Author: Sandra Serrano

The ‘THP Entrepreneurs’ project is THP International’s most recent pedagogical project for students to create their own ‘fictional’ -or not 😉 – company from scratch.

What does this project consist of? Students are together in one big group and they have to develop their company from scratch, organizing themselves in the different departments a normal company has. This project is a phenomenal learning opportunity for many reasons:

Students have to assemble a number of potentially lucrative ideas and then make a sensible choice of which idea to exploit, based on a process of negotiation and productive debate.

Students have to organize themselves in departments, said division is to be democratic, based on their strengths, interests and goals. This motivates self-evaluation of their weaknesses and strengths, acknowledgement of their peers’ abilities, the capacity to negotiate, and the practice of decision-making. For example, psychology students could be part of the Human Resources department while humanities students could form the Marketing and communication departments. 

Once their departments have been created and organized, students need to carry out the necessary activities to start a business: finding funding, fixing objectives, establishing a marketing strategy, evaluating the team’s performance,…

Throughout the process, students -now entrepreneurs- will likely find different difficulties; but with the constant help of their teachers, they will learn to overcome said difficulties and the necessity to be resilient and never lose sight of their goals. 

This project is a perfect example of the values we all share at THP International school: we are a family, we know how to evolve from our mistakes and how to always be respectful and caring with each other; we are all students, we are constantly learning new things; we create second opportunities, we know the importance to keep going after we have made a mistake; we prepare students to solve future challenges, we realize the necessity of motivating entrepreneurship and creativity; and we develop learning in different educational environments, we believe in the necessity of taking education beyond the classroom to prepare students for the ‘real’ world. 

Starting next week, THP International students will sit their mock exams. Mock exams, which take place at the end of each term, are ‘un-official´ exams done under official exams rules and guidelines.

At THP, we take mock exams very seriously and encourage students to do the same. Why?  Because, although mocks are ‘un-official’, they provide teachers and educational body with information about both the students’ progress and the way they would perform in an exam.

However, not everything has to do with grades and performance, mock exams are also very useful in terms of nerves and anxiety management as well as in letting the students become familiar with the rules and restrictions that apply in official exams. By having mock exams taking place a few times before the actual exams, students get to know and follow the pertinent norms, manage their study time, and control their exam-nerves.

On top of this, mock exams are also an ideal opportunity for families to learn how to be supportive of their children during exam season. Due to the aforementioned exam anxiety, exam season can sometimes take a toll on the whole family’s wellbeing, as it sometimes leads to irascible children. Our educational psychologist insists on the need to understand and respect these feelings and try to show support as frequently as possible, always reminding the child that a grade doesn’t define them or their worth and merely shows their performance on a given area.

Reproducing exam conditions is a must for teachers, students, and families, as it makes exams not an enemy to fear but a longtime friend to greet with confidence.

Nowadays, teenagers seem to be quite interested in ‘making money’, probably due to the ongoing narrative on the internet that equates money with personal success and happiness. However, most teenagers lack a basic financial literacy that could actually help them make the most of their money and manage their finances proficiently when reaching adulthood. 

By the time these teenagers become adults and face the job market and the finance world, they have no basic financial education. With the exception of the ones who have studied degrees like Business Administration or Law, those who have studied science or literature -for example- start their jobs and adult lives with no idea of how to interpret a paycheck or how a mortgage works.

What is worse, a lot of these ‘new adults’ don’t value the worth of money and therefore don’t know how to make the most of it and be able to monetise their knowledge, aptitudes or ideas. 

At THP, we believe that financial literacy is a must for teenagers, who are the future of society, to be successful and enjoy stability and abundance in their adult lives.

Among the many innovative and helpful educational tools and techniques employed at THP International, there is the ‘High-performance’ class methodology. But, what exactly is a ‘High-performance’ class? A ‘High-performance’ class consists of a guided and structured study time to track and boost the performance of the students. Each day, the HP session will be dedicated to one of the student’s subjects -the choice of subject will be based on the student’s progress and the observation of their ‘weak’ points that should be improved. The structure of this classes is as follows:

In-person teaching remains the most widely used modality of education, but there’s no doubt of the importance of incorporating technology in the classroom in order to adapt and prepare students for the future. It is important to understand that choosing the resources you use to complement education can make or break how well students do. This is true of education at any level.

Whether you’re at a primary school, high school, or university, there’s a tool that can be incredibly useful: podcasts, which can help students of all ages learn. They’re a great way to make lessons accessible, engaging and informative. Podcasts are an effortless way to take in information, and they can keep students engaged for longer. Here are some reasons why using podcasts in education helps students learn:

When you are learning a new language, we all know that the key is to put it in practice as much as possible, but here are some tricks to ace your AL Spanish exam beyond the obvious need of using the language as much as possible: