"The aim of the project was to allow the children to express themselves creatively through acting, singing and creative writing in their mother tongue and in English. We organized a range of workshops for pupils, including drama, creative writing and storytelling activities. Drama workshops focused on interaction and helping participants discover the creativity that lies within them. The school theatre and drama classes became their alternative way of spending free time. It was a great chance also for those pupils who are shy and cannot cooperate easily with their peers due to the lack of courage and the faith in their own strengths. While acting out they learnt to express their emotions, feelings of a played character, practiced pronunciation, voice, facial expressions and movement on the stage. Such activities shaped children’s imagination and, creativity as they not only presented themselves artistically but they are also involved in preparing the scenography, costumes and additional props. They got used to working with one another towards a specific goal. These skills were transferred to the classroom. The project allowed participating pupils to learn more about other countries traditions and literary heritage through the experience of theatre and drama. Students researched and wrote about traditions, legends of their countries and shared the knowledge with pupils from partner schools. The research was used to form original theatre pieces written by the pupils. Performances were recorded and uploaded to the project web site. Pupils improved their ICT skills as the primary contact with their friends from partner schools will be via Internet using ICT equipment. Furthermore, they worked on several tasks using different forms of technology (recording the plays, working with the video, writing online stories and publishing on the website). This improved their competence for life in an advanced technological society. The students learnt to write stories by analysing the literacy elements like characters, setting and plot. But as a lot of students are not willing to attend writing activities, we have aimed to make story writing fun by attracting the students’ attention, through using enjoyable implementations like ""Storybird"" software to improve their writing skills in the target language.Pupils actively took part in managing the project and in making decisions about the way activities are carried out. Through different local activities we gave the opportunity children from the kindergarten and children with special needs to participate. For pupils coming from socially weak backgrounds it was a great opportunity to visit foreign countries and get first-hand information about different countries, cultures and religions. Such cooperation gave pupils and teachers a wider picture about European traditions, cultures, their habits, way of life and improves tolerance, cross-cultural learning and understanding, multicultural learning for all participants. Comparing school systems and teaching practice and exchanging experience contributed greatly to the development of each partner school.We involved the students of primary and secondary schools, special need children. In total, there were at least the majority of the students (about 1000 students) developing the project tasks in each partner institution. Sometimes, all students of a grade were participating.The teaching staff consisted of 10-15 participants in each country. They were mainly the teachers of native and foreign languages, history, ICT, art and craft. All the administration staff were involved to manage, prepare and coordonate the meetings.The parents participate a lot to the differents contests, presentations, evenings events, lunches...We organised writing stories by pupils in Story Bird Internet tool about the legends and sharing the stories on the website. As a result I can be a writer-a collection of tales written by the students connected with their neighborhood was published and presented in a booklet form. Students wrote creative stories associated with the place they live in. The competition for the best tale and best comic book and best poem contest was organized in each school. The best three were chosen and translated into English in a simple language. Selecting the best tale written by the students in each country and preparing the play script of the tale or legend to be staged in each country. Making props for the play in Art lessons and preparing costumes for the play. Filming the performance and making a documentary using Windows Live Movie Maker software-a workshop for pupils and teachers. Each school chose a tale of a partner country to be staged in their school and prepared a rehearsal with additional scenography and props. Each country had a different scenario to be performed on stage and recorded. DVD films were attached to the published booklet titled In the Land of Tales and distributed among pupils."

"""Explore, Create and Know"" is a two year project with 6 countries (France, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Turkey). This project is based on provision of Erasmus+ program which focuses on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the development of 7-14 years students’ literacy, writing and reading skills in primary and secondary English language teaching levels. There are 3 main objectives to the project : - to support the development, transfer, implementation and dissemination of innovative practices in the teaching of literacy ;- to focus on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) both as an innovative means of presenting material and also as a tool for collaborative work in the creation of curriculum resources ; - to advance students’ knowledge of the diversity and richness of cultures and languages of Europe by selecting towns’ history, traditions, culture, crafts from different parts of Europe as the shared curriculum content.The project is based on using modern and digital teaching/learning methodology when all the activities are student - centered and organized as collaborative learning (teaching) and thinking based learning with peers, to make the students conscious about the differences and similarities that all of the partners have got related to culture, traditions, developing thus, students' critical thinking, writing and reading on social current issues in Europe. The main idea of the project is to analyse, describe, and present our towns’ history, traditions, culture, and crafts and in such way to develop students literacy basic skills. In spite of the fact that the history, culture, crafts of each town is different, the project attempts to find common ground and reveal it of different European towns because not only countries’ capitals are the most beautiful and interesting cities with lots of interesting traditions, sights, culture, secrets also countries’ towns have its own history and culture heritage.The project is oriented to innovations, innovative teaching methods, cooperation, creation and students’ basic skills and competencies development. Majority of projects have already researched traditions, cultures, countries capitals variety but this project‘s innovation is that every participating country will explore their native towns individuality, exclusiveness, will try for various even for them own unknown or less known interesting, for history important places, monuments, traditions, and even crafts. The project envisages the following end- products: common illustrated ""International Book of recipes, legends, saga's, games for children"", recording of traditional dances and songs, a website, photographs, quizzes, reports, movies, presentations, a calendar of festivals illustrated with artwork, physical and digital displays, a brochure with innovative teaching methods as a guide for teachers, a multilingual dictionary, all of which we will enrich the store of didactic tools in the area of traditions, culture, crafts, history which could be used long after the project has ended. Also an educational-interactive language classroom for students where they will have a possibility to develop their writing and reading skills in modern, attractive classroom's environment.Students and teachers will develop their ICT competencies, communication, critical thinking, social, language skills by creating presentations, movies, crosswords, questionnaires using various programs, participate in educational activities in non-formal environment. Teachers and the school will gain new experience, because they will get acquainted with other educational methods, will improve their knowledge of exchanges between schools, they will also improve the level of communication between teachers, develop their language, social, collaboration, critical thinking skills. During the project, students will learn more about European towns, countries, traditions, history, culture, will gain new ideas, experience. They will have a possibility to interact with students of European towns, who will be interested in traditions, crafts, history.Cooperation between different countries will help to improve the quality of education and the level of motivation for everyone : school and teachers, students, parents. It will promote the use of foreign languages, ICT. It will advance our understanding of European citizenship and respect for other cultures, traditions. By visiting each other we will discover more tolerance, understanding, experience, openness creativity courage to share, to show that live in a towns are not so bad. This project will be an important step in teaching tolerance and respect not just of itself, but also for other cultures, traditions and customs."