Sleeping mats

Éste día hicimos entrega a la Alcaldía Municipal de San Salvador, distrito No. 1, la cantidad de 6 colchonetas confeccionadas con material reciclado, para beneficiar a igual cantidad de personas. Dicha entrega se realizó en la Biblioteca Digital de la Colonia Satélite.

Citando de nuestra página web algunos fragmentos de la Misión, visión y valores de la escuela, quisiera destacar que:

Creemos que tenemos el deber de capacitar a los jóvenes con los valores, cualidades y habilidades para que puedan ser agentes de estos cambios.

Creemos que el desarrollo de este compromiso, unido a estos valores y habilidades se basan en nuestra comunidad de aprendizaje, que fomenta en los jóvenes un fuerte sentido de conciencia y respeto por ellos mismos, los demás y el resto de la sociedad. (Academia Británica Cuscatleca)



Nuestro Club Sleeping Mats, esta conformado por jóvenesque cumplen con las caracteristicas arriba descritas y que estan plenamente comprometidos con el bienestar de los más necesitados. Su motivación en contribuir a mejorar la situación de las personas sin hogar que duermen en las calles en cartones. Así mismo, contribuimos a cuidar el medio ambiente al recolectar bolsas plásticas que de otra manera terminarían en los basureros.

Cada colchoneta está compuesta por más o menos 800 bolsas plásticas, cuidadosamente trenzadas entre sí para proveer una superficie cómoda, que permite almacenar el calor, es duradera y a la vez resistente a la humedad. Se estima que cada una de ellas ha tomado entre 40 y 50 horas para su elaboración, la cual se realiza completamente a mano.

Es un proyecto muy interesante, lleno de muchos valores y conciencienciación ya que a la hora de elaborar cada trenza para formar nuestra manta, a través del trabajo manual los estudiantes reflexionan, comparten experiencias y se mantienen alegres, emocionados y motivados al saber que alguien será beneficiado y tendrá una mejor oportunidad de dormir por las noches.

Comentario de Gabriela Quiusky alumna de 12vo grado:

"Al haber sido parte del proyecto por tantos años, se ha vuelvo una parte muy importante de mis memorias del colegio. Recuerdo que al principio empezamos a hacer la primera mat solamente para presentar un proyecto en el STEAM fest de ese año, pero al ver que tanta gente estaba interesada, decidimos continuar. Desde ese ese momento supimos que este proyecto llegaría muy lejos; y así fue cuando miss Garcia y miss Serrano pudieron entregar una de las mats en Estados Unidos. Nuestro siguiente objetivo fue lograr donar al menos una colchoneta aquí.

Al elaborar tantas mats en estos años logramos motivar a mucha gente para que se nos uniera, lo cual fue una experiencia muy gratificante. Ahora que por fin logramos encontrar a alguien que nos ayude con la donación me pone muy feliz la idea de que al final logramos alcanzar la meta que nos habíamos propuesto hasta ya mucho tiempo y que logramos ayudar a la gente que lo necesitaba.

Espero que este proyecto se mantenga en el colegio durante muchos años, por que es una idea verdaderamente innovadora y que puede ayudar a muchos. Por esta misma razón intentaré llevarme este proyecto en mi universidad y empezar un club ayá. Las experiencias que he tenido al ser parte de este club estarán siempre conmigo."

Los alumnos sintieron una gran satisfacción al ver culminado el trabajo de varios años, al entregar formalmente su trabajo y que este sea finalmente utilizado y apreciado.


Puede ver el álbum de fotografías en éste enlace.

by: Gabriela Quiusky y LRC Team

 

Trabajos citados

Academia Británica Cuscatleca. “ABC Mission and Values.” ABC Portal, 22 June 2020.

Life skill – making spider cookies

Written and posted by the LRC Team

We work with other departments in the school, frequently in the LRC and this includes our Heads of Year in support of the Life Skills Program. The sixth grade coordinator recently expressed an interest in the work we were doning with the cooking club this year. The conversation ensued and we decided to put together a whole grade, cooking class. As you can imagine, this is not an easy task to pull off. We don't have a enough equipment for the entire 6th grade to use at the same time, so In the end we decided on a cooking class in which the students needed to follow a recipe to assemble a snack for themselves.

The students had a great time making spider cookies for the class and the teachers had a great time observing them and helping out when needed. The students worked in groups of six at stations, which were placed under cover (since the rainy season is now upon us). They worked as teams as well as independently, learned important lessons in perseverance and resilience when things didn't always go quite the way as they expected (usually this had to do with pretzel spider leg problems),  and learned a very important lesson about sharing spaces with others. In addition to this they worked through a recipe, used a diagram to guide their work and learned some of the basic expectations for working with food. 

The cookies were assembled from crackers, cream cheese, pretzels and raisins were used for eyes. 

It was the first time we introduced food preparation in a Life Skills class. We are planning to do a lot more cooking classes with year groups, probably on a rotational basis and also include some basic sewing activities for Life Skill periods next school year.

Please have a look at the media below to immerse yourself in this exciting activity and do also check out our photo gallery at Flickr.

Changes to Our Maker Space

The Maker Space, which we started 2 years ago, has gone through quite a few changes.


This year we moved a few things around and ordered quite a few new kits and tools based on feedback from teachers and students as well as our own observations on how space was used. We have also enlarged the space it occupies to include one of our large work tables with better access to power.

We have reorganised and redefined areas, but possibly the biggest change is the attention the Science Nook is getting. This can be found at the back of the maker space just in front of the ICT Lab. It now sports microscopes, solar panel robot kits, circuit blocks, engineering kits, board games and more. The students also have access to our 3D printer and printing pens and a good selection of appropriate magazines and books for young scientists, engineers, tinkers and thinkers.







The LRC Maker Club has already started and the response has been great. Over the summer we received a long awaited shipment of replacement 3Doodler Pens. We had the opportunity to view them in action and chat with the company representatives at the annual ISTE Conference and were convinced the 3Doodler Start pens were the way to go. They are non-toxic the tips do not get hot and they were 3Doodler, the only company whose pens has stood up to the rigours of our maker space and ICT lessons. We weren't disappointed.

Have a look at some of the initial designs done by the students during their first lesson.

Welcome to School Year 15/16

Welcome back to a new and exciting school year. There are many changes taking place in the LRC in 15/16. I would like to take this opportunity to share some of the bigger changes with you.

Our first big change is the implementation of our new library system, Destiny by Follett.

This system provides students with a personal portal which will enable them to truly customise their library experiences.

 We also have a large collection of new books both in hard copy along with a collection audio books by Amazon Audible. Students will be able to check out shortly.

While not new this year, our digital collection with Follett TumbleBookCloud is a great resource. We purchased the subscription last school year, which is updated and added to by Follett.

This service allows students to choose from hundreds of books including graphic novels, enhanced novels, ebooks, classic literature, national geographic videos, educator resources as well as audiobooks.


Students can access their Destiny and TumbleBookCloud options on the LRC website. Each class will also be given an orientation session on using Destiny, in tutor time, during the next few weeks.

The new Maker Space has been assigned a spot toward the back of the LRC by the Studio and Raspberry Pi computers. We are very excited about its launch, which will take place this Monday with our first drop in activity along and will run parallel to the launch of the new Maker Club.

Students can sign up for the club and they can also come along at breaks, or after school each week to take part in other activities. During the first activity, Binary Bracelets, students will learn a bit about the language of computers while making a personal chain or bracelet in binary.

Maker Space activities have even worked their way into 8th grade ICT Creative Carousels in the LRC. The students had their first lesson last week in which they began learning about tools, and used  them to deconstruct old desktop computers. 

Here are a few pictures from the lesson.

It is going to be a fantastic SY15/16 at the LRC. Do check back for regular updates!

Club Recilectura Visits the Santa Tecla Children's Library

Yesterday afternoon, the Club Recilectura visited the Santa Tecla Children's Library. The club meats every week to work on book and recycling related arts and crafts. One of their goals this school year is to take their work to different libraries and work with the students there, reading to them and creating craft projects.

Yesterday a small group visited a local library in Santa Tecla, where they read to the children and did a few arts and crafts activities with them. Here are a few pictures from the activity that our school librarian has made into a small collage. 

You can view pictures from this activity and other LRC activites on Flickr.

Jumping Back in with WoW!

The new school year is here and with it a new take on our gaming club. We are about to jump back in, after taking a year off, with our World of Warcraft  extra curricular club, which will run throughout  most of the school year.

Some things have changed however. This year the work won't revolve exclusively around a novel. That doesn't mean books won't be involved. It just means that we will open the club up a bit more to a greater range of language based activities.

Students who decide to participate in the club will have a chance not only to play World of Warcraft, but to engage in several other online gaming experiences including Minecraft. The lessons will involve game play time and a range of language based activities. Students will share their work and reflections on our ABC WoW Blog.

It should be an exciting year full of online gaming and language learning at the ABC. We look forward to sharing more with you as the school year progresses.

The Puppet Project

Mr. Alfaro began running the LRC Puppet Project during as the LRC's contribution to Theatre Week. This project involved students creating Muppet type puppets from foam for use in school projects. The project proved so popular that it was extended for a total of 3 weeks. Puppet making is now well under way and the first puppet (Space Toad) who was featured in the video advertisement has now debuted as the main character in a student production. The Project will wrap up next Friday, with a few small puppet plays.