Today's Writers, Tomorrow's Leaders

"Around 100 years ago, women's rights activist Margaret Fuller is quoted as saying, ""Today's readers, tomorrow's leaders."" Inspired by this, a group of educators in eight schools across Europe recognised that we are privileged to be in the position of shaping the leaders of tomorrow. We took this quote and discussed the priorities of our schools and we talked about how writing can help promote cohesive communication across languages and cultures. From hieroglyphics to graffiti, from poetry to songs, writing and mark-making has always formed part of the communication process across borders and through time. We had an exciting opportunity to not only promote writing in our own schools, but to share this across Europe and indeed across the universe!The main aim of our project was to tackle under-achievement in writing. All partners identified this as a need in their respective schools. We tackled this by creating an imaginative and engaging scenario involving aliens crash landing at our schools and encouraging the children to want to write. The children found that they had a purpose for writing and that it would be seen throughout the universe, not just by their teacher, who is usually their only reader. By creating these scenarios, the whole school community became involved, including children, staff and parents. The project had five main questions that were posed by the aliens at specific points throughout the project's lifetime. Each of these questions then led to an activity and a result. This project has been designed to have digital outputs, but some partners have also decided to create printed versions of project products. The questions posed and the related activities were:1. What do you read?The children in each partner school thought about traditional stories in their country. They shared one of these with the partner schools, who wrote instructions of how to act it out in a silent drama. These silent dramas were then shared with all partner schools and online through eTwinning.In addition to this, each school invited an author to come and visit their school so that the children could ask questions about developing their writing. These interviews were shared online.2. What do you write?The children in each partner school were invited to write short stories, using the alien crash landing as a stimulus. These were collated into an e-book, which was then translated into each of the project languages so that it could be enjoyed by children in each partner school.This question also prompted the children to create a multi-lingual e-dictionary so that communication could be made easier between children in the project schools. This was published online and can be used by anyone that wishes to download it.3. What do you eat?This question involved collating a recipe e-book of recipes from each of the project countries. The children in each partner school were asked to write a recipe of a typically traditional meal from their country. In addition to this, they were also invited to write a recipe that is typical of a minority group living in their local area. This recipe e-book was published online.4. What do you sing?Through studying and writing poetry, the children were able to write songs in their native language that were shared with other project schools. These were then presented in the style of a Eurovision Song Contest, with participating children voting for a winner. The songs and lyrics were shared online.5. Who are you?This question explored the children's identities and how they feel as active European citizens. Children in each partner school wrote autobiographies and these were collated into an e-book to be shared in each partner school and online.In addition to these outputs produced by the children, the staff in each of the partner schools also produced concrete results. At the end of the two learning, teaching and training events, documents that had been produced by the staff were shared online. There were three main outputs:- a selection of training resources that explain how different countries approach the teaching of writing, including priority groups of children- an overview of this project so that it can be emulated in other schools- a series of lesson plans, based on this project's main theme of an alien crash landing, that other educators can use and adapt for their classesThe main impact of this project was that children's ability to write for different purposes improved and that achievement in writing had positive results.A further crucial impact of this project was ensuring that the pan-European dimension was promoted in all schools and that the benefits of working collaboratively with partners from across the continent were extolled at all opportunities. All partners reported that the pan-European nature of the project was positive and that staff and children in their schools benefited from this."