5th forms project have been designed and developed to enhance some of the skills necessary for a 21st century learner.
- Summarizing skills: when dealing with summarizing skills, students worked really hard reading webpages, books and cards which had information about the different projects. They read paragraphs and they had to obtain the main ideas, summarizing them in one or two sentences. Then, they created collaborative presentations with the information they gathered. They also designed mind maps which helped them study.
- Logical & Creative thinking: in our first project Helping Hands students analysed the situation of children in different parts of the world, they connected the place where they lived with their needs. They also read about children's rights and the extent to which they are respected or not around the world. They created a comparative chart collaboratively and they drew conclusions regarding this issue. During Green Helping Hands project students analysed the impact our actions have had on the environment. They investigated about energy & environmental issues. For this they had to find reliable sources, select relevant information, summarize the ideas and show them in a creative way.
- Communicative skills: during assemblies students trained their skills for communication. They were asked to share their ideas and thoughts about the topics both fluently and accurately. They were given different functions which helped them develop their ideas further as well as specific vocabulary to be more precise when they expressed their beliefs. Besides students had various situations in which they made informal presentations during the projects.
They also developed their communicative skills in writing when they created different pieces of work such as comics, stories, descriptions, presentations, reports.
During the videocalls, students faced the challenge of communicating with both native and non-native speakers from different parts of the world, sometimes with unknown accent or with technological difficulties, but always achieving a successful exchange of messages.
- Reflective thinking (reflective moments): All of our projects contributed to the development of reflective skills as students used their knowledge of the world, their feelings and their perceptions to consider the different themes we worked with. Not only did they reflect upon their social commitment to people in need or the environment, but also about the role of ancient civilizations in shaping our culture and heritage. Furthermore, during the project The Time Machine they also implemented a journal in which they reflected upon their learning and the process carried out in the lesson.
- Bringing the world into the classroom: 5th form students have connected with different classes from around the world, both synchronically and asynchronously. They have enjoyed learning about other cultures, sharing their interests and guessing the locations while developing geographic skills. They also used social media to report what was going on in real time, they used online browsers and maps to locate geographical features and monuments, as well as books, encyclopaedias and atlas.
- Collaborating with other teachers (bilingual projects / cross cultural content / global themes)
Even though it has not been agreed on during the teacher’s meeting, we worked on a bilingual content when we studied Ancient Greeks. We profited from the fact that students studied Greek myths and legends in Spanish at the beginning of the year, in order to build in knowledge regarding this ancient civilization.
As far as cross cultural content is concerned, we have already mentioned that each of our projects dealt with topics that bridged gaps and expanded students’ view of the world.
5th form Projects took into account global themes such as children's rights, the environment, pollution, poverty etc; which aimed at raising social awareness and building global citizenship.
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