Anusca Ferrari is a lifelong learner interested in technologies for education, digital competence and entrepreneurial teaching and learning. Previously a teacher, she now works at European Schoolnet for the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition and the I-LINC project. @anusca_ferrari

 

Tomislava Recheva tries to raise awareness about the importance of developing digital and entrepreneurial skillsin all her activities. She also works at European Schoolnet, in particular on the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition and the I-LINC project. @t_recheva

Since curricula is strict in my country, it is almost impossible to convince higher authorities to create a new subject, and even if it is, it is usually closely connected to the area of economy and all other aspects are under minded. Therefore, I believe that professional development on the topic is needed.

Many teachers already implement different entrepreneurial elements nto their subjects, but they are usually not aware of that and these are not recognized.

As a principal or method of teaching - I am very happy and proud to participate in a project "Erasmus+ Street" which aims at developing teaching methods and techniques closely connected to real life situations by developing competences in communication in foreign languages by building a small city in the school environment (hotel, mall, cafe, library, shops etc.) where students simulate real life situations and learn by doing. The teacher acts as a mentor and facilitator and only observes the process, but uses different methods and techniques in order to motivate students to self evaluate and peer evaluate.

 Question Week #1

http://www.i-linc.eu/web/entrepreneurial-teachers

Do you think that you are already fostering creativity and opportunities spotting in your students in one way or another?
Plase share particular examples and experience from your own classes by replying to this thread.


 9/12/17 9:39 PM as a reply to Tomislava Recheva.
 Reply Humanitarian work was on the agenda of the English Club in my former VET high school of economics, law and trade. During holidays, like Halloween, Christmas, St Valentine's Day etc. students were asked to develop different ideas of collecting money for charity. We started with almost no money at all, we organized workshops and we printed cards, made cookies and sweets, made toys from recycled materials, built a stand and sold those on the stand in the school, as well as bigger companies in the city, organized movie nights, parties etc for our students and sold tickets, all in order to collect money for people in need. Eventually, we had enough money to buy supplies for our next activity and enough money to give to charity. Their biggest gesture was to visit the sick children in hospital on Christmas Day and bring them presents.
Students(teenagers 15-18 years old) were so motivated and eager to work that they voluntarely came on weekends and holidays to take part in the workshops. I adore them!

Document, Reflect and Share – Throughout the challenge, learners document the experience using audio, video, and photography. This ongoing collection of content provides the resources for reflection, informative assessment and evidence of learning.

Find out more about CBL here. If you need practical examples make sure to watch this example from a primray school and the report from an Implementation project. 

 

The webinar from Paz de Vera focused on some entrepreneurial challenges. If you could not attend the webinar, you will find the recording and the interactive presentation in the I-LINC Entrepreneurial teachers community from 14 September 2017. 

 

As Paz explained, entrepreneurial learning is about opening your mind, and seeing things from a different perspective. She asks students to look at things (everyday places) in a different way. This kind of perspective (and the feelings that go with it) are the entrepreneurial learning lens that empower students to take their future in their hands.   

 

We are currently asking teachers from all over Europe to participate to one of those challenges: the 5 euros challenge. This challenge aims to foster creativity, working in teams, communication, management of resources, etc. The challenge consists of asking your students to come up with creative ideas on how to generate more money out of an initial investment of 5 euros. All they need is an idea, which they need to try in reality for two hours and see how much money they can get, and 5 euros.
Are you interested in participating? Find more guidelines here.

Entrepreneurship education through challenge-based learning is also the focus of the YouthStart project. The project has developed 40 challenges, which aim to allow students to experience the effect of their actions, by engaging in real-life situations. All challenges are grouped in themes (e.g. language, environment, sport, economics) according to their content. Some challenges may be used for several themes.

 

Why not trying the Recycling adds Value – New Creations from the Rubbish Bin Challenge. The challenge has been adapted for primary and for secondary school students. Challenge your students to collect useless materials to create something valuable. This activity fosters creativity, ecological awareness, appreciating the value of things, etc. 

 

Fostering entrepreneurial learning - as it goes with any other innovative method - implies a change in assessment. One cannot teach children how to run and test them on how they jump. Entrepreneurial learning is a method that is student-centred and based on hands-on activities. Therefore, the assessment of the entrepreneurial learning has to be in line with what the method is fostering. 

 

There are three main functions of assessment: diagnostic, formative, and summative.
 Diagnostic assessment aims to analyse pupils' capabilities and aptitudes as a basis for planning. It established what students are able and not able to do, so that teachers can plan their lessons accordingly. Formative assessment gathers evidence about pupils' progress to influence teaching methods and priorities. It is used to help each student to achieve the best of their potential. Teachers can therefore make adjustments to their students’ learning in order to improve the achievement of their students. The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate (judge and grade) student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. 


Assessment poses some delicate and relevant questions that we will not be able to solve here. However, we would like you to consider how you are assessing your students. Is the assessment that your students receive beneficial in making them learn better?  

 

Assessment and evaluation are a strong component of entrepreneurial learning. First of all, entrepreneurial mindset is about fostering resilience. Enterprising people will not stop at the first obstacle. They will on the contrary take every failure as an opportunity to learn from. In schools, we tend to provide a different image of assessment, one that sticks a label on a student's head. Failure has a very negative connotation for young people and in schools, while for entrepreneurial minds it is perceived as another way to learn from experience.

Therefore, working on assessment through the lenses of entrepreneurial education allows us to focus on the main aim of assessment: a check point to understanding if we are reaching our objectives or not.  

 

The framework of Assessment for Learning (AfL) recognises the priority of promoting students' learning and understanding, and highlights the impact of self-assessment and peer assessment in raising children's achievement. You can read this short article to understand better what AfL is: https://www.rdc.udel.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/InsideBlackBox.pdf 

 

Self-assessment helps students reflect on their own learning. On the one hand, they take responsibility for their own learning, by being the ones who check if their goals have been met. Self-assessment can take different forms and shapes and can be applied to different age group. For instance, you can use a simple smiley system with younger children. This can be in the form of flashcard that they put up simultaneously (by choosing one smiley face) at the end of an explanation or as an individual activity (where they would tick the right smiley).

For older ages or more advanced learners, you can have rubrics. A rubric is a scoring tool that explicitly represents the performance expectations for an assignment or piece of work. A rubric divides the assigned work into component parts and provides clear descriptions of the characteristics of the work associated with each component, at varying levels of mastery.

Peer assessment is another form of AfL: students evaluate their peers’ work and have their work evaluated by peers. This is again used with the aim of improving achievement for each students, so, again, it is a form of learning. Peer assessment gives students feedback on the quality of their work, and can as well provide them with ideas and strategies for improvement. Very often, in fact, learners have strategies that are different from those suggested by the teachers, but they might not be at ease sharing them with the whole classroom. At the same time, the student who evaluates improves his/her own learning and self-confidence. For this form of assessment, you can use rubrics, or targets. The images below show you examples of targets for primary and secondary students. They have been developed by Maria Isabel Gonzalez @Isabel_Gonzal and although they are in Spanish, you can perfectly understand their purpose. 

The last facet of AfL is the assessment that is done by the teacher. This assessment, as the previous forms (self-assessment and peer-assessment) is based on formative assessment, i.e. on the principle that assessment should help learners improve their achievements. This is the perspective that is offered by the Growth Mindset principles. After studying the behavior of thousands of children, Carol Dweck coined the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset to describe the underlying beliefs people have about learning and intelligence. When students believe they can get smarter, they understand that effort makes them stronger. It is therefore important to think about the way in which we praise students.   
 

If we praise their intelligence, they might stop putting the extra effort in their work. If we praise their commitment, they will probably keep up with their engagement. Create together with your students a chart with growth mindset statements, like here in this picture.

Remember that you can carry on the conversation in the I-LINC community where we add different threads on challenge-based learning for entrepreneurial education and on assessment.

 

One way of boosting one’s resilience and self-efficacy is learning through experience. This may mean one’s own experience but also the experience of others. 
Learning through experience is, however, not simply learning by doing. It is also a reflection on what we do and on how we can do it differently.

Selfie-Entrepreneur - designed with the purpose to help students learn from others and find their role models. Paz Fernández de Vera, Elena Rodríguez and Isabel González, came up with the selfie entrepreneur blog where students interview an entrepreneur, take a selfie, and share the image and selfie through the blog.
http://www.i-linc.eu/web/portal/selfie-entrepreneur

 

The Mindfulness in Schools project has been determined to promote the culture of mindfulness across the UK by also developing mindfulness curricula for 11-18 year- old students and children aged 7 -11.

 

A simple activity you can start with is the Body Scan whereas you ask students to focus their attention to their body from toes to the top of their head, bringing awareness to and accepting any sensations. This is an activity which is used often at the beginning of a school day to help students focus better throughout the day. 

Primary schools:
 http://theteacherbag.com/2017/05/20/awakening-the-genius-in-you-primary-classroom-genius-hour/
Guidelines for setting up a Genious hour:
 https://hamikoviniho-my.sharepoint.com/personal/kornelia_lohynova_cloud_zha_sk/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?folderid=013855da46f4f4e0cbda62b43a4f2684f&authkey=AS-i9ImIq3zievZjf5_fo2U&action=view

- Self-awareness: conscious knowledge of one's own character, feelings, motives, and desires;
- Self-management: the ability to regulate one’s emotions to handle stress, control impulses, and tackle obstacles; to set and monitor progress toward goals;
- Social awareness: the ability to empathize with others; to understand and adapt to the social and ethical context and norms;
- Relationship skills: the ability to communicate with others clearly, listen actively, cooperate, tackle conflict situations, and seek and offer help when needed;
- Responsible decision-making: the ability to make informed choices, taking into consideration ethical standards, safety concerns, social norms, evaluation of consequences of various actions, and the well-being of self and others.

What can you do? In order to foster social and emotional learning a teacher needs to know his/her students better. Try to establish a more personal relationship with your students. Take time to get to know them individually and allow time for them to get to know each other. 

You can start with short mindfulness activities to foster self-awareness at the beginning of your class and build on this by introducing daily short activities, focusing on different aspects of S&E learning:

 

CV of Failures: Try to adapt the activity of CV of Failures and help students tackle stress and disappointment by asking them to  think and write down everything they have tried but have not managed to succeed in during a project/a month/ a school year, etc. Facilitate a discussion between them and help them reflect on lessons learnt.

 

Conversation in pairs: Ask your students to pair up with a student they don’t know that much/they are not close to and give them questions to ask each other. Afterwards, each student introduces their partner to the class, speaking as if they were their partner. This exercise fosters active listening and strengthens communication skills of students.  

 

Quotations discussions: Select one quote and share it with the class. Ask students to write down, on their own: (1) what they think the quote means, and (2) how it applies in their own life. Then ask for volunteers to share their thoughts with the whole group/class. You can as well ask them to share their reflections in an anonymous way, for instance by using Mentimeter or Todaysmeet.

 

This last activity is part of the Workouts for Social-Emotional Learning, developed by WKCD (What Kids Can Do). Find more of these workouts here. 

Empathy

 

Establishing schools as safe and friendly environment are crucial for the development of empathy and ethical thinking. Entrepreneurial learning as a method could be instrumental in fostering these skills, which are the foundation for social awareness and responsible decision-making. 

 

For this purpose, learning needs to be contextualised. Always try to build situations which are similar to real life and allow students to reflect about their perspective and those of others. In order to step into the shoes of others and understanding their feelings and perspectives, one needs questions such as: What if this happened to you..? How would you react if a person treated you in this way..? What would you feel if..?

 

A good way to foster social awareness among students is by making the gratitude, apology, appreciation exercise. Ask them to think about things they are grateful for, persons they are thankful to, people they owe an apology to or situations they feel apologetic about. This exercise could take various forms: a personal journal, gratitude jar, group discussion. 

 

A great suggestion, developed by YouthStart is the Friendship Bag challenge. Through this activity students learn to interact with each other in an empathic manner, taking in consideration each others feelings and needs. Furthermore, they find ways to solve conflicts together. 

Find also a very useful Toolkit for promoting Empathy, prepared by Ashoka. 

Empathy helps a person take decisions in a more responsible way. Solving real life dilemmas in class is a good way to introduce pupils to ethical thinking. Use scenarios – stories that can engage them and encourage to discuss and debate ethical issues. Prepare questions to spark discussion.

 

Here is an example: Someone left money sticking out of an ATM machine and there's nobody in sight. Nobody but Ben, that is. If he takes it, does that make him a thief? What should he do?

 

Real-life dilemmas help students to see the different nuances of the meaning of acting responsibly. You can explore many other scenarios at the Daily Dilemma Archive. 

 

 Within this learning event, we have tried to provide as much practical examples as possible. Of course, the list of things you can do in the classroom to teach through entrepreneurship is infinite. To help you find more ideas, we suggest you to check the EntreLearn, a booklet, created by a teacher for teachers, with more than 60 activities to boost a sense of initiative and an entrepreneurial mindset in your students. The booklet is available at the Resources section of the I-LINC Entrepreneurial Teachers Community. 

 

As part of this learning event, moreover, we strongly recommend you to take part to the 5 euros challenge and the Selfie-Entrepreneur activity. Those teachers participating to one of the two mentioned activity will receive an I-LINC badge (for your Twitter and Facebook profiles) and become an I-LINC ambassador. The ambassadors of I-LINC are those people (teachers, educators, youth, organization) that support the development of entrepreneurial and digital skills in young people. 

I find mindfulness very helpful for creating a relaxed working atmosphere with focused and open-minded children. I love the idea of Body Scan and I am going to try that first thing in the morning. What I practice in class, is that every child has a set of emot-icon flash cards and the second thing they do, after greeting me is to flash the cards expressing their emotions. They are usually happy faces but if someone is sad or tired or bored we discuss it or try other techniques to overcome it. We use the flash cards at the end of the class as well so they can reflect after class (smart, happy, tired etc) and we have a discussion. My students are 6-9 years old.