Moving to a new school last year, I have begun working with and teaching a different range of students and educators. Previously, my school’s teaching philosophy has been centred around Explicit Direct Instruction and staff and students are used to there being one answer that everyone ends up with. Introducing inquiry tasks and encouraging students and staff to create their own representation of knowledge has resulted in a lot of apprehension and insecurity around ‘letting go’. Students often don’t know where to begin, with them asking what the end result needs to look like, or how should they do it. A lot of resilience has been needed to be built up in them, to ensure they have to courage to even begin.
The staff have also been apprehensive to trust the students and the learning process, and how to assess when they don’t up with 30 of the same poster/worksheet/test.
One task I implemented with my Year 2 students was designing, creating and using a cardboard arcade game. There was lots of apprehension from the Education Assistants who work in my room, and complaints about the mess, worries about the students accessing different tools and concerns about everyone finishing on time. Initially the students needed lots of encouragement of where to begin, but as they became comfortable in the concept of the project being whatever they imagined,their courage increased. As the students worked through the process of researching, building and playing each others’ games, slowly the other educators came onboard. They recognised the enthusiasm demonstrated by the students, the collaboration showed and the higher end thinking showed by all students. Did all the games work? No, but the children could explain why they didn’t work, and explain how they would fix it in the future. The scientific language of pushing, pulling, rolling, dropping was used conversationally, as was the creative thinking behind the advertising, decoration and design of each game.
The project culminated in inviting the parents in to school 15 minutes before the bell rang and allowing them to play the games. The feedback from the parents was they had heard so much about the games and it was wonderful to see the end product. The students reflected on their games using Keynote and then shared videos of their project via Seesaw so all family members could see their achievements.
What has been great to watch, is the educators have fun with the students, the students excel and the enthusiasm towards coming to school each day that each child displayed.
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