Foster Higher Order Thinking Skills

Higher order thinking skills (HOTS) are key to processing knowledge. Our goal is to have students engaged in analysing texts, evaluating text quality and creating resource lists, and help them reflect on the meaning of texts. Here are some tools we find useful as to help students reflect on and visualize their thinking.

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COOPERATIVE CLASSROOM DYNAMICS

In order to increase the time students are actively engaged in language production or reception, cooperative classroom dynamics prove to be highly effective. Here are some videos that explain the different strategies we employ to get students talking.

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ICT TOOLS in the classroom

ICT Tools offer a wide range of opportunities to foster cooperative learning. Here is an overview of the applications we find most useful.

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Emotions and Positive Classroom Environment

In this padlet we can explore some ideas on working socio-affective and emotional education with students. Regular and sustained attention to the human beings in our classroom (teacher included!) will benefit inter and intrapersonal relations, in turn leading to happier students and an environment where everyone is predisposed to cooperation and learning can flow in a natural way.

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Oral Presentations in the classroom

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This is a padlet with some examples of oral presentations of books and magazine articles the students had read (we usually do this in a JIGSAW dynamics).
The first time there are likely to be texts copied from Google, presentations read from notes etc. But by observing their peers with "detective cards", students soon become aware of what makes a good presentation.

Learning with all senses

We learn better if we address all senses possible. In this Padlet you can find some ideas as to how we can link language to the five senses.

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LEARNER AUTONOMY

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In this padlet you will find interesting overview as to how we can gradually develop learner autonomy in our classroom

ARTIFACT BOX

Here is an example of an Artifact box I did with my 5-year-old daughter on the topic Saturn. She was able to present it all by herself and especially the hairdryer (representing the strong winds on that planet) turned out to be a huge success. Fotobabble on the project

Visual grammar

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We use grammatical structures and elements to convey MEANING. Here are some ideas as to how we are going to visualize the concepts of different grammatical structures in the classroom.

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Neda Mirova

Neda and me are soulmates when it comes to teaching and she has been a huge inspiration. We share ideas, opinions, materials, inspiration... More from Neda at http://crimundo.blogspot.com.es/. Also have a look at Neda Mirova´s padlet on the basics of our teaching: HOTS, Collaborative and Cooperative Learning, Autonomy and Diversity. 

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Poetry and Creative Writing

Do you feel like being a little creative?

Why not start by exploring these resources on the Padlet that can help you plan your poems or short stories...

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You can learn how to make word clouds and brainstorm words around an idea before you put pen on paper.

Have you ever wondered how to write a shape poem? You can read the tips and have a go when you are ready?

Or maybe you need some inspiration before you start? Why not browse the poems on the Poetry Foundation´s website? You can search by subject, occasion, type, poet...you can even look for poems that have video or audio here:

Poems with Audio
Poems with Video

Have you heard of mini-fiction? What about reading some on mini-fiction.com where you can download a whole collection of stories?

And if you want to create a visually stunning poem, grab a book you or any page of a text,your pen or colours and try your hand at making a black out poem - it´s a great way to recycle old books, too.

RESOURCES: SHORT FILMS

Short films can be exploited in so many ways in class. Not only can we work on listening comprehension, and simple vocabulary enriching exercises,  but we can also use them as springboards to create interest in a topic and as the basis for interesting conversations. 

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Depending on our objectives, we may choose to do one or a few of the following activities:

- watch with / without sound (predict content, write the voice over or script the conversation before comparing with the original, choose soundtrack...)

- listen first without the image (predict content, images that you are going to see...)

- 50 / 50 viewing - students in pairs(or small groups) watch different parts of the video and try to reconstruct the narrative together before watching the whole thing together

- watch the beginning and predict the rest

- watch the end and talk about what happened before (could be good for practice of past perfect, modals of deduction, conditionals)

Foster self- and peer-observation

In order to increase students´ awareness of different aspects of communicative competence (speaking, talking, listening, reading and writing), we have developed a series of tools that allow them to observe these aspects.

These tools furthermore allow us to multiply the "role of the teacher" and to have every student in the classroom ACTIVELY participating.

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On this padlet you find an overview of some of these tools
- Detective cards for oral presentations and for writing
- Rubrics to observe different aspects of collaborative communication, the use of English in the classroom
- SCOBA Observation grids for different text genres (travel experience, opinion essay, personal letter,...)
- Bull´s eye to evaluate group participation
- Observation sheets for co-teaching activities
- Metaplan-mapping to decide on evaluation criteria

PORTFOLIO STUDENT INTERVIEWS

Want to know how the Student interviews are going to work? Here is a pictochart that explains the three interviews we are going to do throughout the year