Thais' Project

What difference does it make?

Problem

Students' low self-steem and aggressive behaviour are related to their social invisibility and life experience with youth violence, social prejudice and inequality.

Project goal

Recreating the high school students' reality through sharing their cultural identities, experiences and dreams and simulating positive alternatives within the local community after developing ICT projects on Human Rights at English as a Foreign Language classes.

• WHEN: To start implementing in FEBRUARY 2014 and lasting throughout the year.
• WHO: EFL teacher with students.
• WHERE: School students' room and laboratory informatics.
• SCOPE: Create the students' own sense of belonging to their local community trough a collaborative ICT project on Human Rights.
  
• WHAT: An ICT project for students to be able to share and work together in group as a team.

SMART objectives

• To create a relaxed class atmosphere for students through communicative games in order to share their cultural identities, experiences and dreams among them.
• To develop students' speaking skills through using the language, developing new structures, enriching their vocabulary and practising pronunciation with register.
• To provide students with opportunities to exercise autonomy and work independently of the teacher as protagonists of drama activities.
• To learn to communicate with each other while working together to solve a common challenge on Human Rights, which involves the contribution and exchange of ideas, knowledge or resources to achieve the goal related to citizenship, life and career, and personal and social responsibility.
• To recognize areas of improvement among students within the school community in contributing to the development of a culture of peace.
• To involve students in discussions of global issues, production of materials and creative efforts engaging them through commitment to meaningful work with others.
• To learn through digital means, such as social networking, ICT literacy, technological awareness and simulation in a communicative and collaborative way.  
• To carry out individual action research among students and share experiences and findings in the meetings with the school staff.

Tasks and activities

• Schedule regular opportunities for guided and purposeful reflection on global issues based on students' autobiography.
• Devote some reflection time to orienting students to group work and problems they will encounter and allowing students to practice skills that will be required, such as active listening and observing, through some drama activities based on students' personal stories.
• Seek closure on emotional issues by the end of each reflective session.  
• Keep a journal with the students' reflections and photos of the classes. 
• Write the following sentence on the board: "If you want to see a difference – be the difference!"
• Perform a drama activity based on the Human Right issues presented by the textbook texts (respect for diversity and discrimination).
• Talk to students about the public school reality relating it to the drama activity.
• Ask students to identify different types of discrimination witnessed in school in small groups.
• Challenge students to assess individually their behaviour in the conflict situations they witnessed in school.
• Seek to engage each student in both group and individual reflection activities during the debates.
• Collect and analyse responses on the board to create mechanisms for making group decisions and working as a team in the classroom.
• Ask students to prepare and present a small sketch e.g., artwork, a composition, or theater piece on anti-discrimination that happen at school (sketches might include the following elements: an act of discrimination, negative consequences of such an act, conflict resolution, and an act of more positive, respectful behavior and decision-making).
• Delegate tasks to students in decision-making and in the organization of the classroom.
• Present the idea of an ICT project on Human Rights to students (allowing time for informal talk and issues that arise on the spot).
• Challenge each student to assess the knowledge, values, and skills he or she brings to the group ICT project. 
• Collect and analyse responses to decide which topic/s will be dealt with. 
• Create a rough Action Plan and Schedule of topics and issues to be addressed by each group ICT project.
• Create a Facebook group to be used for each class interactions with the teacher (announcements, informal sharing of ideas, resources and experiences, reflection, questions).
• Share professional development topics, students progress and action research findings with the school staff.
• Create a feedback form for students to complete in the middle and end of the year to consider changes to be made in the future and evaluate their behaviour.
• Share students' ICT projects online and with the school community.
• Schedule a Student Projects Exhibition to share the photos and the students projects with local community.