New magazine "Science in stories for kids"

Usually, we use stories in language lessons as reading comprehension or just to have fun, but, why couldn’t we use them to learn science also? What stories explain, can be certain scientifically? We can ask ourselves if things that happen in them could really be or not. We understood that stories could motivate us to learn and they could allow us to ask about life, show the previous ideas of pupils, make experiments, compare our results with the science ones, and approach the children’s mental models to the scientific models. Between stories, we could show our feelings, and if we felt science we could transmit our emotions. Sure that, everywhere, families and teachers explain stories for kids to their children and pupils. What better way to communicate between children of different countries and schools than through them? Apart from this way to understand the learning of language and science, we applied this project to try to solve some needs of the participant schools. Through results of quizzes and meetings between us, we used our strong points (science, coworking, projects, work interlevel) to get better our weak points: improve teachers and pupils English language level, connect abstract notions and real-life and use ICT tools

By implementing the Erasmus + project KA210 “New magazine: Science in stories for kids”, we wanted to achieve tangible goals such as programming units about how to work science taking stories for kids as motivation; teachers’ training and exchange of methodologies; as well as, an improvement of the English language level in pupils and teachers. In addition, we wanted to achieve some intangible goals, such as increasing tolerance and respect for the different cultures in our pupils and society. The general aims that we wanted to achieve thanks to the association of all partners were to develop the skills and key competences of our students, involving them in interdisciplinary activities that, through stories for kids and science, permitted our pupils to understand the real world and to be conscious of the need for sustainability. All these being able to work together, exchange knowledge and activities with other European schools, using online communities and ICT tools.

During the project, we implemented activities in which the common thread was the stories for children, in concrete, the fairy tale “The three little pigs” and the classical story “Charlie and the chocolate factory”. The activities that we proposed always had the same outline. First, we worked on the comprehension of the stories through gamified and interactive activities, which permitted pupils to learn several language skills. From that moment, we made some science questions about the science topics which appeared in the stories. Then, we tried to look for the solution of these questions through practices such as researching, observation and experimentation. The great majority of these activities were done cooperatively through international groups. So, we used ICT tools so that we could develop them in the correct way. Also, we implemented other type of teaching-learning activities such as teachers and students training workshops, activities to know and exchange culture and traditions, activities to disseminate our work in our local and national community and activities to evaluate the correct application of them. Finally, we also did mobilities to the countries of our partners to work face-to-face and get the aims.

Our students created, through cooperation in international groups, a digital magazine called “New magazine: Science in stories for kids” in which they compiled all the work done during the project in the form of articles. Students published in the Issuu platform two numbers of this digital magazine. Number 1: https://issuu.com/scienceinstoriesforkids/docs/new_magazine_-_science_in_stories_for_kids_volume Number 2: https://issuu.com/scienceinstoriesforkids/docs/digital_magazine_volume_ii_2_ As a concrete output, we also created a webpage with the aim of disseminating our work to the online community. Webpage: www.scienceinstoriesforkids.cat Finally, other results of our project were the programming unit about how to work science taking stories for kids as motivation. Programming unit: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qgY5Vp4qTJlHAm3yoxfEvXBIa_ZBu4jS/view?usp=sharing