The main objective of the project is to address what all the teachers involved experience as an increasing need for differentiated learning in classrooms where the gap seems to be ever widening between the active / talented learners and those underachieving and with a spectrum of challenges. The main target group, those we hope will really benefit from the project, are the students at the top and the bottom of each class, but with a special focus on motivating and strengthening the weakest learners. Eight teachers from four schools from different European countries and different teaching traditions (one from Bergamo, Italy, one from Copenhagen, Denmark, one from Riga, Latvia, and one from Vienna, Austria) work together in a project furthering differentiation and 'best practice' in English lessons and in English language extracurricular debate clubs. Each school will set up an extracurricular English language debate club open to all interested students, and the schools will meet in school pair exchanges with each 12 students from the debate club and 2 teachers in order to shadow English lessons and participate in workshops and debates with the aim of developing best practice strategies for differentiation. The student participants will be selected from the school debate clubs to represent the variety of a normal classroom. We expect a direct impact on the participants: Teachers: differentiation and teaching skill building and better meta-knowledge of teaching methods; Students: Better results for all students at schools, but especially poor performance students. Better employability. - And long term and perhaps more abstract impacts in a wider context such as intercultural understanding and civic and democratic engagement.
The main objective of the project was to address an increasing need for differentiated learning in English as a foreign language classrooms where the gap seems to be ever widening between the active / talented learners and those underachieving and/or having a spectrum of challenges. The main target groups were the students at the top and the bottom of each class, but with a special focus on motivating and strengthening the weakest learners. Eight teachers from four schools from different countries, mother tongues and teaching traditions (Bergamo, Copenhagen, Riga and Vienna) worked together in a project furthering differentiation and 'best practice' in English lessons and in English language extracurricular debate clubs. Each school set up an extracurricular English language debate club open to all interested students, and the schools met in school pair exchanges with each 12 students from the debate club and 2 teachers in order to shadow English lessons and participate in workshops and debates with the aim of developing best practice strategies for differentiation. The student participants were selected from the school debate clubs to represent the variety of a normal classroom. Especially during the first two years, all teachers found that the project - and the meta knowledge gained from it - boosted their differentiation, motivation and general teaching skills. A vast majority of the students directly involved in the main activities experienced improved skills and competencies in a wide range of ways and areas - and this was true for both the weakest and the strongest learners. The evaluations so far make us optimistic regarding more long term and abstract impacts on the student participants directly involved (such as intercultural understanding and civic and democratic engagement and better employability), but these are difficult or impossible to monitor yet. We will definitely continue working with the methodologies gained from the project, and we have plans for spreading results and sharing methodologies not only within our schools, but also to other schools in our countries and further afield. Results and evaluations of the first two years exceeded our expectations, but with Covid-19 more or less completely closing down our planned third year activities both in debate clubs and exchanges, it has been difficult to monitor final results in a satisfactory way. The pandemic and the lockdowns and travel restrictions changed our third year completely, and even though we involved virtual lessons and also more classes than originally planned in three out of four schools, we still feel we need to test the programme more. We also want to discuss our goal of setting up a website aiding our own schools and anyone else interested in using our work. In order to do this we have planned further work together in the school year 2022-23 (non-EU-funded).