Quoting the EU Council Recommendation for Lifelong Learning, “Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, express, create, and interpret concepts, feelings, facts and opinions in both oral and written forms, using visual, sound/audio and digital materials across disciplines and contexts. It implies the ability to communicate and connect effectively with others, in an appropriate and creative way. Development of literacy forms the basis for further learning and further linguistic interaction”. During these years of experimentation developed by JUMP, the innovative use and creation of book trailers in the classroom resulted as a very effective methodology that gained an increasing appreciation both from teachers and students, with evidence based positive effects on learning success, passion for reading, development of a variety of skills and increased motivation in students and teachers.

A book trailer is usually a short digital video (less than 2 minutes) that combines characteristics of a movie trailer and a book advertisement. Book trailers are a great way to support the building of a reading culture in your school and engage pupils with reading in a digital and fun way. Booktrailers, as movie trailers, give a ‘taster’ of a book for its potential audience, designed to leave them wanting to read the book.

Thanks to the cooperation with international partners and a common work of research and studies in this field, JUMP trainers gained experience in the creation of methodological approaches that foresee specific activities according to the age of teachers’ students, including all levels from pre-school until adult education. This process led JUMP to the creation of “The first European digital library of book trailers”, that was born through an Erasmus+ strategic partnership in the field of adult education, titled “EU-Read&Art: The first European digital library of book trailers and adult creativity expressions”.

During this training course teachers will learn how to plan and create booktrailers, exploring a variety of methodologies that allow them to be able to choose the best tools and creative strategies according to different contexts and students’ needs. Through a process of learning by doing, teachers also learn to effectively guide their students to evaluate a book, comprehend the essence and most meaningful messages, visualize what they want to communicate through the video and present their personal perceptions, comprehension and talking through the book trailer. Experiential lessons will include the use of pictures, text, videos, voice overs as well as music to make the booktrailer interesting and engaging. Teachers will learn to film and edit videos and also discover a variety of free online tools and stocks of creative content that can be found under a creative commons license on the internet. Introducing the active creation of book trailers in your classroom will surely increase the engagement of students and at the same time contribute to prevent the addiction to a passive fruition of videos, empowering students to become active creators and more aware of how a video can be realized, for professional and educational purposes.