ACfE In Action

Since the October holidays I have been working in my own school with Mrs Goodman and her P5 class. Funnily enough this was my class last year in P4 so it will be interesting to see how we get on. I am hoping that knowing them will be an advantage and that I will be able to tap into their abilities and skills. The topic is bullying so we asked them to write down key questions using ‘the ideas trail’ , a tool I have used before.It is a laminated board with numbered stepping stones 1-50.The children put their ideas or questions on it and they can be discussed,sorted or graded according to the task. We were then able to sort the key questions which gave us an indication of the type of questions the children wanted to ask about bullying.More to come soon……

I approached the topic from the point of view of the children acting as tour guides for Katherine and handing over responsibility of ”what’ they wanted Katherine to learn about Cockenzie and ‘how’ they were going to do this to the children.  At first, I was slightly apprehensive as to how successful this was going to be, especially, since the Primary 1’s were still settling into School life.  The children did find this tricky and it was difficult to extend their ideas and thoughts further than the classroom and school grounds. However, with teacher intervention we got there and came up with almost an identical list to that which was already on the Environmental Studies topic plan.

Approaching it from this way gave the children total control of their topic, which resulted in a very motivated and engaged class! The children chose very practical ways to report information and models and photographs played a key role. I think it is important to remember that certain skills still need to be taught but it is about allowing them to choose which skill they want to use during a specific task.

Our topic ‘Our Community’ allowed meaningful cross-curricular links to be established and Active learning was always at the forefront of our learning, which was undoubtedly easier to deliever with two class teachers.

Last week I focused on the Golden Rules with the children and then we looked at rules for different clubs. Read the rest of this entry »