21^st Century Skills.

Many are the skills dealt with in Literature Circles, Book Clubs, Workshops and the follow up activities done after story telling.

Summarizing Skills

This is an ability that I consider to be one of the most important aspects of reading since it shows that a reader has truly understood the materials read and allows him to activate lots of thinking in order to use their ideas and findings in his own way. Every time a story or a factual text is read and shared, there’s the natural need to summarize it. It’s been done by the ¨summarizer¨ in Literature Circles, mainly, but the truth is that the rest of the roles in the discussion group do end up summarizing the text read but from different points of view when they are to fulfill their roles.

One of the tasks assigned for the Macbeth readers was to summarize some scenes, and every time there was a tweet done or piece of news shared by means of hash tags (not done by me), I believe that the summarizing skills were fully put into practice.

Logical and Creative Thinking

When assigned specific tasks, readers were engaged into looking for many possible answers rather than one, and in this way they were allowed to make wild and crazy suggestions as well as those that seem sensible, but probably different from others´.

Communicative skills

In accordance with the tasks assigned, students were in need to put into practice their presentation skills mainly, if I had to mention one of the great range of communicative skills. As opposed to what happens in the classrooms (this is used infrequently), the Literature library activities are greatly oriented to giving a brief presentation or talk to other members of a small group who are sharing the analysis of a piece of text. For this aim, clear and effective transmission of the target message is implied.

Bringing the World Into The Classroom

I believe that bringing a story into the library is a way to bring a little piece of the world into it; a piece of a foreign author’s world, and the world itself because of the differences in culture implied in a text. Storytellers bring their world too. Annabelle Howard did bring her own world, the foreign school participants brought their world into our classrooms.

Collaborating with other teachers

I managed to accompany all forms by selecting different genres that suit the main theme of their projects; either by offering online texts or activity suggestions or paper material. Also by storytelling/reading stuff which was also thematically linked to their projects.

There was a number of library projects also shared with the Spanish Library –though activities carried out were obviously different- such as the Celebration of the Library Anniversary, the Reading Marathon, the International Literacy Day.

TIME FOR TIME TRAVEL!

The book The Time Machine, by Robert George Wells, was read by some 5th form students (Nacho Pereyra, Cami Saucedo, Rosario L. Espada) who very kindly suggested that other future readers -Luka Dons, Gastón, Rosario, Lucía, and Sofía Saucedo- who also attended the Book Club Meeting as guests, do borrow the book.

We discussed situations in which we had to convince other people to do something, and how we did it, just like in the story when there's the Time Traveller trying to persuade his friends that time travel is possible, and vice versa when they point out that it is not.

We also watched a deleted scene of the movie released in 2002, and decided if including it in the story would be necessary and appropriate for readers to see or not, and why. And we concluded that it certainly is since it introduces the setting of time, of place, and the main character.

¨HOT, COLD, LIGHT, DARK, EMOTION, INTELLECT. THE UNIVERSE RUNS ON THE COLLISION OF SUCH FORCES¨

It was good to notice that although future and present seem to be other two colliding forces and the future a very tempting one because of technological development, there are some aspects about it that seem to turn it into a less attractive issue:

Nacho: ¨The air will be be polluted and the planet will be destroyed.¨

Gastón: ¨The Earth will be very hot  and oceans will evaporate, and then crops won't grow.¨

Rochi: ¨The hole in the ozone layer will be bigger than now.¨

Lucía: ¨If there is a solution to make the Earth more attractive and less polluted today and nobody does anything, nobody will do anything in the future either.¨

Luka: ¨there will be a lot of rubbish, like today.¨

Sofía: ¨Recyling will take place, but very little, like today.¨

 

RUMPELSTILTSKIN

¨The Queen, the Queen must never be told my name is Rumpelstiltskin.¨, however, she does. When Rump comes to the queen on the third day and she, after first feigning ignorance, reveals his true name, Rumpelstiltskin, and he loses his temper.

Rosario Acosta, Guada Cordano, Victoria Gorgone, Nacho Gallup, Octavio Zacagnino, and Manuel Dons read the story and took in that character names and character personality traits are closely related. 
If they had the chance to rewrite the story just like The Grimm Brothers did, they would change the mean creature's one, by using the following character name generators:
http://character.namegeneratorfun.com/ or http://www.behindthename.com/random/
and generate names such as Fermin Cox or Randy Irvin, by taking into account factors such as character ethnicity.

WHEN RELATIVES COME... 

AUNT ROSE COMES TO STAY! IN 1ST FORM!

This is another Holly and Tom story.

A letter arrives from Aunt Rose asking if she 

can come to stay. Tom and Holly have never 

met her, so Dad shows them a photo of her. 

The family get Aunt Rose’s bedroom ready. 

They go to the shops to buy new curtains, a 

new chair and a new quilt for the bed. Aunt 

Rose arrives in an open-topped sports car. 

She likes her bedroom because the colours of 

the new curtains, the new chair and the new 

quilt match her dress, her shoes and her bag. 

Tom and Holly go to the car to help Aunt 

Rose bring in some presents. Unfortunately, 

it is so windy that all the labels are blown 

off the presents. Aunt Rose cannot remember 

who the presents are for. Each member of the 

family gets the wrong present and they all 

laugh.

After listening to the story, kids coloured all that Holly and Tom's family bought for Aunt Rose: curtains, a chair, her shoes, and her bag, since they saw the illustrations of the story in black and white.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU GAVE A DOG A HAMBURGER? 

AND IF YOU GAVE A CAT SOME MILK?

       AND IF YOU GAVE A MOOSE A MUFFIN?

Ask 2nd formers!! They know it very well! 

If a big hungry moose comes to visit, you might give him a muffin to make him feel at home. If you give him a muffin, he'll want some jam to go with it. When he's eaten all your muffins, he'll want to go to the store to get some more muffin mix.

In this hilarious sequel to If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, the young host is again run ragged by a surprise guest. Young readers  delighted in the comic complications that follow when a little boy entertains a gregarious moose.

RECITING OUT LOUD!!

                                         VERSE COMPETITION

Franco from Anita's 4th form, Delfina F.G, Guadalupe B, Agustina T, Camila S. and Amparo D from Patsy's group visited me in the library during break times to practise reciting their poems for the Inter House Verse Competition.

Congrats on their effort! 

Here's my favourite site for poetry.

You may find it useful for further poetry work in the year. 

http://www.poetry4kids.com/poems and Ken Nesbitt himself teaching about rhymes...

Don't miss them!!!

APRIL BOOK CLUB SHARES

First and Second formers who were interested in discovering where some animals in the wild live, read the book Where Are The Animals. 

After that, they created their own new version of I SPY series; a chance to spot lots of creatures they hid behind a number of elements.

I SPY... a lizard behind a dish!  It's under newspaper sheets!

We had fun trying to find little animals...

Try taking a peep! 

AWESOME CHOICE!

Thank you Milagros F. and Viole M!

PRIME TIME, STORY TIME

Autumn was generous to let us sit down at the  3rd form corridor and enjoy the fantasy story Sophie's Dream, by Dominique Guillemant. Sophie dreams about a day at the circus; about elephants, lions, musicians and entertainers, clowns and ballet dancers! We all enjoyed dreaming together with Sophie...

Autumn time invites us to read and pool 3rd form ideas and believes on what students think about themselves. The story  'I'm The Best', by Lucy Cousins tells us about Dog, who  loves his friends. He thinks they're brilliant. But he also thinks that he's the best, and he just won't stop telling them! So what happens when his friends decide to teach him a lesson, by showing him all the things they are best at?

This story helped us reflect upon our most developed abilities and  about what makes us special. Does it really matter to be the best at something? Is it  necessary to be the best at everything? In the end, we used it to have a discussion about how everyone is good at something different. Both 3rd forms  picked up on the lesson quickly and groaned at the end when it didn't seem like Dog learned anything. 

FROM NEST TO NEST

Birdie's back, ready and willing to spread its wings again after a long rest, ready to read and soar. ready to share and learn.

I´ll share my thoughts reagarding ELT 21st century skills before they are carried away by the autumn winds... Let's see...



ELT 21^st Century Skills

I believe that it is intuition what would lead readers to enter the digital world in the library if they had the chance. However they don’t for they lack the essential tool: net connected computers. Their entrance to that world would be as natural as for a citizen to walk in local streets, and the results would be truly profitable.

Today I believe that I am an immigrant in students’ city because of the ease they handle technological tools with, but at the same time I can turn to be a tourist guide when it comes to ease their research skills both, when they use last century’s preferred source of research: books, or if by chance my computer is virus-free and a one –to-one good research can be engaged. Being that the library is not 21^st century-like updated, I’m in a way limited to continue working just at a theoretical level about how to filter and summarise information using tech devises outside the library.

I feel proud to state that all of the tasks described as essential in the video-except the one of self assessment, are the ones  that I set myself to work on with students in the year 2011 in the library, no matter how many mistakes I made on the way . I’m glad I used my intuition, just like locals do, to determine what skills were necessary to be offered to students in the library to set and re-define my own goals to help these readers. What I called  ¨workshops¨ -though the four lacked an actual and significant practical stage- on Study Tips,  on How To Go Over Books, on Library Skills, and on Plagiarism seem to have covered what this expert on the video we’re commenting highlights as essential 21^st century skills: quoting, developing critical and analytical skills, expressing one’s own opinions, communicating and team working, leading; and being lead, speaking out, being listened to. And so have the Literature Circles and Book Clubs!

I’m glad to know that this new starting year that I’m back at school I am going to fully devote my attention to the same goals for I’m apparently on the right path to assist students in  improving their  skills of communication, reflection, and discovering their strengths and weaknesses as readers. As I’ve always believed and as I always will, it is only after trying things out more than once than one can improve them on.

ELT 21^st Content

Cross curricular expertise, such as Art for illustrating or dramatising a story piece, can continue to be shared among students in Literature Circles, when they are to perform a specific task according  to a role assigned, for example the Art Director. Cross curricular subjects are also developed when both, in the classroom and in the library the  project main story theme are shared and so the story for Literature Circles accompanies the knowledge that takes place in the classroom.

There’s an inevitable need during Literature Circles to compare students’ own lives and the one of story characters, no matter if they are fictional or not . It has always cropped up. So I think that a cross-curricular connection has been done.

I think that developing basic notions of global themes is essential to students. I wish there was enough and updated material in the library regarding themes such as the environment, global warming, recycling, poverty, unwealth, access to clean water, trade, charity, food, and money to provide students with a global perspective.

ELT 21^st Century Tools

I still humbly claim for the purchase of books (from the past century) and the weekly systematic use of only six net books in the library to offer students the necessary tools to carry out basic research , so I don’t dare ask about the possibility to have nor a white board as Kath suggests or any other tool…