ACfE In Action

For the last few weeks my class has been involved in a project for the Curriculum for Excellence.  http://www.curriculumforexcellencescotla…) We’ve been particularly thinking about Active Learning—this is trying to move away from ‘chalk-and-talk’ teaching and towards, where possible, the children discovering things for themselves. A colleague suggests that it means the teacher not being the sage on the stage but a guide on the side.
We’ve been investigating Light and Sound, which we did through making Shadow Puppets. This began to spread through other subject areas—we found ourselves covering Drama, Technology and lots of Language work in addition to the Science outcomes we’d expected. We realised we’d need a reason to use the puppets - an occasion - so we wrote plays to perform for our Nursery Children.
As a teacher, it’s been very much a learning experience for me. I’ve seen children show unexpected strengths, as we’ve worked in different ways. I’ve found it quite powerful to watch the children learning from each other. It’s been interesting to watch the P4 children making decisions about what would be appropriate for Nursery Children; their judgments were surprisingly realistic.
There have been strengths and issues that need further development: working in this way has meant a cross-curricular approach is essential - we certainly haven’t been limited by subject constraints. It’s also kept the children very motivated and engaged in their own learning. It has taken over our classroom - a good thing when it generates this much interest - but I know we’ve done less work than normal on some areas, which I’ll have to make up. Also, it’s making the children think about their own learning much more; not just what facts they’ve learned, but about how the way they’ve been working has been a good thing for them as growing individuals.