Sneaking through Stage 1
In my day, I regularly try to quietly and sneakily cut through the stage 1 classroom in order to get either across the school or up to Stage 3 and year 7. It’s the shortest route, and after climbing the stairs five or six times a day, my laziness kicks in and I wander through the classroom trying the best I can not to disturb.
Lately, however, I’ve been cutting through the classroom for another reason. I have been in a lot of PBL classrooms, and I have sat through a lot of Entry documents. I have used this example of an entry document when I’m training people in entry documents since 2012. It’s so far the best example of getting kids emotionally (sometimes angrily) involved in a project.
Then, I saw this on twitter. What an amazing way to engage students curiosity and invoke questioning around the topic. Each day some something is added to this section of the classroom. I walked in the other day and animal sounds were playing, and there were leaves all over the ground. Students are starting to ask questions about what could possibly be in the box, and teachers are putting them up on the wall around the box. Students are then making hypotheses around what could possibly be in the box, and then using logic to rule out ideas (no, it can’t be a shark, it’s not big enough). Each day I walk past I now make sure to stop and look to see if there’s something new.
#somethingscoming @StLukesMP pic.twitter.com/FRCOrfmUKT
— Angela Ryall (@angelaryall93) April 6, 2018
It’s interesting, my experience in the past is actually that where teachers have been effectively trained, that where PBL has been implemented in a primary setting, the change has been significantly easier, longer lasting and more rich for a number of reasons….firstly, experiential learning has always been a feature the younger that students are in education, secondly, that primary teachers understand the connections between syllabus documents better, and that finally, change in a year in a primary school requires change of maybe three or four teachers to effect an entire year group. In high school a year group may have 30 or 40 odd teachers in a normal school. I also think primary teachers also have a greater knowledge of their students….the difference between five hours a day in primary and five hours a fortnight in secondary is significant.
I’m really interested to see what’s in the box. I think I’ll be secretly cutting through their classroom a lot more this term.
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