what skills have our students discovered?

While this project was conceived primarily as a peer-to-peer development opportunity, those students who have collaborated with us have discovered, developed, displayed a range of skills.  Here are some of the most prevalent.

• Collaboration: whether with teachers, external practitioners, peers from their own schools or students from the partner schools, our students have exercised their collaborative powers tremendously. They were vital to the realisation of our action research, taking part in the various lessons and workshops, giving feedback, evaluating their experience and suggesting what makes for effective teaching in music and English language lessons.
• Listening: fundamental to both subjects, this project has required students to listen attentively and actively throughout. This, we hope, will benefit them in their other studies.
• Sound-making: whether speaking or singing, students have been asked to make sound during the project. Their confidence has grown, which is vital to their successful use of music and English language in their lives.
• English language skill: students have developed subject-specific and general English language fluency, which provides them with a key skill for life, study and employment.
• Risk-taking: action research that involves students as co-collaborators is a risk; working in trans-national groups is a risk; asking students to undertake exercises and work in ways with which they are not familiar is a risk. Risk-taking has been of vital importance to the project and is a transversal skill that will prove useful for the students as they progress academically, professionally and socially.
• Innovation: the subjects on our students’ timetables have been revised, revisited and re-framed as a result of this project. The innovative approaches adopted by staff have provided students with an opportunity to think about and explore their subjects differently.  This, again, is a tremendous skill for learning and life.