NUACHTÁN ELEMENTARY | July 2022
July marks the end of the 2021-2022 school year. We thank the parents who have placed their trust in us to accompany them for another year in the education of their children and those who joined our great family this school year. It is time to rest and enjoy the summer vacation period. Enjoy the family doing fun activities. We will be preparing and planning the new experiences for the next school year with great enthusiasm.
Congratulations to all our students for finishing another cycle with a great baggage of achievements and goals accomplished!
Agency and the learning community
By Pilar Lavín, PYP Coordination
The learning community recognizes that agency and self-efficacy are fundamental to learning. A learning community that encourages agency provides opportunities for learners to develop important skills and dispositions, such as critical and creative thinking, perseverance, independence, and self-confidence. These are key characteristics in the learning process and the development of self-efficacy. The learning community also provides learners with a wide range of opportunities to experience the impact of their choices and opinions, which underpin their evolving perceptions of their identity. For their part, learners with a stronger sense of self-efficacy bring a stronger sense of agency to the learning community.
Schools that focus on agency take into consideration their own perceptions of how children learn and their capabilities, and of the overall value of childhood. When teachers reflect on their beliefs regarding children’s identity and rights, they are analyzing personal beliefs, theories, cultural contexts, and values.
When teachers support students’ agency:
- They are perceptive of students’ abilities, needs, and interests, and reflect on these in order to personalize learning.
- They actively listen to students’ opinions, doubts, perspectives, and aspirations to help them expand their capacities to think and act.
- They encourage authenticity for learners to explore their interests through open-ended assignments.
- They provide opportunities for learners to be creative and take risks.
- Reflect on when learners need help and when they don’t, using assessment information as a basis for learning and teaching.
- They listen and respond to each student’s activities in order to expand their thinking capacity.
Bibliography
From principles to practice. Retrieved from https://resources.ibo.org/pyp/works/pyp_11162-51463?lang=es
Our Interactions Language and Communication texts
By Consuelo Zamudio, Spanish Coordinator
The Language and Communication books from Pearson publishers offer us a series of aspects that constitute the study of the mother tongue, Spanish, as a subject in the national curriculum.
This series of didactic materials is structured in 12 units, each unit offers a reading in the “I read” section which is followed by a series of questions to verify comprehension “I understand”, these assessment questions are adjusted to the types and levels of comprehension (referential or literal, inferential and critical or creative) so that students can advance solidly towards the highest level.
They also include the section “I think and imagine”, which is focused on textual production, using reading as a trigger. In addition to reaching the highest level of comprehension, this strategy promotes the metalinguistic reflection necessary to create a new text, which can be of a very different type.
Every two units of the book are dedicated to the study of the culture of a country, thus inviting students to form a cultural background, since it reflects the social and ideological aspects that we share as humanity, the values and attitudes necessary to participate in a globalized society and economy, as well as to commit to the search for a more just, safe and sustainable world.
Focus on LEARNING EXPERIENCES
By María Eugenia Varela Maldonado, 2nd Grade Elementary Teacher
The accumulation of learning throughout life constitutes what we call learning experiences; it is, in itself, the learning that means the acquisition of the necessary tools to face the increasingly complex and, therefore, more competitive modern world.
Within the IB, this learning is enhanced to generate the necessary competencies required and that cannot be overlooked for the sake of a preparation that ranges from deficient to limited, at least in some areas.
Our students live day by day the experience of inquiry that leads to the questioning of historical, economic and, in general, social and natural processes, that in other words, it is about the knowledge of the world and the factors of change; making students empower themselves and build, from their own perspective, their own learning through experimentation, reading, playing, living together and the theoretical part of the disciplines corresponding to each grade and age. However, let us not forget that every human being learns, perceives and experiences from his own personality, character and context of life, that is, he builds with his own resources and mental and physical tools, therefore, the IB allows children to express, through their particular “way” how they learn about the world, this means that IB learning generates daily scaffolding, translated into tools, so that students generate, in turn, the anchor as a background and doorway to new learning.
Focus: ENGLISH DISCIPLINE
One of the most relevant aspects of contemporary societies is communication; almost one hundred percent of our time we are communicating and this, through the use of all media, such as language, body language, signs or through the use of various devices and resources. Communication has made the world a global world, not only in the economic sense, but in the broader social sense and the better we move and communicate, the better we will be able to face the changing circumstances of the world.
The English language is a universal tool that, even without mastering it, we need to know at least the basics. At CELTA School, through the IB PYP program, the teaching and learning process of English is privileged on a daily basis, not only as a curricular discipline, but also as a different way of knowing the world. Therefore, from the earliest stages of our students’ school life, they encounter English through games, exercises, videos, music, readings and teamwork. This leads them not only to the mastery of the language, but also to the knowledge and interaction with other cultures, since we encourage cultural diversity as a way to take students out of their contexts, whether personal or in collective contexts, to a much wider geography than that of their own physical spaces.
For the teaching of English we focus on various aspects, such as, mainly, reading and conversation, the use of the textbook, application and development of exercises, the use of posters, the visual aspect, such as the frieze, videos and images, as well as music. It is also assumed, as primordial, the inquiry regarding diverse topics that are related to the curricular subjects, such as History and Natural Sciences.
In this way, the children relate to English as something inherent to their education and make the most of it in their daily lives, which will lead them, in the future, to facilitate their student and working life.
Bibliography:
