The PLACES Project

The Whole School Approach to Storytelling

Themes and Learning Objectives

Whole school approach to storytelling and teaching SDGs 3,4 and 10, using “Dragondancers”, “Stunner”, “School Camp”, “Stonesoup”, “Tops”. Whole school collaboration and participation, experiential learning, empowering students, turning classrooms into museums, teaching curriculum lessons through PLACES stories, making board games, theatrical play, ceramics.
Hatzivei Primary and Secondary School

Location: Nea Philadelphia, Athens

Pupils involved: 150 students

Age Group: 7-13 years old, 

Lesson: Italian, Civic Education

Implementation Procedures

From the beginning of the program in Greece, in the autumn of 2022, schools and teachers were invited to participate as pilot schools in the Erasmus+ Project from 2022 to 2025, with an engagement on behalf of the participating teachers and schools to engage in all the following phases of the project: the Needs
Analysis questionnaires and focus groups, the teacher training seminars, the regular Zoom update meetings, the testing phase in their classroom and the evaluation questionnaire and focus groups and good practice and recommendation Templates.

Materials and tools used
PLACES Video Stories and SDGs (PLACES platform), clay, paper, cardboard, colors, markers, musical instruments, theatrical props (glasses, hats, fabric), glue, lesson sheets to fill in.
Hatzivei primary and secondary school is a private small school in Athens, where the headmaster (primary school director) was very engaged in the project since the beginning, together with three main educators participated in all stages of the PLACES project since 2022. Continuity and a stable partnership are elements of this good practice.
After participating in the two physical teacher trainings organized by ICH in 2023 and 2024, the headmaster of the school organized an in-site training seminar with ICH partners and the storyteller, including the SDGs, making the map of the main characters as a mnemonic tool, telling the Dragondancers story from the perspective of the dragons etc.
This was followed by an internal workshop for all the teaching staff in May 2024 organized by the headmaster, with the aim of getting them familiar with the PLACES platform and stories. All the teachers of the school watched Dragondancers and the platform together, worked in smaller groups with brainstorming ideas, so as to co-create a school plan for the school year 2024-2025. The teachers set goals and ways of working, beginning in September 2024 with whatever story they liked, and then moving on from January with the whole school working with Dragondancers, using creative ways through many different lessons.
The theatrical play of Dragondancers from the two classes of B’ Grade (7-year-olds) was a successful good practice of the school. Teachers of theatrical education, arts, music, modern dancing, together with the main teachers and students, collaborated with each other for two months in order to produce a theatrical play from Dragondancers. The students watched the story with their teacher and discussed the bones of the story, the differences between the two villages and themes of SDG4 about quality education and school values.
The drama teacher made a theatrical text out of the story using 15 iambic syllable that helps memorizing the words. The students were told to impersonate with feelings and embody the characters they played, rather than just say the words. They made songs and learned body movement in a more physical theatre to include in their performance. The two classes performed the two theatrical plays to their parents one Saturday as a celebration of what they accomplished and another school day they played it to the other classes.
In D’ Class (9-year-olds) teachers worked with the story in the context of their math or language lesson, for example after watching the video story from the PLACES platform, the students created their own mathematical problems with Dragondancers (I.e. “How long is the tale of the dragon, if it is 5cm bigger than…”). The students produced written texts and worked with language with the story in playful ways, created ceramics and paintings in arts classes, paintings for creating the theatrical settings for the school play, drawing the maps of the main characters’ journey with the different stops

In addition, the students made board games with Ladders and snakes for Dragondancers, school camp, “Super Atout” (“Hyper Trumps” cards) card games with Dragondancers highlighting their strengths, inventing their story endings and most importantly students were discussing and working in groups as teams. 

Each team would produce their work and present it to the whole class and then the entire school created the “Code of Values of the good Dragondancer”, writing the school vision and school values inspired by the story. Next year, new students entering the school will see the Code of values of the good dragondancer as they enter the school yard. “The Good dragondancer: explores and learns from the world, does not use violence and prefers peace…”.

All the classrooms were transformed into museums and students visited all the different “museums” and looking at the ceramic art of Dragondancers produced by students, dragon eye painting exhibitions, stunner posters, board games created by the students with the facilitation of the teaching staff.

In secondary school, the Language professor (also a drama teacher) introduced the SDGs to the B’ Gymnasium students (age 13) and then after watching Tops facilitated the group discussion so that students would guess which of the SDGs the story Tops was linked to and why.

Sharing Outcomes and Experiences

A story’s values align with a whole school agenda, school mission and values: This case study highlights among other things, that to align the school’s mission and school values with the values of a story (Dragondancers) that was worked by the whole school community with storytelling and playful learning transversally across the curriculum, is a great way to upscale quality education and develop a healthy social learning environment for both students and teachers, as the whole school approach to health promotion suggests.

Leadership and coordination: The role of the school’s leaders is very important for a whole school approach and for allocating and coordinating resources such as time and staff in the project , and inspiring the school community to work interdisciplinarily across the curriculum with storytelling. Also, the school’s insightful leadership contributed to the decision to focus on Storytelling as an innovative educational tool during an entire school year and encouraged teachers to coordinate creative activities, teach life skills, thus supporting an ongoing sustainable collaboration between the school and the project partners and coordinators for three years.

Empowerment, engagement and teamwork: The students were empowered and said they would love to go to school even during the weekend if lessons were theatrical play rehearsals for Dragondancers, or painting and making card games in teams. Many students from the focus groups evaluating the project experiences said that they loved the fact that they learned in practice to work in teams and be a team.

Teachers also said that the best way to teach students collaboration and team work is by modelling it through teacher collaboration. This project implemented in the entire school really managed to teach teamwork and co-creation to both teachers and students.