Category: global awareness

On Tuesday I was in sunny (yes, it was sunny!) Manchester, delivering my AQA course.

Apart from the problems with the internet, I believe a good day was had by all – lunch was once more a highlight!

Rather than repeat all the links, can I refer you to my last post where you will find all the ‘new’ links about PLL, and also some recommendations from other delegates of sites and learning materials that they’ve found useful.

I forgot last week to put a link to a resource listing many many games and quick activities for the PLL classroom, so here it is.

Today, 5th May, marks the 5th birthday of eTwinning.

The birthday was celebrated across Europe with balloon releases, cake eating and national events.

In the UK we were encouraged to plant blue and yellow flowers – the colours of the European Union and also the eTwinning logo.

At Whitehouse Common, 1DS marked the event in several ways.

1. we watched the eTwinning videos below – the children (aged 5-6) completely understood the message of the first clip – ‘eTwinning makes lessons more fun.  The kids looked much happier when the eTwinning man arrived.’  And they were highly amused by all the ball throwing in the second!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj58uA4cjrQ

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HDdxNQ6AIY

2. we made paper doll chains to symbolise people holding hands as friends – surprisingly they all successfully cut out their dolls in a chain (although we had one set of decapitated dolls!)

3. we coloured in flowers in blue and yellow for a display

4. and best of all, we planted some marigolds and a blueish daisy in the dragon planter.

So – Happy Birthday eTwinning from WCPS!

The first session I attended was Helen L. Walker presenting Raising global awareness in a second language and speaking from her experience as an early years teacher in the immersion programme in Canada.Helen asserted that we still tend to live within our own cultural bubble despite the immediacy of internet etc, and that global awareness, that is, an understanding and appreciation of other cultures, is something on which we still need to work. She talke dof how we can do this using books, experiences and contcts as well as global focus weeks such as thos edetailed on the SWgfl.

Whilst living in an English speaking part of Canada (Calgary), Helen taught a class under the immersion programme of pupils aged 5 who had no or very little French. they began their journey using the topic L’Afrique, and applying an enquiry based method of learning. They looked at elephants, had an Africa day and did lots of art activities. Questions were posed and the children looked for the answers with teacher help where needed.

One such question was ‘Does it rain in Africa?’ to which the children immediately answered ‘no’. Reading What the animals were waiting for, a book about the rains in Africa, challenged this view and shaped their understanding of what it might be like to live in Africa.

Another book Beatrice’s Goat had wide reaching effects on the pupils.

Beatrice lives in Uganda and wants to go to school but has no uniform as she can’t afford it. Then she’s sent a goat from a charity. The pupils empathised with Beatrice – and wanted to send a goat to her. Helen explained that Beatrice now had a goat, but that perhaps they could buy a goat for another child. The class discussed how to raise money to send the goat, and settled on creating items to auction off including the journal of Françoise the class teddy bear, booklets made in computer time in french about numbers, colours, animals and Africa. On an art trip they made a quilt with each child contributing a square – this too was auctioned . All in all, they raised sufficient money to buy a barn full of animals. Not only had they raised funds but also the awareness; the pupils were so proud of themselves and had a great joy in giving.

Helen offered a list of some of the resources she used, and of sites that were useful for this type of thing, and others shared ideas from their classes including a boys’ school where the pupils raised money by doing the staff’s ironing!

As a postscript to this, I overhead a conversation today about an article saying that by teaching ICU, we are producing racist pupils as we are presenting a ‘stock view’ of countries. This rang bells as I had had a similar experience in Liverpool at the PLS where someone had been challenged for portraying a very narrow view of life in Martinique. Good point i guess. How can we make sure we’re not reinforcing unhelpful stereotypes?

‘Super Sub Stevens’ was called up as a last minute replacement today at a Comenius West Midlands conference for PMFL leaders entitled ‘What does a good one look like?‘

Hope all those that attended enjoyed th day. I was only there for the afternoon, but really valued the input by Pam Haezewindt of HMI on OFSTED inspections (blog post to follow!)

As promised, below is my presentation on The International Dimension. If you pop back in a day or so, you’ll be able to listen to the audio at the same time as I intend to make a Slidecast. (You can also listen to the audio on my podcast, Lisibo talks.)

I’ve also embedded a video of the hands from one of our International projects, Hands across the World.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNIYKcVfX1k&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f&border=1]