ACfE In Action

The day of reckoning  arrived! Had we succeeded in our aim of offering the children real personalisation ,choice ,relevance and challenge?We started the afternoon by asking the children to evaluate their shadow puppets using the success criteria which was *does my puppet have a clear outline?*does my puppet have a moving part?We also asked the children if they could improve their puppet in any way.They were reminded to be specific and we had a lot of clear and concise ideas –

• Jack-make the head smaller to fit in with the rest of its body
• Jenny-make the arms come out of the body at the same level,make the legs the same size
• Cameron W- cut it out  more carefully
• Teri-don’t make it so big it and it won’t be heavy
• Shaun-make moving arms next time

The children then worked in groups of their choice to make a poster of everything they had learned over the past few weeks. This for me was one of the highlights .This was ACTIVE LEARNING in action !!!!  They were engaged in discussion with each other and recording their learning .The comments were of a practical nature as well as a PSD nature. For example

• I like working in a group because you get on better
• If you don’t work together you never get anywhere
• We all helped each other
• We did a better job
• I learned how to make a shadow puppet
• We learned how to make a moving part
• We worked as a team
• We learned how to make our puppets better
• Get more action
• I learned how to cooperate

These are only a few of the comments but it was clear to us how much the children enjoyed and learned  from it. If children can work in this way and engage with each other it makes for a much more dynamic and interactive learning environment.So did all this tie in with the four capacities of the Curriculum for Excellence?We used a child friendly version and asked the children to link the statements to what we had done. Many of them were covered and the children could clearly see the connections. When the children are given some real choice it makes a real difference. What next?  Well I am very excited about going back to work in my own school with my class and another class .I hope to use all I have learned at Cockenzie and continue to develop and extend my knowledge and understanding of the Curriculum for Excellence.