Making the Most of the Magic of Reading (3MR)

Making the most of the magic of reading is an Erasmus+  project under KA2 Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices: “Strategic Partnerships for school education “ - project number: 2018-1-BE01-KA201-038616.

Partner organisations

• University of Liège (Belgium) (coordinator); 
• Asociația Lectura și Scrierea pentru Dezvoltarea Gândirii Critice România (Romania)
• Estonian Reading Association (EstRA) (Estonia);
• Centro per lo Sviluppo Creativo Danilo Dolci Onlus Associazione (CSC) (Italy).

Project Duration: 1 September 2018 – 31 August 2021

Co-financed by the European Commission

Goal: The project goal is to increase children’s early literacy skills development by preparing professionals involved in early childhood education and parents to engage in reading aloud to children and in books sharing practices in order to reduce the literacy gap among children from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds.

Objectives:

1. Develop a training programme for early childhood professionals to master reading picture books aloud for children in a highly attractive and engaging manner, while also modeling this reading for the children’s parents;

2. Test the training programme on a variety of ECEC professionals (kindergarten teachers, nursery nurses, student teachers) within the partner countries and on volunteers;

3. Equip ECEC professionals and parents with freely accessible appropriate toolkits to provide guidance for how to read aloud for young children and infants and how to ensure a literate learning environment at home and at nursery/ kindergarten/ preschool/ daycare centers;

4. Raise awareness of ECEC professionals, teacher trainers, librarians, educational decision-makers and others of the importance of reading aloud for children and infants in order to give them a good start in literacy skills development. 

Target groups:

1. 12 teacher educators trained how to deliver the training programme (participants in the LTTA)
2. 110 trained teachers, nurses, university students, speech therapists etc., highly skilled to do individual and group read-aloud and with knowledge of how to select age-appropriate children’s books, as well as with specific skills to empower parents to read aloud to their children
3. 25 volunteers trained to do short read-aloud sessions for young children/ toddlers in places where they generally wait with their parents (e.g. a pediatrician’s or other physician’s or dentist’s waiting room, in orphanages/ children’s placement centers, in playgrounds)
4. 600 children will benefit directly from the nurturing experience of being read to in an attractive manner, and therefore with higher chances of academic success and social integration
5. 200 parents will be shown repeatedly how to read aloud for their children
6. 160 institutions and organizations will be informed about the resources produced about the project and about how to access them

Types of activities: elaboration of the training curriculum, elaboration of support materials for early childhood professionals and parents, multiplier events, transnational project meetings, learning/ training activity.

The major result of our project are the intellectual outputs:

• An originally developed and tested curriculum for training professionals (kindergarten teachers, nursery nurses, etc.) to develop their specific competencies to read aloud in a highly engaging and attractive manner to young children, while also empowering parents/ carer to improve the home literate environment; this curriculum will also include quality assurance instruments;
• An originally developed and tested methodology of the training for the abovementioned professional, including training materials;
• A basic toolkit for teachers and other related professionals to support them in reading aloud with young children, including original videos (the online toolkit)
• A basic toolkit for parents to read aloud with their children and improve the home literate environment, including original videos (the online toolkit).

3MR Project Website: readingmagic.eu
3MR Project Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/3mrproject