The project “Be the change you want to see”, an Erasmus+ program for the years 2018-2020, was realized by five partner schools, namely: Zespół Szkół w Staninie, The School Complex in Stanin quartered in the East of Poland and consisting of a kindergarten, primary and lower secondary school, a big institution with a long tradition of participating in European projects and our project coordinator, 3rd Gymnasium of Kilkis, a Junior High School located in the town of Kilkis in Northern Greece, which runs general education mainstream classes along with classes that support the inclusion of students with learning difficulties and refugees, Bekescsaba Center of Vocation and Training Zwack Jozsef Commerce and Catering School, a Vocational Secondary School in Bekescsaba, Hungary, where students attend orientation and foundation training courses and acquire vocational skills and and professional certification, Nikos Kazantzakis School in Braila, Romania, a secondary school that offers educational services to students with special educational needs, reduced frequency, in detention regime, as well as second chance students and students of disadvantaged groups. Kozmos Yazılım Anadolu Lisesi, the Private Avcılar Kozmos Software Anatolian High School, established in 2017, in Istanbul, as Turkey’s first software Anatolian High School that provides, among others, comprehensive English education and software training at international level.

Purpose

 
The project dealt with the idea of teaching English as a foreign language through stories to secondary school students, focusing entirely on the 13-16 age group. Nowadays, it has become imperative to adjust our teaching methods to the requirements imposed by the rapid pace of the advances of the technological era and not overlook the fact that there are practices and methods which have started to lose ground. With this in mind, we set out on the journey of discovering and rediscovering the pleasure of reading, as a way of improving students’ basic competences- language, communication, as well as skills such as interpretation, critical thinking and analysis.

Meetings

 
The first project meeting took place in Turkey in December 2018, followed by meetings in Greece, Hungary and Romania in March, May and September of 2019 respectively. The final meeting was programmed to be held in Poland in 2020 but, due to the pandemic, the coordinator country Poland hosted a 3-day online conference in January 2021. Besides teachers, six students from each partner country participated in every short-term exchange program. During the short-term exchanges, a number of topics were approached through model lessons and workshops: Developing literary and interpretative skills through stories Teaching reading and critical thinking skills through stories Teaching writing skills and creativity through stories Teaching speaking skills through stories. Throughout the project, our objectives were to: develop students’ taste for reading and motivate them develop students’ creativity and language skills develop students’ critical and creative thinking, personal and social capability develop understanding of their own culture in connection with other European cultures promote European values and develop cohesion among European citizens exchange teaching methods and improve the material bases of the English teachers produce sustainable teaching materials and share them with foreign language teachers in our countries as well as other European countries. The results of the project refer to all the documents and materials produced by the partners: action plans, evaluation material, feedback forms, 5 sets of dissemination materials, 5 Erasmus+ corners, an interactive project website, e-Twinning space, presentations of educational systems, photo collections, a collection of story-related activities and lesson plans for secondary school students, a curriculum for optional class “TESS- Teaching English Skills through Stories”. Our journey began with enthusiasm and high expectations and was successfully concluded and we are happy to present our final products as a way of sharing our work and ideas.

Program Video

 
Video