project are both municipal and private,and include students of various cultural and social backgrounds. The theme of the project, Sharing Legends and Myths,was considered as appropriate and beneficial to all participants and empowering the teachers to effectively involve their students into the learning process, thus improving not only their literacy but foreign language skills as the project was run in English. Students were involved in researching the legends of their countries and producing their own creative output after having understood the reading material (translations into English and native languages,making presentations, creating comics and sketches), through which objectives of the project were achieved. Students of all partner schools shared their creative outputs with the international audiences. Doing so, they increased their interest in reading and processing the information in the foreign language. Information regarding the flow of the project and part of the creative outputs were exchanged through the project website available to all participants at any time and will still remain open for public use during 2 more years after the end of the project. The partner schools had 4 meetings where the students of the host schools had a chance to hear the legends presented and taught by guest-teachers from partner schools. Throughout the project, the students were developing communication, IT, and writing skills, gained new factual knowledge and valuable experiences and competences. The partner meetings were also beneficial for the teachers. They provided the counterparts with great opportunities: to co-teach, give each other feedback and exchange methodology concerning literacy skills development. During their visits, the colleagues observed each others' lessons, implemented theoretical ideas in practical lessons based on the legends; discussed the adjustments to be made to teaching the legends in particular environments . The above-mentioned enabled the teachers to create an online- accessible Teaching Kit which has appeared to be useful for all the teachers who have applied it internationally being interested in literacy skills development. Final products include: - Magazine based on comics on the national legends, -Teaching Kit containing lessons based on national legends translated into English ,- Video recording of teachers' performance in the internationally staged play,-Web-quest based on national legends, -Booklet with legends translated into English and adapted to the use in classes by the teachers' team . All these materials will be available and beneficial for further use by partner schools as well as other educational institutions and libraries. To sum up, the most significant aim of the project was to advance students' literacy skills as a result of working out good teaching practices and methods. Besides, the legends which teaching is supposed to be based on are and will always be up-to-date, which will give the project outcome a longer life and dissemination.