Maker 02 Teacher's Guide Unit 4

Dear teachers, The English language can be the door to a number of opportunities, and by being a teacher, you can truly inspire students and engage them in a life-long commitment to learning. The #MAKERS series allows you to explore an array of contexts and topics and provides you with ideas and tasks that can enrich your practice as an educator, positively impacting the life of numerous preteens and teenagers by acting as a catalyst for change through the use of this series. We believe that teachers can change the world through the achievements of their students, and by teaching them English, it is possible to help students become better communicators, more sensitive citizens, more critical human beings and more engaged individuals. The role of teachers should be that of a guide, a facilitator and an instructor—not the source of all knowledge. By seeing your role as that of a facilitator, you will be able to help your students become more independent by guiding them into acting creatively and thinking critically when faced with challenges. A teacher can be a powerful role-model, so it is also important to constantly reflect upon your own communication and critical thinking skills, as well as upon your level of engagement. The way you demonstrate these abilities and your passion towards teaching and learning can go a long way and maximize the potential of any material you use. In the #MAKERS Teacher’s Guide, you are going to find ideas to enrich your teaching practice, but also input for reflection that will prompt you to constantly consider your role and reassess your beliefs about the teaching and learning process. Your attitude can certainly impact the success of your students by generating engagement, promoting a respectful and fruitful learning environment, helping them develop both cognitive and social and emotional skills and providing them with a consistent role-model of fairness, sensitivity, collaboration and respect. We hope you and your students enjoy working with #MAKERS ! The goal of the #MAKERS series is to innovate the process of learning a foreign language by turning students into empowered citizens who can better understand their role in an ever-changing world. The series brings a range of materials and activities that will expose students to current and meaningful topics—both for their local realities and from a global point of view—and invite them to develop the necessary abilities to communicate effectively in a globalized society. All the work is contextualized and focuses on communication, so that what students learn is actually meaningful to their realities. In this process, students will be invited to compare different cultures and perspectives, explore the language that people actually use, design and create their own projects, reflect on relevant events and issues, pose meaningful questions and act like real protagonists of their learning. Creating an environment where this kind of learning can be achieved is an important step towards a more effective framework for international education. In 2015, UNESCO released a publication entitled Global Citizenship Education: Topics and Learning Objectives to guide educators who wish to prepare learners for the challenges of the 21st century. One of the key elements mentioned in this document, which is also one of the guiding forces of the #MAKERS series, is the importance of considering how students learn—and not just focusing on what they learn. Ensuring that the learning process revolves around the students themselves, giving them a voice to tell their own stories and connecting new content with their lives are pivotal to the process of raising awareness of what meaningful citizenship should be today. In this series, you will find the necessary resources to raise students’ awareness to the fact that we all belong to a broader community and are all united by a common humanity, thus developing skills like tolerance, mutual respect and critical thinking through effective communication in English. The #MAKERS series has been developed to foster learning in a learner-centered model, based on content that is relevant, useful, current and that can be turned into active knowledge and true understanding. It places students as the protagonists of their learning and global citizens who need social and emotional skills so as to actively contribute to both local and global issues. In order to do so, the series encourages students to join the maker movement and experiment with the scientific method to develop higher- order thinking skills and the autonomy they will need in the future. The following topics present the most prominent overarching principles of the series. Students as Protagonists In the contemporary world, it is essential for people of all ages to act as leaders in the situations with which they are faced. However, in order for learners to be able to do so, schools have to allow them, from a very young age, to make decisions and actively take part in relevant and meaningful contexts. Thus, it is essential to foster skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, autonomy and creativity. #MAKERS guides learners to behave in a more autonomous way. Autonomy is directly related to the ability of asking the right questions and understanding the need to be fully prepared and constantly learning. Teachers face the challenge of both asking questions that trigger deep thinking and empowering students to come up with their own questions, for which they should look for the answers themselves (instead of waiting for someone else to give them these answers). Questions can be asked with a number of objectives, such as to assess previous