Lets explore! What engages students more then allowing them to explore their own learning? Students are constantly driven when they have choice put into the palm of their hands. Allowing them to search, read or view what catches their eyes is giving them choice in their learning. Students came into school knowing that they were going to have a Social Studies lesson after recess. I had students asking me, are we going to learn about Egypt? Are we going to learn about Rome? Do we get to build a pyramid? What are we doing in Social Studies? I decided to wait until after recess….
The time was up, the recess bell ended and my supervision duty was over, it was time!!! Time to be open and honest with my grade 7 students. I decided to open my lesson with sharing todays learning goal. I shared with them the prescribed learning outcome(PLO) “Use various types of graphs, tables, timelines and maps to obtain or communicate information.” We broke down each term and came up with examples on why we have graphs, tables, timelines and maps to obtain or communicate information. Students were making cross-curricular connections to math and science I was amazed!
Next, was time for students to decide which direction they wanted to take their learning? Everyone had a Social Studies textbook on their desk and a Developing Readers worksheet labeled “See, Wonder and Think.” It was the student’s task to use their graphic organizer “See, Wonder and Think” sheet to provide the following while exploring the textbook.
See – What catches your eye when you look in the textbook and why? What tables, graphs and timelines did you notice in the book? What did they represent?
Wonder- What do you wonder about that topic? What do you wonder about the graphs, timelines or tables for that topic?
Examples of topics: Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Greece, and Rome etc
Think- If I were to do a project that would be presented to the school on this topic how would I present this information? What type of model would I display? What type of graph, timeline or map would I display?
In addition, the following instructions were kept on the overhead in case students forgot the instructions given prior to exploring as a way to look up at any time to remember the directions. Graphic organizers are a great way for students to organize their thoughts. As teachers I feel we should provide visual materials and graphic organizers whenever possible (e.g. Pictures, written directions, charts and diagrams). We must be cognizant of how individuals and groups of students learn and have a strong sense of what is best for particular students in particular situations.
Finally, at the end of the lesson we discussed how our learning goal related to todays lesson. I was excited to see in the discussion how students were able to relate todays PLO to what they did today. My job was to make sure students understood the learning goal, while still having choice in how they would go about in understanding the learning goal.
For the duration of this unit we will be exploring through project based learning(PBL) a civilization of students choice that will be presented to the school through a gallery walk. The audience for their learning will be parents, guardians, siblings, students from K-7, teachers and members that represent the community of the school. Having an audience for students learning will allow for students to take pride in their work, students to see a purpose, be engaged through the process and produce meaningful work to be presented to a diverse audience. I am super excited to watch students learning unfold through this unit.
Do we really need to tell students exactly what to do? Or can we allow choice in their learning? What are examples of choice you have provided for your students?