As part of the 3MR – Making the Most of the Magic of Reading, 37 teachers, volunteers and other ECEC professionals have completed a 30h training in planning, performing and reflecting about reading aloud activities.
This week, the last session of the 3MR training for ECEC professionals and volunteers was concluded. In a year of lockdowns and difficulties, the CSC has implemented to its best capabilities, 2 (identical) 3MR training courses for professionals on reading aloud with children from 0 to 6 years. The trainings are part of the second intellectual output of the project “Guidelines for the implementation of the 3MR methodology” which consequently contain the methodological framework. The guidelines describe a training of 30 hours for professionals who work with young children from 0 to 6 years, aiming to increase the competences of those professionals in their book-sharing and reading aloud activities with children and parents. The trainings were divided in 5 main themes:
- Professionals and their relation to reading
- Child development and reading
- Selection of quality picture books
- The planning, performing and reflection on reading aloud activities
- Professionals and parents: promoting reading aloud with children
The training was organized together with experts in the field: Gabriele Mercadante, who works at the library booq, and Antonella Provenzano, the reference point for the national project on reading, called Nati per Leggere. Furthermore, local experts and libraries were invited during the course, such as Chiara Siro, of the Libreria Europa and Davide Schirò from the Libreria Dudi.
The first training took place at the beginning of the year, still before the first lockdown. It started off with a large group of motivated kindergarten teachers, volunteers, educators and other professionals who work with children. Due to the restrictions, the course has been transformed and continued in an online from April onwards. Despite the restrictions, the groups remained motivated and engaged throughout the lockdown, and even met up in person again in September when restrictions were lifted. Furthermore, reading sessions were organized during the summer, in collaboration with the summer camp of Kala Onlus.
The second group of the training was held after the summer holidays, but unfortunately it faced the same problems. After the first 5 sessions in the classroom, exactly when it was the moment to practice, restrictions increased and it was no longer possible to read to children that were not one’s own, or enter in the schools for reading activities. Online activities and replacement exercises were done to compensate the losses and nevertheless, participants remained attending the classes until the end, and doing the most possible.
In the end, despite the remodulation of both trainings, the evaluation of the course by participants was very positive and the trainers were satisfied with the quality and motivation of the participants. Especially the sessions that talked about quality picture books were highly appreciated.
The training experiences have contributed to the finalization of the guidelines (IO2) which will be available online in English soon, as well as national versions that are not only in the national language but also adapted to the particularities of each national context. When ready, they can be downloaded here: https://readingmagic.eu/results/.
3MR – Making the Most of the Magic of Reading is a project funded by the Erasmus+ programme, Key Action 2: Strategic partnerships | School.
The partnership is composed by 4 institutions, 1 university and 3 associations:
- Coordinator: ULiege, Belgium
- Asociatia LSDGC, Romania
- Estonian Reading Association (EstRA), Estonia
- Centro per lo Sviluppo Danilo Dolci, Italy
For more information, please write to Vidjaya.thelen@danilodolci.org, have a look at the website www.readingmagic.eu or on the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/3mrproject.