Kategoria: Learn how to learn

Reading for just 6 minutes can reduce stress levels by up to 68%

Throughout the almost whole school year, once a week, students from the 6th grade had ESL lessons, during which they read passages from books in English. We read extracts from the most popular books for children, like Harry Potter, Whimpy Kid, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, etc. Students read the texts, listened to the recordings and did a lot of lexical and creative activities, like drawing comics, building Lego constructions, playing games, developing stories, solving puzzles, writing poems or making models.

The objectives of the activities:

  • improving literacy, developing language competences
  • increasing general knowledge about the world
  • promoting reading as a stress relieving activity
  • modelling behaviour
  •  increasing creativity and imagination
  • building a sense of empathy
  • improving concentration
  • enhancing reading enjoyment

All the resources used during these activities were gathered in one padlet collection:

https://padlet.com/tambelli_sylwia/mo9efju9nkusotrl

Reading is awesome

This year we decided to introduce reading as a long-term stress-relief strategy and a way to increasing vocabulary and comprehension. There are numerous benefits of reading, especially empowering people to empathizing with others, reducing stress, improving communication skills. It also helps to concentrate on one thing at the time and improves your ability to understand other people and see the world from perspectives of our family, friends, classmates and even enemies. 

We introduced reading on English lessons on a regular basis. We started from deciding what factors influence our choices. In other words – what makes us choose this book not the other one. Students made posters on which they listed the main reasons for choosing some books while buying or borrowing them. Students read some excerpts from the book chosen by the teacher and after reading it they discuss the content, try to predict what may happen, they characterize protagonists, their personalities and skills. They describe the relationships between characters, their plans and intentions. They are also given various tasks related to the book read:

  • drawing a comic based on a chosen story
  • using Lego bricks to present the chosen scene
  • presenting a character they especially like 
  • making word clouds of the vocabulary they learned from the book
  • comparing characters 
  • comparing accuracy of the film based on the book with the book itself
  • role playing 
  • making mind-maps
  • reconstructing a journey of book characters
  • using Google maps to count distances and see the places where the story takes place

The activities are enjoyed by the students, they are interested in the stories they read, they are keen to discuss the problems mentioned. Their creativity and general knowledge seem to expand. 

Willeas Fogg in New York

How to achieve success?

During online lessons, due to the lockdown we could work relying on tools, different from the ones, used on a daily basis in the classroom. One of them is the WebQuest method, which enables incorporating the Internet resources into the classroom and encourages critical thinking skills, such as: comparing, verifying, classifying, inducing and analysing perspectives. Learners have to select the information and transform them. not able to simply regurgitate information they find, but are guided towards a transformation of that information in order to achieve a given task.

The students tried to answer the following questions:

  1. What makes a great athlete? 
  2. Which personality traits are indispensable if you want to achieve success?
  3. What is the difference between inner and outer motivation?
  4. How important is family support?
  5. ‚The only place success comes before work is the dictionary’ V. Lombardi – do you agree with this statement?
  6. What makes a great athlete?
  7. Who is an athlete you admire? Why? What was his way to the top? 
  8. What skills do you have to have to achieve success? 
  9. What can stop you from the success? 
  10. Shortlist some tips for achieving success. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l7ygzrNOEqWC4rFHqilzRLT5EwkAh4Rf/view?usp=sharing

https://gpe-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/syltamb83_edu_gdansk_pl/EWTSlQueq8lLnk4bIZLsHHkBfwswbjddFRcDrmOF9YnYow?e=RkRudk

https://prezi.com/view/GrFRBIBzsIW5wX6AjXsa/

Let’s Make School a More Friendly Place

On the whole our schools are not user-friendly places. Regardless of the location, across Europe, we tend to perceive them as hostile and oppressive buildings and places. In order to define what their weakest points are and what demends improvement, students took part in a debate. They listed the shortcomings first:

  • too crammed classrooms, too much furniture and not enough space to walk and move
  • tables and chairs in poor condition, not comfortable enough
  • too much teachers’ rubbish!
  • decorations are boring and hardly ever updated
  • poor lightning
  • narration as the main teaching strategy
  • not working clocks
  • too much copying
  • only one message board in the school
  • teacher’s-centred lessons prevail over student’s-centred classes

What are the students’ expectations:

  • less crowded classes
  • more spacious classrooms
  • decorations changed frequently, displaying students’ works and projects
  • designing one classroom for projects and team work
  • special area for silent relax
  • more comfortable desks and chairs
  • doing things and performing rather than copying and listening
  • some additional information boards, classrooms are better labelled
  • tablets used on a daily basis
  • more games, performances, events which would truly engage the students
  • appreciating their initiativeness

During the mobility the students attended the lecture delivered by Adam Parzyński, the headteacher of Primary School no 27 in Gdansk, the school leading in the city in terms of initiativeness and resourcefulness. He presented us some of the ideas of using the space wisely and effectively, relying on students’ skills and their creativity. Afterwards students made their own projects of ideal classrooms and they recorded the podcast on making a school more favourable place. They researched for the information in the following areas:

  • How to organize space well
  • How to make school effective for learning
  • How to improve school as a less stressful place
  • How to involve children and parents more

ASAPodcast Let’s make school a friendlier place

Learn more effectively

How to use the time spent in school more effectively? How to learn how to learn? During the mobility students could learn about new ways of taking notes and presenting them in a clear way and they were also exposed to different forms of teaching and testing such as games. Gamification is defined as a set of activities and processes to solve problems by using or applying the characteristics of game elements. Quizzes and escape rooms increase user emotional engagement, they provide fun, cooperation and rivalry at the same time. Generally it has a positive effect on individuals and for building the team. Another thing which contributes to an academic success is knowing one’s good points, abilities and recognizing one’s own learninng style. To find out what their dominant style is, students solved the simplified test of multiply intelligence and they discovered what their best way for studying is. The test is available here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T5D8NaC7kLEZe2B6dbDMZOa9fk8jQ8xY/view?usp=sharing

Before recording the podcast the students searched for the information in the following areas:

  • what good learning habits are
  • what different learning styles are
  • how to study smarter not harder
  • how to minimalize stress while studying
ASAPodcast How to learn effectively

How to manage your time wisely?

To learn efficiently we have to know how to manage our time. To sum up the workshop led by Małgorzata Solowska, the headteacher of Liceum no9 in Gdansk, the students made handouts reminding us how to manage our time wisely, that is:

  • setting a time limit to each task
  • using a to- do- list, but not skipping tasks
  • using applications to plan your tasks and ticking off the already-performed-ones
  • avoiding time-wasters
  • delegating tasks, sharing work if it is possible
  • while working in a team appointing a person responsible for time-checking
  • replacing your bad habits with good daily keystone habits, such as exercising, learning languages or developing daily routines
  • starting your work from the most difficult tasks

ASAPodcast: How to Manage Your Time

Visual thinking

The main source of stress seems to be school. Traditional ways of teaching, crammed sessions of learning just before an important test, not creative enough opportunities for practice and growth are likely to build stressful situations rather than eliminate them. Visual thinking is the way to rehearse or introduce the information with the use of drawings, visual notes, mind maps. This might involve taking visual notes, or drawing a mind map. By learning in more than one way, you’re further cementing the knowledge in your mind. Vitia Bartosova Hoffman, a former basket player, now a teacher and a specialist in sketchnoting agreed to lead the workshop in sketchnoting and provided specialist knowledge at the highest level. Students were taught how to illustrate ideas, organize their thougths, did a short course in lettering, learned a new way of studying, and, finally, were able to present stress, its causes, symptoms and ways of relieving it with the use of visual notes.