Communication skills
Class that emphazises communication
At the end of junior school, students that are interested in learning communication skills have to apply for entrance exams. In the entrance exam there is a writing part and a photography part.
by Elli Leponiemi and Saimi Haanketo from Finland
What does
it mean?
Some of the communication skills the students will be learning are photographing, writing, filmmaking, improvisation etc. For example, the classes have their own blogs and have made short films. The difference comparing to a regular class is that there is a few hours of communication class every week.
For example, here is the link to the eight graders blog:
Projects
One of the bigger projects in the communication class is making a short film. It takes over the most of eight grade. First, the students are split into groups. Then, they have to come up with a script. The most interesting part is the filming itself. While filming, the students can also learn about filming techniques. After that, they have to edit the footage into a film. In the end of grade eight, the class watches all the short films together.
Another bigger project was making a book review and presenting it to the class in the seventh grade. The students were able to choose any book they wanted. There were certain things about the books that the students had to focus on. For example, they had to tell about the characters and the scenery in the book.
Other options
In Finland, secondary schools provide lots of classes that emphasize a certain topic. Some of the options apart from communication skills are sports, music, art etc. If students don´t apply for one of those classes, it´s still possible to attend shorter courses about similar topics.