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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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