Wednesday is World Children's Day. My Grade 7s and 8s will be doing activities in their homerooms. Both have different activities. Grade 7 is more general and Grade 8 is focussed on sports.

Enjoy! Let me know if you use them or what you do at your schools

Tomorrow is World Toilet Day! Here's an activity my Grade 9s will be doing in homeroom on Wednesday.

I'll be hosting #MYPChat on Twitter again this week. Last time my focus was international mindedness, but this time I'm focussing on interdisciplinary units.

Join in on `Twitter, or add your thought is the comments on this post.

It's not even 8.30am in Atlanta, and my old MYPC, Carmen Samanes, and me just wrote the skeleton for a unit. We work well together, have similar ideas and collaborating with her is a joy. We also work fast when we work together! The following unit is for Spanish Language Acquisition - the slideshow and information shared below is mostly in English, but would be translated into Spanish before using with the students.
​The following unit was inspired by 'Sneaky Cards'. This are cards which have prompts for activities on them, (almost like 'dares'). When you have done the activity, the card is passed on to the next person. 

We were originally thinking of doing these about every attribute of the IB Learner Profile, but decided to focus the whole unit on the IB Learner Profile trait of Caring!

The students will warm up by writing an anonymous postcard to someone in their community - with maybe a compliment of a quote about happiness on them. To have students generate ideas, we get them to think about the following questions:

• What are school appropriate acts of kindness?
• Who in our school community can we support?
• Who in our school community understands Spanish?
• Who in our school community do we not often interact with?
• What are moments of stress in our school community?
• Think about the different types of rooms in the school - are there any cards which could work in different spaces?

After this activity, they will move onto making 'school sneaky cards'

At the end students will use the following Spanish Proverbs and inquiry questions for reflection!

This unit is not complete, and just came out of a conversation last week, and then half an hour this morning, so please feel free to give feedback.
I wanted to share our unit overview ideas - though this might change later. As well as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which fits in nicely with our Global Context and Key and Related Concepts!

Although this is for a small, phase 4 Spanish class in Atlanta, I might do a short version of this with my Design students, in Stuttgart, later in the year too! Here's a link to our work so far, and below is the full presentation.

I originally created a translation spreadsheet for all my EAL students, but this year I shared it with everyone. It is a Google Sheet which automatically translates words from English into a variety of languages. I share this through Google Classroom, so every student gets their own copy, and they can delete the columns that are not useful to them. I also discuss how reliable this spreadsheet is (or isn't), and remind students that it might not be 100% accurate! 

Here's the link - feel free to make a copy.
Here's a video explaining how it works.

As with any international school, I have a lot of EAL students in my class. I also often have students joining in the middle of the semester with little to no English. I wanted to share an introduction activity I do with them. It is just a little fun, gives them something to do if they are coming in during the middle of an activity and helps me get to know them a little better! Here is the EAL Designer Handbook.

Last year I was part of a focus group that looked at how we can revamp student conferences. Often conferences are just teachers repeating information that is already available in reports and on assessment feedback. Usually no body looks forward to conferencing (especially students). We want to move towards a focus on learning and with students leading the conferences. Although we are not 100% there year, mostly because our portfolios are brand new, so we are going to start with three way conferences.

Running student-led conferences can feel a little scary if you are used to more traditional ones. I make sure to really prep my students before hand, by doing regular reflection throughout the year, but also by running a mini conference session the week before conferences. I explain the focus of conferencing is on goal setting, not grades, and on learning, not work. I also have a list of questions, including our inquiry questions, AtL reflections, a discussion on the Statement of Inquiry and some other bits and bobs, which students get to look at  - then the students highlight the parts which they want to talk about. I also remind them to talk about something useful. It should not just be about celebrating what went well or just looking at summative assessments, but we want the meeting to be useful and productive.

Here is the short presentation I shared with my colleagues at the International School of Stuttgart.

Here is the information I will share with my students right before the conferences.

Here are my question/prompt sheets for Grade 6, Grade 7 and Grade 8 design students. 
I also share my teacher prompt list, and tell students that I might ask some questions too!
Guiding Questions / Prompts for Student-Led Conferences

• If this was a traditional teacher ran conference what do you think I would say about you as a student?
• Why did you choose to put X in your portfolio?
  
• Why did you choose to not put X in your portfolio?
  
• What do you think about your focus in class?
  
• What distracts you in class?
  
• What do you think about your participation in group discussions?
  
• What is the hardest part of this class?
  
• What do you enjoy most about this class?
  
• What makes you excited about coming to this class?
  
• What do you struggle with in class (and how can I better help you)?
  
• How do you feel when you are asked to explain your thinking in class?
  
• Do you prefer to learn alone or in groups? Why?
  
• What do you think about your progress in this class?
  
• What growth have you made in this class?
  
• How might you better share your learning with your parents?
  
• How can your parents help you with your learning?
  
• How can I (your teacher) better support you in the class?
  
• What is something new/exciting you have learnt in this class?
  
• What did you think about the feedback you received on X assignment?
  
• When do you feel most confident in this class?
  
• When do you feel most nervous in this class?
  
• When do you feel most/least creative in this class?
  
• What steps could you take to improve your learning in this class?
  
• What do you think you should keep/stop/start doing in class?
  
• What do you hope to be able to say at our next conference?