Team Work Contract for a PBL Approach

Before starting any collaborative PBL approach in a classroom, I think it is necessary that team members sign a team work contract.

Why? Because in real life being able to overcome a challenge involves commitment, and so does in class.

That's why when we started PBL work at #ictclil_urjc, the first step was providing the team with a contract to sign, as a way to make them aware of the importance of their projects, the respect the other team members deserve, the responsibility and conscientious work such an approach entails.

I hope you find it useful and interesting for your own lessons. Feel free to download it and adapt it to your own classroom needs.

Italian Style Art

Just with a mirror and some materials, @pablomaster89, from the Arts & Music Around The World team at URJC, is going to show you how to come up with a fine piece of art, Italian style.

Just watch his video clip and follow the steps:

Now, if you are a CLIL teacher or a CLIL student and decide to use this clip in your Arts & Crafts lessons, the team from Arts & Music Around The World will love to hear from you.

Learn more at Arts & Music Around The World.

#TeachDoNow

Summer Learning: #TeachDoNow MOOC


Learn more about Twitter and other media sharing applications through the first ever free #TeachDoNow MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). 

This course, organised by KQED Education, is designed to help educators learn to promote social and civic discourse with students around science, news and the arts. 

Course starts July 7 2014.

Full information at the Course Blog and Google+ Community.

A singer, an artist, or both?

The future Primary CLIL teachers from URJC working on the Arts and Music in Jars project tell you how to show your talent.

Either interested in digital songs, in digital photography, or in digital art, they are sure you are going to find these two tutorials very useful for your Arts & Crafts or Music Lessons.

First, they are challenging you to Sketch a song and create a colourful musical piece in English, with the help of the neat instructions below:





The next challenge has two sides: photography and art. Grab a photo you would like to drive mad and turn into a fine digital picture with Psykopaint! Of course, here you are the step-by-step instructions:

 

Find more tutorials at Art and Music in Jars.

Seed Germination

The Science Breaking team of future CLIL Primary teachers at URJC have been designing various activities to aim at fostering Science and Audivisual skills among Primary CLIL students.

Today they are bringing a new mission that they have presented in the animation below:

For students to be able to accomplish this mission, Breaking Science has everything ready in this full lesson including various worksheets, together with an assessment rubric they have designed using Blendspace. Every part of this mini-project is scheduled step by step so young learners can observe, investigate, analyse, create, draw conclusions and evaluate their own work.

First Graders at CP San Claudio in Asturias are already looking forward to seeing what happens after the experiment, thanks to their CLIL teacher, Graciela.

If you ever carry it out in your lessons, @ScienceBreaking will love to hear your feedback!

Cross-posted from EU Robotics Week Education Spain. Originally viewed at Breaking Science

The Hare and The Tortoise, Revisited

As part of their URJC Master's Degree for Primary Bilingual Education, a team of future CLIL teachers have been designing various CLIL activities to foster digital listening, reading and writing skills among CLIL Primary students within a so called  Heal The World With Stories project.

Their latest outcome is a two-stage assignment based on the traditional children's story 'The Hare and The Tortoise'.
Along the first stage, they explain the three different sections all stories have, and propose kids to mindmap their own story. As an example they have designed a mindmap of 'The Hare and The Tortoise'.

Once done, here comes the next stage: podcasting a new story following the mindmap the kids have designed. And again, they are providing the learners with a recording example. 

What story do you think you are going to hear? Of course, 'The Hare and The Tortoise'

The Heal The World with Stories members are @laugar91, @Maria91bm and @alcalop14. They will all love to hear from you if you ever use their activities in your lessons

Cross-posted from Heal The World With Stories.

Teacher Appreciation Week

May 5 - 9 2014 is Teacher Appreciation Week and there are tons of posts, comments, articles, tweets and so on and so forth, flooding the net with thank you messages, best wishes and lots of other sweet moves whose aim is to show the world the value of teaching and teachers.

I guess this post is just another of the kind for most, but for me it means a lot, as I have a lot of teachers to show appreciation to, not only along this week, but along the whole year round, and so this post is to express my most sincere Thank You to:

• Sylvia Guinan, for her mentioning my students in her flabbergasting 'What Teachers of Substance Have To Celebrate On Teacher's Day' post at Wiziq Blog.

• Dr. Nellie Deutsch, for her sweet moderation at the Spring Blog Festival in March 2014 and her generous invitation to contribute to IT4ALL Non-Profit Network.

• Heike Philp and Angelika for their patience, smooth mike tests and neat hosting at the 7th Virtual Round Table Conference last April 2014.

• All the teacher peers that restlessly try to make the difference, inspire and accomplish goals on the Edumovement 30 Goals Challenge World Tour.

• My fellow teacher-students from #ictclil_urjc, without whom such a solid teaching/learning year would have never taken place.

• Matthew Williams and his wonderful friendly iniative to weekly turn us all into DoNowers.

• Every single teacher that has already started taking steps towards collaborative connected projects and shared knowledge, from whom I have the honour to learn day after day.

• And last, but not least, Shelly Terrell, for circling all this up, connecting us all, bringing edumovers together and being @ShellTerrell, no need for further words.

Free downloadable image from Dimple Prints.