A special Learning, Teaching and Training Activity (LTTA) was held in Palermo, Sicily for a week from February 20-24. This was part of the SensEd project, funded by the Erasmus+ programme to embed sensory skills within school curricula.
The project’s six consortium partners congregated at a wonderful former church space of MeNO, the Italian partner to run a series of training workshops and discussions about sensory skills, their relevance to today’s curricula, and to showcase some different ways to integrate these.
Project leaders, SOTS (Norway) oversaw the week, and events were kicked off by WCI with Dr Julian Ng presenting an interactive session about the importance of mindset (of both teachers and students), and how teachers can exemplify their own learning before the students. Several fun activities were held so the teachers could experience learning for themselves. Also, Dr Pamela Hatton looked at the psychological and physiological aspects of the senses, and how they might affect teaching and learning in the classroom, while Nina Hopson had a very enjoyable session of interactive games.
EARTES (Spain) demonstrated how music can affect mood, emotion and thought. The Turkish partners (Cagdas Drama Academy and Cankaya Education Department) brought out the theatrical in us, with useful tools such as Forum Theatre, improvisational acting, and XXX.
On the fourth day, Esprominho (Portugal) provided a full day of sensory exploration with food and drink initially (sight, taste, smell and touch) and then dance and painting (movement, coordination, hearing).
A framework for integrating the sensory skills into educational curricula was unveiled by EARTES as a starting point for building blocks and tools for teachers to use.
In between the work, consortium partners got to know one another better, and spent time exploring the beautiful city of Palermo and all its historic places. Of course, the wonderful Sicilian food had to be sampled to be believed, including the many unique dishes made with pistachio (grown all over the island).
It was a very productive and enjoyable event indeed.
