Stop and think: José Martí (thinker)

Introduce the language and the cultural component through writers, philosophers... from the Spanish-speaking world.
If you are teaching an IB course a good idea could be to identify the IBLP in characters in books.

Do you want to know more?

• José Martí [Wikipedia in Spanish]
• La página de José Martí
• Poemas de José Martí
• José Martí [UNESCO]

Lunaprofe 9/12/2014  No comment

Stop and Think: Miguel de Unamuno

Nurture your students minds through crucial people that show and demonstrate the IB Learner Profile.
Inspiring our students is a core task for a teacher and a challenge every year.

Want to know more?

• Miguel de Unamuno [Wikipedia]
• Artículos sobre Miguel de Unamuno [Universidad de Navarra]
• Documental sobre Miguel de Unamuno [Documentos UNED]

Lunaprofe 8/18/2014  No comment

Stop and think: Paulo Freire, a Thinker

It is important to nurture our students minds with thoughts, but deep thoughts to make them think about crucial problems and reflect on them.
Paulo Freire can be a great example to introduce the concept of Thinker from the IB Learner Profile.

A Thinker is a person who use critical and creative thinking skilss to analyze and take responsible action on complex problems & exercise initiative in making reasoned, ethical decisions. [From IBO]
Want to know more?

• Paulo Freire [Wikipedia in Spanish]
• Paulo Freire - Pedagogía [Youtube]
• Paulo Freire - a thinker [Unesco]
• Colectivo Paulo Freire [Colombia]

Lunaprofe 6/06/2014  No comment

IB Profile: Equilibrados

This visual stimulus really grasp the idea behind "Balanced".

My students freak out with this image and they always make the same question...but...this isn't real, right?

And that's the main point, that it is, this is a real castell in Times Square. You can also make a connection to Risk-taker, or even modify the picture and adapt it just adding the Risk-taker definition instead of Balanced. The story behind this tradition is really inspiring for our students and I also usually introduce culture topics to make them think about similarities and differences with their own culture and make a Venn Diagram to see this comparison in a visual way.

Specifically for language classes you can:

• introduce or review structures/patterns for comparing in Spanish
• introduce some math vocabulary such types of figures, width, length...
• work some cultural vocabulary
• talk about History in Spain, what is Catalonia? what is Catalan? How different is Catalan from Spanish? Intercultural understanding...
• options are just limited by your imagination!

Do you want to know more?

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1HWyUIZ5kk [Youtube]
• http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castells [Wikipedia]
• http://www.castellersdevilafranca.cat/es/ [Official website of Castellers de Villafranca]
• http://www.catalunya-tradiciones.com/paginas/castellers.php [Castell's history]

“The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? 

Pablo Casals (Spanish Cellist, Wrote music for UN Anthem for world peace, 1963 Presidential 

Medal of Freedom) 

Lunaprofe 5/30/2014  No comment

Stop and think: Repensándome

IB Learner Profile

Reflective: We thoughtfully consider the world and our own ideas and experience. We work to understand our strengths and weaknesses in order to support our learning and personal development.

It is crucial to be able to re-think, to re-visit, to reflect upon what we do. 
It is worth it to consider including your students in that process. 
Believe me, you'll see the difference.

The highest levels of performance come to people who are centered, intuitive, creative, and reflective - people who know to see a problem as an opportunity.

Deepak Chopra

Lunaprofe 5/26/2014  No comment

IB Profile: Solidario

The IB Learner profile is a core concept in IB education. 
Through these visuals I try to help my students understand, internalize the concepts and give them a visual scaffold to get the idea.
Activities involving the IB Profile are as many as your imagination can provides you.
Here you have some potential general activities:

• Let your students make their own posters based on the concept you are working on. [With this activity we help them develop their creativity and taking ownership of their own learning]
• Make your students find real-life examples that show the concept. [This activity helps them making connections] 
• Make the students find the person in the class that best shows the concept with his/her behavior. 
• Ask your students to think in a famous person that shows the concept with his/her behavior. 
• Ask your students to think in the last book they read, considering how the characters in the book acted. Was someone in the book caring?
• Let your students find a quote related to the concept we are studying in class and draw a personal conclusion from it.

For your Spanish class:

Sequence:

1. Break the concept down into ideas
2. Give examples using patterns.

1. Break the concept down into ideas and have your ideas in different lines [to differentiate them visually] like this:

Ser solidario es:

- mostrar empatía

- mostrar sensibilidad

- mostrar respeto

- comprometerse personalmente a ayudar a los demás

- actuar con el propósito de influir positivamente en la vida de los demás

- actuar con el propósito de influir positivamente en el medio ambiente

2. Giving patterns to your students to give examples:

1. [Nombre del estudiante] es solidario porque __[idea]________
2. [Nombre del alumno] es una persona solidaria. Lo demuestra + [verbo en gerundio -ando - iendo] ___[idea]_____

Adding more ideas:

1. [idea] y [idea]
2. [idea] también [idea]

Example:

Ryan es solidario porque muestra empatía y actúa con el propósito de influir positivamente en el medio ambiente.

Don't forget to conjugate your verbs ;)

Lunaprofe 5/05/2014  2 comments