ACfE In Action

The excitment has begun! I am lucky enough to be working with Jennifer Daly and her lovely Primary 6 class. There is a real buzz in the classroom and everyone is keen and eager to go. The topic is World War 2 and we decided that the children should be given the choice about what they would like to learn. In order for this to be an informed choice the children were given a range of books on the War and asked to come up with no more than two aspects of the War that they would like to learn more about. Once the topics were chosen (the what), the children had to decide on the who, who were they going to work with. As we know all children have different learning styles and like to work in different ways. The result - some children are working individually, some in pairs, some in trios and there is one group of four. Interestingly Jennifer commented on how well the children chose the groups, characters who may not have worked well together have stayed apart - exactly what Jennifer would have done if she had chosen the groups! Motivation is already high as the children have chosen what they are learning and who they are learning with.

Now to the really exciting part - how are the children going to learn? There are many of us teachers I am sure who have sat at home night after night writing forward plans. Well perhaps this could be a thing of the past, we have decided to allow the children to write their own plans. A Curriculum for Excellence  is encouraging us to be creative and take risks, well here goes! Each child has been given a jotter to keep as their learning journal (more about that later). The first page of this jotter contains a forward planning format; the children write their key questions and what they want to find out, how they plan to find out the information, what they will need to help them and finally how they plan to prove their learning. We set out with the aim of ensuring cross curricular links so the children have to include art, drama or music somewhere within their plan. They are learning how to write letters and reports in the classroom so they can practise these new skills in meaningful and relevant contexts when proving their learning. So far the children have planned their first two key questions and have begun finding out the answers. All children in the class are on task when using the computers to research their topics and the feedback sessions have shown just how much the children have already learnt. The chosen topics range from evacuation and women’s uniforms to weapons and aircraft so all children will learn something about each of these topics during the feedback sessions. I can’t wait till Monday morning to continue on this learning journey with the children!

I mentioned learning journals earlier, well we decided that it was very important to share exactly what we are doing and why we are doing it with the children. This led us to explore the principles of A Curriculum for Excellence with the children (personalisation and choice/relevance/challenge and enjoyment in particular). We also shared the four capacities with the children and discussed in their language what it meant to be a successful learner, confident individual, responsible citizen and effective contributor. The children have a copy of the four capacities with a blank octagon in the middle in front of them at the start of every lesson. They circle what it is they think they are going to be focusing on during that particular lesson and at the end highlight when they have done it. The octagon is then filled with a photograph, picture or sentence proving their learning with an I can statement written beside it. This helps to personalise the learning for the children as each learning journal will be different and unique. Two statements written so far are,  I can use technology to make decisions about my next key question to learn for my topic and I can work in a team to find ten spelling words related to my topic that I will learn for homework this week. I am sure this week will bring a great deal more learning that is not only challenging but is fun too!