Illustrating a Story

 En el mes de abril estaremos celebrando la semana del libro y por esta razón la Red de Bibliotecas y Colegios IB hemos realizado el taller: Ilustrando una historia, impartido por Angélica Hernández, encargada de Arte la ABC.

Estuvimos ilustrando el poema “Barrilete” de Claudia Lars y el cuento de “La pileta sin chorro y la canastiada”, del escritor salvadoreño Salvador Salazar Arrué mejor conocido como Salarrué. 

Los participantes del taller quedamos fascinados con las técnicas simples de la ilustración básica y dejamos volar nuestra imaginación en donde la historia se convierte en un mundo fantástico y cada uno plasmó su creatividad en lienzos pintados con acuarelas.

La finalidad del taller es lograr que cada uno de los bibliotecarios de las diferentes escuelas que conforman la Red puedan replicar la actividad con la comunidad educativa y de esta forma promover la lectura a través del dibujo y la ilustración.

Más fotos en Flickr

Video: https://youtu.be/zjuiSJ0cJQA

La Academia Británica Cuscatleca en conjunto con la Asociación de Bibliotecarios de El Salvador han unido esfuerzos para ayudar en la formación profesional al gremio bibliotecario del país, a través de la realización de talleres, cursos y conferencias, entre otros.

Como bibliotecarias siempre estamos buscando el desarrollo profesional al igual que compartir buenas prácticas y crear puentes que ayuden al crecimiento de todos nuestros colegas en el país.

We will be celebrating Book Week during the month of April. In anticipation of this celebration, the IB Schools and Libraries Network carried out the workshop: Illustrating a Story, given by Angélica Hernández, Head of Art at the ABC.

During the session, the librarians worked on illustrations of the poem "Barrilete" by Claudia Lars and the story of “La Pileta sin Chorro y la Canastiada”, by Salvadoran writer Salvador Salazar Arrué, better known as Salarrué. 

The workshop participants were fascinated by the simple techniques of basic illustration they learned and were able to let their imaginations run wild, to a place where stories become fantastic worlds, each captured through creativity using watercolours on the canvas.

The purpose of the workshop was to ensure that each of the librarians from the different schools that make up the Network can replicate the activity with their educational community during Book Week, and thus promote reading through drawing and illustration.

More photos on Flickr

The Academy Britanica Cuscatleca, together with the Librarians Association of El Salvador have joined forces to help in the professional training of the country's library guild, through workshops, courses and conferences, among others.

As librarians, we value professional development opportunities, as well as the chance to share good practices and create links with our colleagues.

Brain Awareness Week 2022!

It was Brain Awareness Week this week!  The LRC prepared several activities for the community which we would like to share with you.

This year we celebrated Brain Week with a variety of activities including riddles, physical and mental exercises, as well as a display of our collection of books related to the brain. 

Displays were also put up outside of the LRC which sported many brain teasers and challenges. On many occasions, we observed groups of students trying to work them out while on breaks. Student enthusiasm was so contagious that one of our students, Simón Jarma even created his own puzzle which was placed outside the LRC for other students to view and answer.

During the week an additional activity was also carried out in conjunction with the PE Department in which12th grade students participated in a Yoga class. They enjoyed the activity very much and in doing so became more aware of how Yoga helps the mind and body. 

The LRC team had the opportunity to interview students who were involved in this activity so that we could all learn more about their experience participating in Yoga during Brain Week. We have included the links to these interviews, the activities as well as our photo gallery below.

Thank you to Mrs. Cecilia Hernández and her team for their support, as well as the participation of everyone else involved.

As always, we cordially invite you to stay tuned to our social networks to stay abreast of the many activities we carry out each week.

LRC Social Media

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Photos and videos

Spanish

¡Esta semana fue la Semana de Concientización sobre el Cerebro! El LRC preparó

varias actividades para la comunidad educativa que nos gustaría compartir con ustedes.

Este año 2022 celebramos Brain Week con muchas actividades entre ellas: acertijos,

ejercicios físicos y mentales, nuestro display con la colección de libros

relacionados al cerebro, etc.

En muchas ocasiones, observamos grupos de estudiantes tratando de resolverlos durante sus brakes. El entusiasmo de los estudiantes de secundaria contagió de tal manera que el estudiante Simón Jarma, creó su propio acertijo que fue colocado a las afueras del LRC para que así cualquier estudiante lo pudiese responder.

Adicionalmente se realizó una actividad en conjunto con el Departamento de PE con

estudiantes de 12th que participaron en la clase de Yoga. Disfrutaron mucho

de la actividad y al hacerlo se volvieron más conscientes de cómo el Yoga ayuda

a la mente y al cuerpo.

El equipo de LRC tuvo la oportunidad de entrevistar a los estudiantes que participaron en esta actividad para que todos pudiéramos aprender más sobre su experiencia participando en Yoga durante la Semana del Cerebro. Hemos incluido los enlaces a estas entrevistas, las actividades y nuestra galería de fotos a continuación.

Agradecemos el apoyo recibido de parte de Mrs. Cecilia Hernández y su equipo

por su apoyo, así como la participación de todos los involucrados.

Como siempre, los invitamos cordialmente a estar atentos a nuestras redes sociales

para estar al tanto de las múltiples actividades que realizamos cada semana.

LRC Social Media

• FB

• Youtube

• TW

• IG

• Blog

Fotos y videos

Mini Maker STEAM Fest Challenges

 Prior to the Christmas Holidays, we launched our Mini Maker STEAM Fest Challenges. This activity marks the first step on the path to STEAM Fest 2022, which will take place later in the school year.

In the end, several students submitted their work for this activity.  We received quite a variety of projects, many of which were developed based on ideas taken from the Science Buddies website, while others were innovations the students designed and developed. themselves. 

At the ABC we very much value student choice,  agency and endeavour so it was fitting that we recognise and highlight the work of the students who not only engaged in various challenges over the past 2 months but also shared their final projects with us. 

On February 11th, each of these students were asked to visit the LRC, where they received a special, quite unexpected prize and a thank you from the organisers for taking part and for sharing their work. They can now choose whether to use their prizes to explore their favourite books or invest in further STEAM challenges at the Libreria Internacional.

Please do visit the STEAM Fest Mini Maker Challenge page for further details on this activity.

Building Empathy

 

Building Empathy

Our 6th-grade students are currently working on an MYP (Middle Years Programme)unit that focuses on three ATLs (Approaches to Learning), one of which is Practicing Collaboration Skills: Practice Empathy. 

The unit sets out to teach this ATL across a wide variety of experiences, one of which was a practical activity done these past two weeks. 

The Statement of Inquiry for the unit is The creative development of innovative products designed to function for an individual's needs, can help lessen inequalities. Through the inquiry process students will be researching designing, developing and testing their 3D solutions for mobility challenges. It can be difficult for students to understand these challenges if they have never experienced them so we set out to give them a few mobility challenges of their own.

This is what two students had to say about that experience.

"This activity made us see how people with disabilities struggle to do things that for us are not complicated but for them are very challenging. It also made us feel disappointed because sometimes we make jokes about those topics when it is a very serious issue. What we did see was how disabled people lived their normal lives. We did this through some “games” which helped us understand what people felt.

We felt very stressed and frustrated because we couldn't do simple things like write our name or even get a cup. We think that we did this activity because it was going to be fun and to reflect on how people with disabilities live their normal lives. This made us feel guilty because we sometimes complain about little things when people with disabilities wish to have legs, arms or other parts of the human body. We hope you reflect on these issues and think about how people live their lives missing a part of their bodies that make their life complicated. 

The question we have to ask you is what would you do if you were them? "

Thanks.

By Gabriel Cañenguez and Adriana Guzmán

Paper Circuit Christmas Cards

 

 Creative learning at the LRC is alive and well. This week students had the opportunity to construct light-up  Christmas cards by building paper circuits, which use paper, copper tape, battery packs and LED lights.

This is one of several Christmas-themed activities brought to our students by way of the LRC Makerspace. 

A big thanks to our team of librarians for all of the exciting projects they have run for our students.

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Visit with the Maquilishuat School

 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.

Supporting Local Universities

 

 

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. 

Please click on the link to view more photos from this event.