After visiting Silverton Primary School in September I was inspired to have a go at the notion of guided students lead discovery. I played around with a few concepts and ideas and came up with the following.
Discovery Time is guided student led learning that will take place for 2 hours every Friday. The process will involve students selecting a topic or area of interest that they wish to investigate for example; flowers, planets, robots, popcorn etc.
They will be required to keep a ‘Discovery Journal’, in which they will plan their discovery and record their progress.
Students will be working with the teachers to organize and plan their discoveries. During their planning time students will list two to three key questions they want answered and the different steps they might need to take in order to answer them.
During the allocated weekly technology time and as part of homework, students will begin to gather information about their topic.
Once they have some information during the discovery time they will begin to answer the key questions they asked during the planning stage. They will develop the research skills of Identifying Key Points and Note Taking.
Students will then be able to present their discovery in any format they would like e.g poster, PowerPoint, Prezi, podcast or pictorial form etc.
Students will be given a maximum of three weeks to complete a discovery project, during Discovery Time on Fridays. They may complete it in one or two weeks also.
Once they have completed a discovery, students will share their discovery in their home class. Teachers will then use this time to generate feedback and assessment.
So this term Year 1 and Year 3 are embarking on this journey. I am blessed to have a team of teachers who are willing to take risks and have a go. I told them that we are just trailing it and seeing what works and what doesn't....
It is as much of a learning experience for the teachers involved as it is for the students.
Interesting points for discussion and thought -
*Resources: as we are not a one to one laptop school and only have four computers in each classroom finding and gathering information was the first problem. In year 1 we asked that they students gather and only gather some information at home and bring it to school for unpacking. This did however mean that some students went home and found all the answers to their questions.
*Reseach Skills: During our Technology Centre (YES, we still have a lab!!) we have begun to use different search engines to find more information and locate what information is 'key information' and what is extra information what we don't need. Very interesting with 31 Year 1 children!! I used 'askkids' as the search engine but I am sure there are better ones??? Any suggestions?
* Working with 31 different topics: Was always going to be something to overcome.... We are however getting there. Having the students write two to three key questions has meant that the search for specific answers has been easier than if we had just said find information about the topic.
The students are SUPER excited for our first actual Discovery Time session this Friday!
I will update you on how it goes! Fingers crossed!
xoxo
A
No comments:
Post a Comment