IB: A model for the future

The teaching methods used at Agora Lledó International School promote investigation and active participation in the students so that they are the true drivers of their own learning.  The pupils have an active role in the classroom, they analyse their surroundings, they show respect and tolerance when speaking with their classmates, they work together in an experiential way in a diversity of areas, and they know the importance of effort. The teacher is there to motivate and guide the educational development so that the pupils find out the answers for themselves, while acquiring vital skills such as communication and teamwork and building up their knowledge so that they are able to get on in the real world.

Our teaching body constantly assesses its own teaching methods and looks into new ones ensuring that the best teaching innovations from around the world are being used. The strengths of our current methodology are: our awareness of multiple intelligences, which helps us to pinpoint each student's strengths; the KTAV methodology, which adapts itself to the different learning rates of the pupils; the innovative project we call «Highly prepared people», a register of the academic assessment of each of our pupils throughout their school life that enables us to give an objective evaluation of their progress.

Motivation and Challenge

Students learn more and better when they find their work stimulating and sufficiently challenging. This is why our pupils are exposed to motivating, interactive and experiential methods upon which our “Learn how to learn” concept is based. They are inspired and motivated by their work, especially when the work presents an appropriate degree of challenge. Thus, they develop scientific skills and a critical approach in our science labs, while cultural and sports outings take them away from their everyday surroundings and contribute to their all-round education.

Personalised teaching methods

We believe our teachers should carry out coaching by combining the available resources so that each student performs as well as they can. The first step is to assess their capabilities, aptitudes and preferences in order to personalise the methodologies by applying a wide range of teaching techniques to the development of each student: project work, direct instruction, inverted classrooms and critical thinking are a few of these techniques.

Collaborative Learning

Teamwork is the basis of collaborative learning, this is why communicative and social interaction are a daily part of our students' lives as they are essential to the full development of their skills. The students are fully involved in each of the work teams and they have an active role: all the members of the group are responsible for attaining a common goal, thus acquiring values such as responsibility and empathy.

Critical Thinking

At Agora Lledó International School we want our pupils to «learn how to learn» and, by doing this, they acquire full intellectual autonomy. We work on certain skills from an early age by stimulating critical thinking at the Preschool stage. Throughout the educational stages students learn how to delve into information, analyse, assess, create and develop their own ideas as main players in their own learning.

Assessment and Feedback

Student assessment is an on-going process that is constantly evolving and improving. This process is based on a variety of sources and methods that go from marking tasks or classroom observation to conversations with the pupils and analysis of their work. Thanks to this feedback, our teachers can identify the next steps to be taken in each of our students' learning and they adapt the teaching-learning process accordingly to obtain the best academic results possible.

At Agora Lledó International School we know how important technology is for a successful career in the future and that's why it is part of our students' daily life to the same extent that it is of ours. In addition, technology is an educational tool with many advantages and resources: coding, for example, has a wide scope of possibilities for resolving problems which help the students to develop their capacity to «learn how to learn». This provides them with intellectual and learning resources as well as a sound base for their future careers. It is why, from 5th year of primary onwards, our students use iPads in 5 of their subjects.

As part of our bid in favour of technology, we have an IT classroom with 25 PC's and two mobile classrooms for Primary and Secondary that each have 25 laptops. Baccalaureate students can also bring their own devices to school. The teachers also have a further 35 laptops for their own use and a further 45 for each tutorial. In addition to this, there are 50 fixed projectors in the classrooms, 3 digital classrooms with Tablet PC's, projectors and Wacom tablets, 9 smartboards, 8 robots for Robotics and another 4 for Computer Science, 35 tablets for the teachers on the Gavea Project, plus 360 tablets for pupils and a further 12 for Preschool pupils, 5 drones, video cameras, digital cameras, servers and control units plus a 3D printer.

The Gavea Project

Agora Lledó, as part of a Globeducate group wide initiative, is developing the GAVEA project (GAVEA is a Spanish acronym for the Virtual Classroom Management for Academic Excellence) where tablets, smartboards and interactive material are used to motivate the pupils when carrying out their school tasks, always under their teachers' supervision and during a limited amount of time each day. Therefore, new technological tools improve learning, nurture the development of cognitive skills and favour cooperative activities, as well as provide the pupils with basic digital skills.

Computer Science

Agora Lledó International School has Computer Science subjects in Preschool and Primary school. This is an innovative method whereby our pupils learn coding and discover how to create software and applications that we use daily. This makes it possible for pupils to take advantage of the learning possibilities of coding, which opens their minds to new solutions and opens up a range of future career possibilities. Furthermore, they take part in activities such as «The Hour of Code», an international collaborative event which is sponsored by the world's top companies in the field of technology.

Creative Technology

Creativity is one of the values that make our educational project stand out from the rest, this is why we offer a variety of subjects which technology is an essential part of in order to develop that creativity. For example, in the Secondary Technology students work with a 3D printer as a learning and creative tool: they learn how to carry out projects from the early design stages to the printing and assembling stages. This allows students to get a real knowledge and feeling for novel solutions and digital tools that are in high demand on the labour market.

Gamification

From Preschool onwards, the pupils use the school's tablets with programmes that have been adapted to their needs. These platforms make it possible to work on values, cognitive capacities and multiple intelligences all while enjoying and in a play-like environment called Gamification that provides personalised information regarding each student's development to both teachers and parents. This boosts their learning of English, serves as a natural source of motivation and personalises the digital content to suit the students' capabilities and performance making it possible to analyse their capacities, weaknesses and strengths in real-time. Thus, we use technology applied to teaching to personalise and improve the little ones' learning process.

Robotics

From the age of 6, the students start to work with robotics material called «Dash & Dot», which is ideal for providing across-the-board curricular content, working on projects and helping the students to Learn by Doing. This material has been designed to boost fundamental abilities such as creative problem-solving, computational thinking, organisational abilities and decision making. Furthermore, 4th ESO and Baccalaureate students have the chance to be part of the Robotics group where, through the use of Lego Mindstorms Education EV3 educational material, they can build, programme and try out solutions for the real world.

In order to improve every school and ensure educational excellence, Globeducate has implemented a quality framework we call The Globeducate Platinum Standard. The aim of the Platinum Standard is to help the Globeducate to evaluate the quality of the teaching they offer. Its principles are backed by some of the best practices used in educational systems worldwide, and the mission and values of Globeducate. It is based on the use of quality indicators that help establish improvement plans in areas such as the effectiveness of leadership, quality in teaching, and the progress and well-being of pupils.

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