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In Level 3 de ESO, all Advanced English students (92, this year) participated in the Global Classrooms project, during the Fall Semester. It is a comprehensive , multi-dimensional project. The framework for Global Classrooms has been designed to challenge students participate in a decorum as delegations; the prcedures and structure are ostensibly the same as the United Nations. Students prepare detailed research, write, and speak about a topic that is affecting many nations (this year, the topic was Juvenille Crime and Violence). Each group of 2 students represented a delegation of a different country (i.e. Venezuela, France, ect).
The overarching objective for the project is for students to collaborate with one another, so they can begin to write proposals and potential resolutions to mitigate Juvenille Crime and Violence in their assigned country. The educational framework for Global Classrooms has been adopted by many schools across the world. In Spain, the Community of Madrid designs a culminating conference, every January, in which dozens of schools participate. Each school chooses 10 students to represent it in the conference. Below, I have attached some photos of groups of delegations (with parent consent, of course) that attended this year´s conference:
The Global Classrooms Project empowers students to carefully conduct research, write essays, review feedback, write speeches, and present formal speeches in groups. As mentioned in the introduction, each delegation gets assigned the same broad topic -- this year it was Juvenille Crime and Violence -- and it is up to the students to develop research and create solutions within that topic. Students are challenged with developing rational solutions to improve the health and well-being of the Juvinille Crime and Violence issues in their assigned countries, as well as developing proposals with other delegrations (classmates) to create solutions.
Video Blog
In the link below, I created and published a video blog; it discusses how the Global Classrooms Project has uniquely challenged both my students at I.E.S Diego Velazquez and me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVf1-SCSPIM&feature=youtu.be
As mentioned, in the video, most of the students, subconsciously, develop soft skills, as they continue to work on this project. I believe students continuously develop the following life skills:
1. Learn how to collaborate with one person to create a final draft
2. Interpret feedback, edit writing and speaking skills
3. Practice teamwork with other delegations (student pairs) to develop "resolutions" to the given topic
All of these life skills have helped students achieve new academic heights. They are able to develop new methods
Project Analysis
The aforementioned comprehensible input, detailed "project" instruction, and personalized feedback model can apply to Global Classrooms project, too. Since students told me that they had never completed research, written essays, or delivered speeches -- prior to this project -- it was clear to me that they needed some gradual, guided assistance to complete the project. This was evident, especially at the beginning of the project; they needed guidance in conceptualizing how to research, write, and speak about a topic that they did not know about, regarding a country did not have familiarity.
Comprehensible Input:
Since the Global Classrooms project has been increasingly growing, in Spain, for the past few years, there have been a number of resources available to help Global Classroom Language Assistants instruct their students. I thought it was essential for students to participate in the research, writing, and speaking components, within the perimeters of the Global Classrooms initiative.
A. Blog of Research materials -- I provided students with a blog that contained useful resources that were relevant to the project. Students could streamline their research, by visiting this blog. They could also help one another, by informing me of other credible sources to upload on the blog. In addition, the blog contains motivational guidance and other useful tools related to the Global Classrooms Project. The link to the blog is here; many of the links were offered by Fulbright Scholars, and they were offered only to Global Classrooms Language Assistants, so I was not able to give a proper citation to them in ¨references¨ page. Still, I designed the structure of the blog, here:
https://dvglobalclassroom.blogspot.com/
B. Direct instruction -- Plagiarism, Citations, and Research
To illuminate the importance of proper research and citing, I would show students websites and examples of how to properly utilize academic information from the Internet. This, too, was a new concept for many of them. The Global Classsrooms teachers and I spent a lot of energy demonstrating the proper way to conduct research. We would then discuss how to properly quote, cite, and paraphrase their research. Here is a link to Purdue University's prominent website on plagiarism, which was cohesive resource for students to use
C. Online Resources --
As I was planning and facilitating instruction for the Global Classrooms Project, it became clear that other schools have published Model United Nations (MUN) materials on the Internet. I utilized YouTube to supplement my instruction and reinforce some of the concepts I wanted students to practice in their essays and speeches. For example, I provided visual learners videos and websites to give insight into our general topic of Juvenile Crime and Violence. I believe this particular TedTalk piqued the students' interest in the Global Classrooms Project, and it helped get them excited about how to research relevant topics, write about their countries, and deliver understandable speeches. Discussing the strengths of other public speakers - and reinforcing the need to deliver loud and clear instruction -- raised students' awareness and aptitude for delivering their speeches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWNTMmktoCQ
Personalized Feedback --- Rubric to help students work
Students received feedback on their "position papers" (research papers), as well as feedback during the Mock Conference. The teachers and I required them to complete research papers and written speeches, and we assessed their written submissions and oral performance as grades. The rubric below was given to them, at the beginning of the project, so they could see the criteria upon which we were grading their papers and speaking participation in the Madrid Mock Conference. Once again, I used a the same rubric provided by the Fulbright Scholars, which was offered to all language assistants working on the Global Classrooms project:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YR6LssLKeK6cEbDwY-orMZnW181afDxsDQG1kUV0LQA/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QMc2Tw4OaymzgHaroydurhU_h0bHcWffB1baWIlcNhY/edit
Final Note: How Global Classrooms can Adapt to other Contexts
In summary, the Global Classrooms initiative -- the Model UN framework -- embodies some core learning objectives of student-creativity and collaboration. The concepts introduced to students -- researching, writing, articulating, debating -- are fundamental life skills they will need to develop throughout their academic careers; therefore, it is never too early in their education to begin to practice. As they cultivate the ability to extract and develop information from web-based (hopeful credible) sources, they will learn to become more abstract learners.
In a pragmatic sense, teachers are utilizing class time during English Class of 3 de ESO to develop ideas for the Global Classrooms project. I believe this is a "Least Restrictive Environment" for students to participate in for their English classes, since it challenges them to complete learning assessments beyond their language fluency. Fortunately, students English classes have become more sophisticated and have moved beyond grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure. With the Global Classrooms project, students are synthesizing their thoughts into creative research papers and monologues. Additionally, they are developing team-building skills and learning how overcome academic challenges with their classmates.
In education, today, I believe it is critical that we challenge children to cultivate critical-thinking skills. It can and should be done in all disciplines. For example, foreign-language classes could design learning activities with the MUN framework (i.e. Spanish courses in the United States), or some underdeveloped nations could adapt some of the concepts to help their own issues (i.e. nations living in poverty could challenge students discuss regional solutions).
The world is more interconnected now than it has ever been, due to technological advances and globalization. It is very possible that our educational communities can utilize resources to discover solutions to some of the most challenging issues in our globalized society. Students need to develop critical-thinking skills, and I believe communicative-based teaching methods is the best pedagogy to maximize each student's potential.
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