lunes, 15 de diciembre de 2014

21st century skills - 4th forms


In 4th we´ve had many project (The 5 "lands") + some mini projects and I believe that we´ve enhanced some of the skills necessary for this century in different ways.



- Summarizing skills? We tought 2 techniques to summarize: highlighting key words and phrases or crossing out irrelevant info. When we have texts from project they must summarize it for studying. When we finish a class before leavingg kids make a summary of the most important things we did/learned, when they retell a story.

- Logical & Creative thinking? We ask them to find solutions to character´s problems in many assemblies. Creation of stories (creative writing) also involves Creative thinking


- Communicative skills? In every assembly, in every final task-presentation they have to send a clear message. We made some peer-assessment activities specially during the training for the Verse competition and in retelling stories (kids had an assessments chart in which they had to evaluate their mates performance). In the preparation of the spring Concerts revisited / hangout / Brazil´s Final Task / Christmas Assembly we made a lot of emphasis on presentation skills, posture, tone of voice, turn taking etc.


- Reflective thinking (reflective moments)?Throughout the year in many occasions, during assemblies if they are giving opinion about a character´s attitude, if a problem/situation came up. A project in particular: Melody Around The World


- Bringing the world into the classroom? 1) Hangout with Missoury, USA. Our sts prepared beautiful presentations about our country involving food, tourism-places to visit, culture, etc (We had a gaucho, a paisana, some chefs talking about empanadas, asado and mate). we listened to the american sts´presentation. We received and gave them feedback. 2) Brazil´s Football worldcup: We learned and activated prior knowledge about Brazil´s culture. We read a Brazilian legend, we worked on geography of South America and analized/commented info about teams and general organization of this event. 3) Stories from Around The World: in this mini-project we read a story from each continent so we work on cartography (continents, oceans) and in card-work kids completed beautiful illustrated cards about the culture of the country of each story.

- Collaborating with other teachers? (bilingual projects / cross cultural content / global themes) All the time, specially Belgrano´s project, Brazil´s Football worldcup, seating arrangement, articulation with library projects and workshops.