Start to Listen
Would you like to help your students become better listeners? Not simply to 'obey', but to truly observe, discover, and connect? The free online toolbox Start to Listen can help you do just that. More than 800 teachers have already started using it!
Start to Listen offers practical tools to help you develop listening skills in the classroom. Because learning to listen closely can open up new worlds: it sharpens our perception, stimulates curiosity, and encourages intercultural understanding.
- Do you already have an account on our Start to Listen site? Login here.
- Don’t have an account yet? Listen to some snippets and register here to use the full version of Start to Listen.
In school, 'knowing how to listen' is seen as an important artistic and social skill. But listening is about more than simply obeying.
When we listen carefully, we discover new things, sharpen our focus, and develop new ways of thinking. Yet listening isn’t always as easy as it seems. After all, our ears are constantly surrounded by clichés.
Start to Listen approaches listening as a free, unconditional, personal, and intercultural way of auditory perception. Because, really, listening is very simple – it’s a natural way of observing.
Developed in collaboration with our colleagues at MATRIX.
Ready to be explored in your classroom, too.
Dive into the toolbox, try it out in your classroom, and discover how listening affects your students. We’d love to hear about your experiences. Let us know!
A toolbox full of sounds and inspiration
With Start to Listen, we aim to provide inspiration and practical tools for making active listening a part of everyday life. The website www.starttolisten.org offers a selection of audio clips.
Start to Listen consists of 3 levels, each lasting 3 weeks, during which teachers work with their students on a different snippet every day.
Our selection is growing: in addition to the playlist of Flemish music, there is now also a Walloon and a Turkish-inspired playlist. The Walloon playlist was curated by Le Forum des Compositeurs in collaboration with Centre Henri Pousseur, and the Turkish one by Barkin Engin and Burak Tamer from Reverie falls on all.
Reflections on Listening
Sound art, new and experimental music, and field recording take center stage: all sounds that traditional media rarely feature. They challenge you to listen in a different way.
The accompanying listening questions encourage various forms of reflection: verbal, visual, performative, and philosophical. They inspire you to explore your own listening habits and those of others.
Listening becomes a journey into the unknown, filled with various encounters, where images and associations will captivate you.
Ready to get started with Start to Listen? Take a look at our tutorial!
We developed Start to Listen specifically for elementary schools. The material is available for free to everyone. The focus is on the experience, not on knowledge about the artwork being heard or its creator.
Credits
Start to Listen is a project by aifoon and MATRIX, with support of Cera.