Project activities, Project objectives and results related to the thematic focus of Greece

The Greek team focused upon one of the basic skills of Education, Reading. More specifically during the meeting in Athens in April 2-8 2017, the project of the 62nd High School of Athens dealt with the issue as follows: "Increase of reading skills – development of different motivational techniques for the acquisition or improvement of the skill of reading".

Our school has performed smaller, internal projects before the Erasmus + project aiming at promoting the Reading skill for the students. The positive results achieved during those past projects, encouraged the group of teachers to deal further with the issue through the Erasmu + project; further on, the idea came up to enable colleagues from the partner countries to participate with their proposals within the framework of exchange of good practices between the partner schools.

During the preparatory phase of the meeting, different aspects of this issue were edited as planned by all partner schools. These included:

1. An online questionnaire for 300 pupils from all partner countries on Reading, (reading behaviour, reading motivation, reading habits, etc.). The results could give us an insight into the following: a) What similarities or differences has the reading behavior of the students at an international level. b). How accurate is teacher assessment regarding students’ reading behavior, etc. The survey results were presented during the Athens meeting.

2. A guidance of students in order to become aware of the ambiguity of the term "Reading": What is the meaning of "I can read"? Students from all partner countries reflected upon and discussed the issue of the multifarious meanings of the same word under the guidance of their teachers. They compiled the results of whole sentences, phrases, or simple tags – then translated into English or German and sent to Athens. The Greek students were inspired by the theme and created giant wall posters and exhibition panels; in this way, all the results were visible in the school corridors and school yard. Thus, all participants had the opportunity to view the final product of this work during the meeting in Athens.

3. Quotes, proverbs, aphorisms (including Authors’ sayings) on education or Learning formed another task in the run-up to the Athens meeting. Students dealt with views and opinions on the topic of education about the Reading task and decided which ones they considered as representing their own attitudes. These were written also in German and English and sent to Athens. During the preparatory phase the Greek students created at their school entrance the "tree of knowledge" of the Erasmus +, in which the quotes, sayings and aphorisms were depicted in the languages of the partner countries. Thus, all meeting participants had the opportunity to read them.

4. Presenting an important literary text or a writer or poet of each partner country considered notable for world literature was another task of the project. Students involved in this task dealt with the literary heritage of their own country and contemplated upon its individual components as perceived through their relevance at an international level. Through this task, students contributed by creating a work which represented their school and their country in a number of ways. The final product of this task shown in Athens included power point and video presentations. The actual result was finding ways to make students curious about learning.

The actual theme of the 62nd High School of Athens was extensively processed based on four workshops during the Athens meeting.

In the First of these Workshops was sought to make clear the relevance of Literacy, i.e. the ability to decode the written text– as the basis of reading skills and comprehension.

In the 2nd Workshop was shown the transcription or paraphrase of texts into comics as an alternative method of approaching and working with the written work. (As a preparation for this workshop the Greek school had already carried out a Workshop with two well-known Greek comic artists. The workshop, attended by students, worked as a kind of training for our colleagues who in turn acted as multipliers during the Erasmus + week.)

Finally, the 3rd Workshop worked on the dramatization of texts, as another extremely motivating method for working with texts.

Furthermore using the ancient Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus, a number of aspects and approaches were mentioned: the aspect of Science in the myth (echo), the aspect of depicting the myth in painting by Italian, Hungarian, Spanish artists, the aspect of narrating the same story from different angles in written form, the content of the myth concerning Narcissism/egocentrism and further on, nationalistic rhetoric. Dramatization included the echoing (repetition) of the same word in the languages of the partner countries.

Finally at the 4th Workshop students under the guidance of their teachers were involved in the rendering of a text in movement (and for that matter, texts giving instructions) as an alternative method for approaching a written text and promoting reading.

The objectives set by the 62nd High School within the framework of its thematic focus have been achieved. This is proved on the one hand by the pupils’ active participation in the works carried out before and their final products.  On the other hand, the successful implementation of the workshops emerged from the results as well as from the motivated participation and the very positive feedback by the parters.