The LRC teamed up with the 6th and 7th-grade year groups this week to offer a special maker space Christmas activity. The objective was to bring a bit of fun and celebratory active learning to students while socially distancing and following school protocols. The kids were so excited to be able to work on the project and produce a large collection of cute Christmasy gnomes.
The students have been sending in photos they have taken of their Gnomes at home and we are busily adding these to our Flickr Album so we can share the fun and joy with the greater community. Many of the students have said they are going to make more gnomes at home with their families as well. The gnome hats seemed to be the clincher. Once the kids say them they were hooked and worked diligently to produce their own pompom gnomes by the end of the session.
The Gnomes are made with paper towel rolls, red and white wool, dabs of glue, a handful of filling, and a small styrofoam ball for the nose. If you are interested in making your own you may want to check out the instructions on the following blog.
We will add the photos from the 6th-grade activities to the same Flickr Album as they roll in.
Today we were honoured with a special visit by the sub-director and librarian of Maquilishuat School here in El Salvador. During the visit, we were able to show our visitors around the physical and digital LRC as well as share good practices in the running and development of school libraries as resources centres for learning. Our primary focus was on educational provisions for the school community, collection access, and development, community service projects, and digital equipment and resources.
The visit would not have been complete without an opportunity to explore experiential learning ideas featuring some of our favourite digital learning tools including Ozobot, Sphero Mini and Bolt, and Lego Robots, our beloved 3D printers and pens. We also had an opportunity to share our current VR and AR provisions including Oculus Quest, Google Cardboard, and Merge Cubes. These technologies while used by students from 6th-12th grade in certain subjects will soon form the backbone of our proposed LRC Mixed Reality Lab or MR Lab for short.
The MR Lab is an internal project which the LRC Team has begun to develop in conjunction with the ICT department. Through this project, we endeavor to insert AR and VR experiences more predominantly into student learning across disciplines both within and outside of lessons, in a safe, dedicated space, within the LRC. It will provide opportunities to explore both virtual and augmented reality through preexisting experiences across platforms, as well as provide the resources for students to view and interact with their own design projects in 3D and 360-degree formats. We will share more on this in future blog posts, as the project develops further.
As educators, we believe it is vital for schools to work together as part of the larger educational community. This is a vision we share with many of the educational organisations in the country including La Escuela Maquilishuat. Communication, shared initiatives, and support between centres of learning and their libraries are fundamental to meeting the current and projected needs of our school communities and it is important that we explore ways in which to address the challenges facing institutions, together. Our meeting, therefore, would not have been complete without a discussion of the concerns facing libraries today and strategies for further improvement and outreach within our educational communities. As a result, we have also identified further opportunities through which to further extend the relationships that currently exist between our two schools and have planned to meet up again in the new year to discuss additional collaborative initiatives and events between the two schools.
One such opportunity was that of the Sleeping Mat Club in which students work together outside of normal lessons to create sleeping mats out of plastic bags for those less fortunate than themselves.
Here is the link to our Flickr Album of photos of the visit.
Today the LRC Team had a visit from a group of Library Sciences students from the University of El Salvador. This was a follow-up session from a virtual meeting a week ago in which the students interviews the librarians about the LRC and its workings.
We were asked for a tour but prepared an experience for them that we hope not only illustrated many of the functions and purposes of the LRC in an engaging way but also, highlight ways in which they as future librarians can engage members of their communities through experiences which can be adapted across subjects and grades, at a low cost or no cost.
This was an enjoyable experience for all and many important connections were made.
We have encouraged the students to keep in touch and keep us abreast of their professional endeavors. We do hope that the students will take us up on our offer to support them as they move from university to their first library postings.
It is a wonderful thing to hear that we are considered by many, including university professors to be the best school library in the country. The LRC has come a very long way since 2008 and we endeavor to ensure that the innovative learning, resource collections, community engagement, and support continue to develop and improve, in the benefit of our ABC and local communities.
Written by Ana Sofía Santamaría-10th Grade Student
As ABC students, we foresee that our futures will be bright as reflected by our context and the educational opportunities we regularly receive. Most of us are confident that we will become excellent doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. However, not all the youth in El Salvador have these certainties, but most dream of becoming a professional.
At our school, all girls know that they can pursue any interest they desire; yet, outside our community, not all girls believe they can do so. Due to this, in El Salvador, less than one-third of graduates in STEM are female. This saddening statistic led me to design a project to empower girls from low-income institutions by exposing them to the different branches and possibilities within STEM.
For this week's meeting, Mrs. Garcia and Mrs. Serrano were the guest speakers who introduced the girls to robotics and technology. All the girls in the project have big aspirations, and many are interested in technology, medicine, and engineering, but often, what they perceive as limitations don't let them believe this is possible. The project aims to accompany the girls throughout their academic year, introducing them to the various possibilities in STEM, and aiming to empower them to apply for scholarships and seek out other opportunities to pursue their goals.
This year we participated once again in the Salvadoran Library Association's Cultural Week. This year was the 32nd and was declared the Ibero-American Year of Libraries- Libraries Building the Future.
During the sessions, we shared our experiences with the challenges brought on by a change from interactive physical spaces to interactive virtual spaces, as well as the tools that allowed us to facilitate these changes.
We also discussed the challenges of online education, in particular the lack of access to our physical teaching resources (computers, book collections, 3D design printing equipment, electronics, and robotics sets, the kitchen, and more) and how we managed to facilitate electronic access to learning in these areas, albeit in a different manner.
One of the main challenges we focused on was the need to modify our approaches as we went from having personal contact with students and sharing learning experiences, in an environment rich in educational resources available to students, to a more restricted environment via online access and communications.
In doing so we were able to share how this experience not only allowed us to operate fully with modifications during the closure of spaces brought on by the pandemic but also impacted the manner in which we will operate post-pandemic. The result was a series of short workshops in which we taught our colleagues some basic practices for services that can be delivered electronically and with it provided a list of useful, free, resources that can be shared with the rest of the community.
We focused on the ease of use and the potential impact the following tools can bring to any library setting:
-Create interactive spaces with slides and Bitmoji
- Basic photo editing
- Google devices
- Websites
- Canva
It was a pleasure to always share with our fellow librarians and teachers, to create important links here at home and abroad, and continue to learn together as a community.
Taller: Superar los desafíos del encierro. El caso del Centro de Recursos de Aprendizaje de la Academia Britanica Cuscatleca (LRC).
Spanish Version
Este año participamos una vez más en la Semana Cultural de la Asociación de Bibliotecarios Salvadoreños. Este año fue el número 32 y fue declarado Año Iberoamericano de las Bibliotecas - Bibliotecas Construyendo el Futuro.
En el contexto de la pandemia, compartimos con la comunidad más amplia de bibliotecarios nuestras experiencias con los desafíos provocados por el cambio de espacios físicos interactivos a espacios virtuales interactivos, así como las herramientas que nos permitieron facilitar estos cambios.
Al hacerlo, reflexionamos sobre los desafíos de la educación en línea, en particular la falta de acceso a nuestros recursos físicos de enseñanza (computadoras, colecciones de libros, equipos de impresión de diseño 3D, conjuntos de electrónica y robótica, la cocina y más) y cómo logramos facilitar acceso electrónico al aprendizaje en estas áreas, aunque de manera diferente.
El principal desafío fue, sin duda, nuestra mentalidad al pasar de tener contacto personal con los estudiantes y compartir experiencias de aprendizaje, en un entorno rico en recursos educativos disponibles para los estudiantes, a un entorno más restringido a través del acceso y las comunicaciones en línea. Al hacerlo, pudimos compartir cómo esta experiencia no solo nos permitió operar completamente con modificaciones durante el cierre de espacios provocado por la pandemia, sino que también impactó la forma en que operaremos después de la pandemia. El resultado fue una serie de talleres cortos en los que les enseñamos a nuestros colegas algunos conceptos básicos para los servicios que se pueden entregar electrónicamente y con ello proporcionamos una lista de recursos útiles y gratuitos que se pueden compartir con el resto de la comunidad.
Al hacerlo, nos centramos en la facilidad de uso y el impacto potencial que las siguientes herramientas pueden aportar a cualquier entorno de biblioteca:
-Crear espacios interactivos con diapositivas y Bitmoji
- Edición de fotos básica
- Dispositivos de Google
- Sitios web
- Canva
Fue un placer compartir siempre con nuestros compañeros bibliotecarios y profesores, para crear vínculos importantes aquí en casa y en el extranjero y seguir aprendiendo juntos como comunidad.
The much anticipated ABC Secondary School DVA will take place this week. Do come out to the virtual event and support all of the wonderful student creativity that has taken place this school year.
We will be using the ABC Bull Dogs Livestream for the event. Please use this link to access it or go to the DVA Website to access it from there.
The LRC Team would like to thank everyone who participated in Book Week 2021 and made it the amazing event it was. You may remember from our earlier post that this year's Book Week was very unique in that it was planned and organised as a collaborative project between IB school libraries and local organisations in El Salvador. You can read more about that here or scroll down to the previous post.
It is now time to report on some of the highlights which arose from the participation strand.
Calligram Competition
The LRC team would like to congratulate Nadine Salume in 7th grade for taking part in and winning the Book Week Calligram Competition with her rendition in the representation of the Hunger Games Novel, which she designed using text arranged to depict an image. Well done Nadine for your hard work on this initiative! We look forward to your participation in future activities as well.
9th Grade Assembly
We also have a winner from 9th grade Michael Romero for leading with student responses during the Book Week Assembly. Well done and a huge thank you to Michael for sharing his ideas with staff members and students during assembly.
Creative Writing Exhibition
Catalina Portillo in 11th grade won the Creative Writing Exhibition piece for her video submission in which she reads to us from her piece entitled Omaha Beach, which focuses on the power of courage. We would like to thank Catalina as well as all of the participants in this challenge for their exemplary written pieces. We look forward to more creative works from these students and would like to encourage them and others to continue sharing their literary endeavors with us.
(Please be aware that some of the student content is only accessible with ABC login credentials)
Finally, Challenge #3
Read 2 Books per Month, is a student initiative being run by Juan Santos and Sofia Tapias, which as the name states, is a challenge to read 2 or more books each month. This initiative will continue to run until the end of the school year. Do please consider taking part.
This week was Book Week in Secondary and what a wonderful Book Week it was. This was the second year we have held it completely online. This year, however, was a very different Book Week Experience from last year's event. This year, our librarians teamed up with librarians from the other IB schools in El Salvador, the Internacional Book Shop, and various authors from around the country to plan a variety of powerful activities. The LRC Team put together a Book Week website to which they added collections of challenges, video sessions, and book fair links.
LRC Challenges were provided for students and in some cases by students as was the case of the Read 2 Books per Month challenge. Additional activities included the Calligram and Creative Writing Exhibition challenges. A prize will be awarded to the top submission in each category.
During Book Week, students in 6th,7th, 9th, and 12th-grade students took part in a variety of activities.
6th and 7th Grade participated in reading workshops with Salvadoran author Milena Calderón, which focused on the book, La Calabiuza. The students were enthralled with the activity which included a dynamic reading by Milena. This was one of the learning opportunities provided by. GREMISAL.
Silvia Pira of GRELISAL took part por su participaciñon en el fomento de la lectura con el cuento sobre La muerte ella pertenece a la Red de escritores salvadoreños GREMISAL
GREMISAL(Gremial de Escritores de Literatura Infanto-Juvenil Salvadoreña ) is a group of Salvadoran writers, storytellers, and librarians who are involved in the promotion of Salvadoran children's literature within the country and abroad.
The 9th Grade Book Week Assembly took place on Thursday, April 29th.
Ms. Valdez, one of our guest writers this week, who is also our wonderful head of 9th grade had this to say about the assembly.
We finished another week of school by reaffirming the joy of reading and storytelling with our G9 students. The LRC put together some great activities and challenges for all ABC students to participate. Additionally, they were kind enough to organise a virtual storytelling for G9 with Salvadoran author Silvia Pira. As she dramatised her story "La Muerte", it was great to watch G9 students hanging on the edge of their seats and their reactions as the story progressed. Thank you once again LRC for allowing us this opportunity"(Margarita Valdez-Ho9th)
Thursday was a busy Book Week Day as the librarians, Spanish teachers, and grade 12 Spanish students participated in an online Book Day virtual discussion with 11th grade IB students at Faith Christian School in Paraguay. This was a wonderful success, punctuated by a variety of student-led questions, answers, and discussion which revolved around literature, IB experiences, and online learning during a pandemic. This virtual forum was a powerful experience for the students and teachers involved.
We believe in providing our students with opportunities to engage in collaborative work which enables them to learn with and learn from others, share their own ideas and discuss global issues and concerns and share their experiences and learning in collaborative venues. Over the years we have engaged in a great many collaborative with students and teachers from other schools, all of which have not only impacted positively on learning but have made lasting memories and enduring connections for those involved. Virtual meetups provide an ideal platform for this vital work.
Ms. Granados, who is one of our Spanish teachers had this to say about the event in which she too played a major role.
"El conversatorio ha sido una muy buena experiencia, en cuanto al intercambio de conocimientos y vivencias en la materia de Español.
Fue gratificante tener ese contacto con alumnos de otro país y comprobar que, los alumnos de la ABC están dentro del perfil de aprendizaje del IB, los cuales se mostraron muy receptivos y, a la vez expresaron algunos consejos"(Ana Gladys Granados-Dept. Español-ABC).
Mention should also be made of the careful preparation, and engagement with this activity evident in the work that the LRC librarians, the ABC Secondary Spanish team, as well as the students and teachers from both institutions who participated. We would like to say a special thank you to Cynthia Ruiz Diaz of FCS, and Judith Mendez who got the ball rolling and are largely responsible for the planning and implementation of this event.
Finally, the LRC team would like to thank Ms. Rabanowitz, our head of Spanish, for all of the work she and her Spanish team did in helping to prepare for and participate in this activity.
Each school year the LRC Team prepares a variety of fun activities and resources designed for students to learn more about their brains, how to keep them healthy and challenge them.
This year we are still teaching from home so we again had to find another way to do this. We have found that Google Sites has proven very useful for creating online themed events for the community. Just short of year from the day they locked things down in El Salvador due to COVID-19, we find ourselves publishing our newest resource via Google Sites.
This year STEAM Fest will work a little differently and take place online.
In preparation, the STEAM Team has prepared a great many challenges for you to look through and take part in. There are Grade Level SDG challenges, General Challenges and you can even Build your very own challenges using the guidance on our website. All entries are individual this year due to our special circumstances.
This year we will include a judging panel full of wonderful ABC teachers who will help determine which of our wonderful ABC Makers attain Bronze, Silver and Gold Level standards! The students whose projects are allocated the highest points by the judging panels will also be awarded a special prize.
Finally, we would like to issue a challenge to all Secondary ABC Students to design the STEAM Fest 2021 Logo and Slogan for the event. To be eligible, all entries for the Log/Slogan Competition must be sent to either Mrs. Garcia or Mrs. Serrano by March 15th.
Please check out the STEAM Fest 2021 Webpage and watch our Promotional Video for further details on how to join the STEAM Team of student Makers, for STEAM fest 2021.
Finally, a reminder about LRC- Today in History, is our weekly update with interesting facts for you and the students to enjoy.
Safer Internet Day is celebrated at the ABC for an entire week each year. This year Safer Internet Day 2021 will be celebrated globally on February 9th, 2021 with a focus on the theme,Together for a better internet"
Here are some driving statements and questions to prompt powerful conversations focused on this topic:
Let's face it the internet is a powerful place to connect with others, but issues can occur.
How could we work together as a class, a school, a country or a planet to make it a better, safer place for everyone to connect?
Can you think of a few ideas that you as a student would be able to do to help make this happen?
(saferinternetday.org)
This coming week students in each grade will work on a series of short mini lessons during tutor time and Life Skills. In doing so they will explore a variety of positive and negative impacts of the internet, as well as the various ways to conduct themselves in a safe, ethical and positive manner online, while making the most of the positive opportunities that are available.
We encourage you to browse our resources by grade level and engage in conversations with your child which focus on these topics.
We have also provided a list of videos for conversation starters as well as additional resource collections from leading organisations, lower down on the home page, which we hope you will find useful.
Let's make every day a safer internet day, together!
