Some European teachers from Italy, Portugal, Greece, Croatia, Austria and Spain are attending a course in Dublin from Monday 2nd December to Saturday 7th December,on different competences:Creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.
This is the school in Dublin and first class.
Teacher Clara is one of the students attending this course in Ireland with the other European teachers.
The teacher,Robert, introduced the course. Why the 4 Cs? New time needs new abilities.
Students should get new competences: Critical thinking, creativity communication and collaboration are the competences we should teach them.
After a short break, every teacher presented
her city and her school.
It was very interesting because we could compare the different educational systems.In general they are quite similar.
What are our needs we expect to solve with the course?
We shared our comments on our difficulties in our teaching practice.
Why are the 4 Cs: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication and Collaboration so important in Schools?
Traditionally teaching is knowledge based.
Nowadays, knowledge can be found easily on the internet and some machines can do lots of jobs. So, we need to achieve other competences.
Teaching must adapt and become competence based.
Critical thinking, creativity, comunication and collaboration are meaningful competences we should try to develop in our students because they will be very useful for them in the future.
Critical thinking, creativity, comunication and collaboration are meaningful competences we should try to develop in our students because they will be very useful for them in the future.
The problem, all teachers agreed, is that if we really want to work on competences and develop them in our classes, we should teach less contents.We all complained about the lack of time and too many students in the classroom.
This was the way to school. What is the weather like?
Here she is with another teacher-student. Can you guess what nationality she is?
In the afternoon...
After lessons, a nice walk around Trinity College, the most important University in Ireland.
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| The Trinity Collage |
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| The University |
Student! Can you read the messages on the boards?
Motivation and Communication
How can students be motivated?
There are many factors that can affect motivation.
Fear of speaking in public,exercises should not be too simple or too complicated for them,
they should connect something new with something already known:"Neurons that fire together wire together"
With traditionaly deductive exercises the techer provides the theory and students solve problems whereas with inductive learning the teacher gives the examples and the students give the rules. Inductive learning promotes analytical and critical thinking and also, motivate students: Control- Choice-Responsibility.
As a conclusion we can say that active style of learning is more motivating and effective than the traditional passive way.
Students learn more by practice doing, by discussion, with audiovisual images and enjoyable activities.
Sense of humour can be very useful in our classes.
We shared some fun activities we usually use in class.
It's been around for millions of years, but is never more than a month old. What is it?
Also, the teacher suggested some enjoyable apps to be used and some activities to carry out in our classes.
It's important to make students be aware of their lack of something,always without making them feel bad, to encourage and motivate them with the curiosity of learning.
Besides,the recognition should be for effort and not for intelligence. Using unlimited rewards is advisable.
Always giving them some structure (jigsaw method for example)and being specific.
Lesson on Creativity
It has many aspect to develop.
Trying to understand the creative process, there is usually a directed-thinking part where you face a problem or a task, then you gather some information (learning)and afterwards a non direct- thinking part comes. (Incubation, illumination and verification).
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Creativity should be stimulated and
if you think you are not a creative person,
you are wrong!
Creativity can be developed!
Stress and too much information are the enemies of creativity.
Mindfulness exercises can help to stop the analitical processes in our brain and boost creativity. We have to trick our brain , our analytical mind (no thinking)to let our creativity flow and our mind wander.
...music... 
...will develop your creativity.
It's difficult and not neccesary always to be original but try to be authentic!
Create space for the student’s questions,
e.g. via K-W-L charts: What I Know, What I Want to Know, What I Learned
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Failure is part of the process.
Freedom to fail, allow for risk-taking
We should speak abou-negative-positive.t facts and being specific. Using a rubric to evaluate an activity is good to show clearly those aspects that should be improved.
Watch this interesting example of
constructive feedback
(Click here) The butterfly
Lesson on Collaborative work and critical
thinking
"If you want to go fast, go
alone; if you want to go far, go
together"
African proverb
Our teacher insisted on the fact that to organize group work in class, It's important to give clear instructions. Every student should have a task and know what to do. Groups can be arranged in different ways depending on the activities.
Edward de Bono developed a simple and effective way to facilitate more productive meetings by using different perspectives.
The Six Thinking Hats Method
Use the Six Thinking Hats to Improve Brainstorming and Collaboration
In order to develop the critical thinking in our students is important to consider the different aspects the coloured hats represent.
For example, working in a class divided in teams, each team member wears each hat in turn. Each hat represents a different perspective.
For example, “Okay, let’s put on our White Hats. Jim, you’re up first.”
Another possibility may be that each group analyses por example a sentence given taken into consideration every single aspect the hats represent.
Communication
Being a good communicator is not easy.
Commnicative competence will be very important in students' future life and work.
Non-verbal communication
Why focus on non-verbal communication?
Because it's often underuse and helps us boost our self confidence when speaking and develop our communication abilities.
Posture is very important.
Posture is very important.
Notice how body language and other non- verbal resources are used by the 2018 world communicator champion in this video
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