Happy New Year!

Rory's Story Cubes

Storytelling becomes a game with these nine cubes, each of them with six images. There are plenty of ways to play, on the webpage they suggest you some:

https://www.storycubes.com

For now, I have introduced the cubes (and the app) to the pupils. I decided to use them as a prompt to analize the nouns that appear on each face. Next term we will explore the endless ways to play and learn with them.

By Mercedes Delgado. Primary 5. Santísima Trinidad School

Describing people

Our primary 5 pupils have been learning to describe people. Instead of describing 'real people' they have described Playmobil. Describing appeareance was easy, but the personallity was more complicated because they had to invent it. The description is made in Spanish but, after Christmas holidays, we will be reviewing clothes vocabulary so that they can do it also in English.

Here are some examples:

By Mercedes Delgado. Primary 5. Santísima Trinidad School

Unto us is born a Savior who is Christ the Lord.

Rejoicing with you in the miracle of Christmas

En esta navidad os deseamos.. from Pastoral Trinitarias on Vimeo.

and one little baby changed the whole world. Happy Christmas! 

I Didn't Do My Homework Because...

I'm using this wonderful storybook by Davide Calid and Benjamin Chaud to teach my Primary 4 students the simple past in a inductive way. 

How many excuses are there for not doing homework? Let us count the ways: Giant lizards invaded the neighborhood. Elves hid all the pencils. And then there was that problem with carnivorous plants.... The excuses go on and on, each more absurd than the next and escalating to hilarious heights. Featuring detail-rich illustrations by Benjamin Chaud, this book is guaranteed to amuse kids and their parents, not to mention anyone who has experienced a slacker student moment—and isn't that everyone?

Significant vs meaningless learning

Carl Rogers' Theory of Learning distinguished two types of learning: cognitive (meaningless) and experiential (significant). The former corresponds to academic knowledge such as learning vocabulary or multiplication tables and the latter refers to applied knowledge such as learning about engines in order to repair a car. The key to the distinction is that experiential learning addresses the needs and wants of the learner. Rogers lists these qualities of experiential learning: personal involvement, self-initiated, evaluated by learner, and pervasive effects on learner.

To Rogers, experiential learning is equivalent to personal change and growth. Rogers feels that all human beings have a natural propensity to learn; the role of the teacher is to facilitate such learning. This includes: (1) setting a positive climate for learning, (2) clarifying the purposes of the learner(s), (3) organizing and making available learning resources, (4) balancing intellectual and emotional components of learning, and (5) sharing feelings and thoughts with learners but not dominating.

According to Rogers, learning is facilitated when: (1) the student participates completely in the learning process and has control over its nature and direction, (2) it is primarily based upon direct confrontation with practical, social, personal or research problems, and (3) self-evaluation is the principal method of assessing progress or success. Rogers also emphasizes the importance of learning to learn and an openness to change.

LEGO Research Institute

The Research Institute is the 8th LEGO Ideas set, with the original design submitted by real-life Geoscientist, Dr. Ellen Kooijman. The concept behind this set is really simple yet profound – a small set of female minifigures with extremely interesting scientific jobs to make your LEGO town more diverse. The set also aims to empower young girls with the knowledge that they can be anything they want to be – a Geoscientist, Chemist, Paleontologist or even an Astronomer!

The Nativity Scene

The pupils from CM2 (aged 9 and 10) created a NATIVITY SCENE through drawings.

They put in the middle of the stable the PLAYMOBIL representing Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the shepherd and the angel. They also placed some animals.

Thanks to Playmobil we learnt the English vocabulary about the NATIVITY scene.

By Valérie Metal - Sainte Thérèse Les Cordeliers

We like creativity at school

Pupils are working in small groups to build the logo of the project. They are discovering the fantastic opportunities LEGO offers. At the end of work they have said that they want a school to create and grow up together.

A group of children are building the multi-coloured wall of the school using lots of LEGO bricks.

Another  group of children are building some trees and bushes.  Look at our characters on the top: a policeman and the big black cat made from cardboard.

This is the school we want, the school of creativity and friendship!

Our funny characters. They represent ourselves.

Pupils are working hard to build a  pyramid of LEGO characters and finally…

By Valeria Guicciardi - ICS. I. Militi

Moving around

In our unit "Moving around" the children do a dialogue to ask for the way in a town. I've taken the idea out of the Blog. The children have made their own little towns with houses and streets. They've played the scene by using little Lego and Playmobil figures. They really enjoyed the work and the dialogues. Some videos they've recorded.

Here are the structures to learn:

Excuse me please, where is the....?

It's in .........Street.

Sorry, where's that?

Go straight ahead, then turn left/right.

Thank you. Good bye.

It's okay./You're welcome. Good bye.

EFL Primary - Erich Kästner Grundschule Gera

LEGO Education INNOVATION STUDIO

LEGO Education Innovation Studio is based on a hands-on learning approach that actively involves students in their own learning process. The Innovation Studio will become a hub for the local community, bringing together schools, teachers, parents and companies to provide an education for your students that will last a lifetime. Tomorrow’s scientists and engineers are sitting in our classrooms today, just waiting to be encouraged, inspired and activated. With a dedicated LEGO® Education INNOVATION STUDIO in our school you can lift science and maths from the pages of a textbook and bring them to life. LEGO core range of products is focused on supporting Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths but can also be used across other areas of the curriculum. As part of your LEGO Education Innovation Studio, they will develop a range of classroom packs that are designed for our school’s needs.

https://education.lego.com/en-gb/preschool-and-school/secondary/innovation-studio/introduction

¡Se armó el Belén!

Long before the Christmas tree became a common sight in Spain, tradition centered exclusively on the "Nacimiento" or Nativity scene, also known as a "Belén". The emphasis on Christmas Eve is on family and the commemoration of the birth of Christ while the Three Wise Men arrive in Spanish cities with great pomp, as witnessed by thousands of children and grown-ups watching any of the parades, large and small, in cities and villages on the night of the 5th of January. The Three Wise Men are in charge of depositing presents – or, in the case of naughty children, (candy) coal – in children’s shoes.  

The Nativity scene is also a perfect chance to teach our primary students key facts about the Roman World.

Usborne Children's Books offers a wide range of books on the Roman civilization.

http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/catalogue.aspx?cat=1&s=1&searchText=roman

By Miguel Ángel Martín Mas - Santísima Trinidad School

Stars and Stars

Activity with Lego bricks: observing the geometrical prospect and creating star shapes.

Yellow bricks for the stars and white bricks for the snowflakes.

The result is a wonderful winter night sky.

The children listened to “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”.

Trying and trying… different colurs? Yes! A good idea! What is it?

Ehm.. form up above to down into the sea…

Seastars, seagrass and… coloured fish

And why not? Coloured star flowers

And a star tower

Good work!

Geometry, English and work in pairs with the youngest: well done guys!

ICS Ignoto Militi, Primary school

Les Animarrons - animals&chestnuts

Sainte Thérèse - Les Cordeliers - France

Multiple intelligences

The geneses:

Last year the team of teachers attended a lecture by two Canadian teachers, Mr Gervais Sirois and Mrs Sylvie Dubé about “Multiple intelligences”. We pointed out our thinking and practice on ourselves first, to be able to transfer this experience to the pupils. Since then, some of us are teaching with this new point of view, especially with children with special needs. The teachers pay special attention to make the pupils use different ways of learning by proposing them different attitudes regarding the 7 types of intelligences.

What do multiple intelligences mean?

I invite you to read the article by Carla Lane from "The Distance Learning Technology Resource”.

Howard Gardner of Harvard has identified seven distinct intelligences. This theory has emerged from recent cognitive research and "documents the extent to which students possess different kinds of minds and therefore learn, remember, perform, and understand in different ways," according to Gardner (1991). According to this theory, "we are all able to know the world through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, the use of the body to solve problems or to make things, an understanding of other individuals, and an understanding of ourselves. Where individuals differ is in the strength of these intelligences - the so-called profile of intelligences -and in the ways in which such intelligences are invoked and combined to carry out different tasks, solve diverse problems, and progress in various domains."

I invite you to read more about Howard Gardner’s works on Wikipedia or on many other websites. Nowadays most of the teachers are teaching using different ways to help the understanding and learning; but the strength of the method is to combine and to think about all this intelligences to make it easier for the children, especially the ones who resist at “traditional teaching”. When you propose Playmobil to learn a foreign language you use bodily-kinesthetic intelligence by using the body, touching things.

Dominique Mottet – teacher of Sainte Thérèse for pupils with special needs

Reading Rods by Learning Resources

Making sentences in English with Reading Rods (Sentence Building) by Learning Resources. 

Miguel Ángel - Primary 3 - Santísima Trinidad School