" We learn together"
Our Spring project has a lot of learning opportunities, but I think the most valued in my mind is collaboration. So often we look at students as a unit of one trying to move forward and face academia on their own. One of our pillars is "we learn everywhere, we learn together." I see so much value in being able to work within a group of people that have different perspectives, different strengths, and different academic needs. I vividly remember those "group project days" when I came home so upset about the dynamics going on in my group. Now is the time to start building those skills around how we work towards a common goal with people that may be vastly different from us. There will be conflict, there will be some tears, but in the end we will learn the value of compromising and the value of realizing that my way may not always be the best way. I mention this because as we dive deeper into this Spring project, we need your support. Remember, true collaboration that comes from students working together and not the teacher telling them what to do can be a little messy at times. Trust the process :) We are setting up kindergarteners for their future PBL work at QAE and opening their eyes to the rich learning opportunities they have amongst their peers. We all have something to learn from each other.
Our first collaborative exercise was to complete a 100 pc Africa savanna puzzle. The beauty of working on collaborative skills is for students to figure out for themselves how they should go about completing the task. Instead of assigning them jobs and telling them to do the edges first, I just dumped the pieces on the floor and said "go." Sitting back and watching what happens next is where the real learning takes place. After about 5 minutes, I stopped them and asked "what is working well, what is not working so well." From those questions we then start to make a plan for how we are going to complete the puzzle. Here were some of their thoughts...
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The next day, our plan got more refined and we added different components as we went. We came up with having different groups of kids working on different parts of the puzzle (edges, elephant, giraffe, ect). They soon figured out the challenge of some animals overlapping each other and who was going to get what pieces became a problem. They worked together to join together their teams and work together. There were also a few kids who decided that they were going to be "piece finders" and just look around for pieces that each group needed. I tried to capture the messiness and awesome learning as best as I could :)
Learning about the African Savanna: past and present
We dove into learning all we could about the African Savanna this week. We have been looking at books, watching videos, and hearing stories that Ms. Ward learned from her Zambian friends to help us understand what the savanna used to be like and what it is like now. We discussed how what we think of as "the African Savanna" doesn't exist in many places in Africa anymore. For instance, in Zambia there are no "wild" animals roaming around out of captivity. All animals are housed and protected in game reserves, much like extremely large zoos, for visitors to see and to keep them from being hunted. I think it is important for students to understand that not all of Africa looks like a savanna. I forgot to post this during Dwankhozi week, but we also talked about how big the continent of Africa is and how different all the countries and communities are within it! Here is a link to a google presentation I showed them during that week to help highlight those differences. |
What we think we know.... | What we want to know..... |
What we Learned
At the end of the week, we also got a second chance to work on collaboration in a small group when we drew an African Savanna together. We used everything we have learned so far about the Savanna to make a picture with all the savanna's important parts! Again, 1 piece of paper for 6 kids is a challenge! We had to make a plan, and all agree on the plan before we started! Whew, so much collaboration.