What have P1/2 learned?
8 10 2007Today was interesting! I spent the morning getting the children to tell me about what they have enjoyed learning, what they have learned and what else they would like to find out about. I recorded this so I could play it back and therefore be clearly involved in the conversation and not furiously taking notes.It was obvious that children really benefit and appreciate being out and about on trips. These are really valuable educational experiences. We should do our best to find ways round expense, parent helpers and risk assessment to get children out more! They love it!What they learned - summary This is where my evidence on the trips comment above came from. Even though Katie and I made every effort to ensure active learning within the classroom, which was personalised and involved choice, almost all the children reported back that the things they learned most about or enjoyed was during our visits. Luckily then they have a few more to go on after Oct hols that could not be arranged for before - a beach visit with an East Lothian ranger and a tour of Seton Collegiate Church.
It was also clear from the interviews that having a purpose to a task motivated and engaged them at a deeper level. A number of them referred to the fact that they were showing Miss Macnaughton (me) around the school or Port Seton/Cockenzie. They enjoyed making the maps to show others what they had learned.
What they still want to know - here are a couple of the more interesting comments!
Daniel - wanted to learn more from information books. He felt he had not read any to learn things from!
A couple of pupils referred to wanting to learn more about writing and making labels - this had been a little focus in a couple of the activities Katie had done.
Lewis - wanted to know more about Cockenzie power station and what’s inside it.
Again a number of pupils wanted to know more about the harbour - hopefully the ranger is going to come and talk to the class about this.
Faith and Holly - wanted to talk to the fishmongers to find out how they get the fish and what they do to them. We discussed how we could contact them to find this out.
Someone wanted to see another school!
This was interesting. Katie found it really hard at the beginning of the topic to get the children to come up with things they wanted to know - having less life experience we found this maybe harder than you would further up the school or later in the year. We did however try to listen to conversations and let the children lead the learning. Perhaps doing a little evaluation session in the middle of the topic, like we did today, would have steered the topic even more towards the childrens’ interests. Ah good old evaluation! Kat
Re the comment about seeing another school: one of the exciting things about interactive class web sites is that they have this potential.
Not only can classes get a window into what’s going on in another school, the use of comments offers an opportunity for dialogue about the activities.
Perhaps in time this could lead to peer review visits, but where the classes are the peers!