This week we are working hard to write teaching books about our group problems. To help us learn more about these problems we read books together on EPIC! to research and then wrote down the facts we heard in our own words. These teaching books will be on display during the PBL showcase as another way we are raising awareness about a problem we care a lot about.
During the creation process, the creative energy in the room was amazing! I was able to capture a bit of the magic with these photos, but lots happened that I didn't get a chance to capture. Many students really enjoyed the long chunk of time that they were given to create, add on, and perfect their creations. Although, some students really struggled with this amount of time and how to use it without being given explicit instructions on what to do. The skill of seeing a problem, creating a plan, executing the plan, and having to modify the plan when things don't work out does not come easy for everyone! We have our groups!Students chose one to two topics that we have been discussing that they wanted to dig a little deeper on. These topics will be their focus for the next few weeks, understanding the problem deeper, and coming up with creative ways to help! Group RolesWhen it comes to working in groups, we get more accomplished when we are in each in charge of something that helps everyone in the group. We all shouldn't be gathering materials, trying to make decisions, and keeping notes! That wouldn't be efficient or productive. We learned about 4 roles that we can use whenever we are in groups to help us get organized and work together.
Group AgreementsBefore we started our first collaborative project with our new teammates, It was important to set up some agreements for how we are going to work together. Sounds a lot like group norms, right? We know no one is leaving or changing groups, so we have to be able to get a long and work with the people that we have been assigned to be with. Group agreements are a great place to start! We all signed our names next to our job, demonstrating that we are going to work hard to do the agreements we decided on. Raising awareness about our group problem
Our first collaborative exercise was to complete a 100 pc Africa savanna puzzle. The beauty of working on collaborative skills is for students to figure out for themselves how they should go about completing the task. Instead of assigning them jobs and telling them to do the edges first, I just dumped the pieces on the floor and said "go." Sitting back and watching what happens next is where the real learning takes place. After about 5 minutes, I stopped them and asked "what is working well, what is not working so well." From those questions we then start to make a plan for how we are going to complete the puzzle. Here were some of their thoughts...
The next day, our plan got more refined and we added different components as we went. We came up with having different groups of kids working on different parts of the puzzle (edges, elephant, giraffe, ect). They soon figured out the challenge of some animals overlapping each other and who was going to get what pieces became a problem. They worked together to join together their teams and work together. There were also a few kids who decided that they were going to be "piece finders" and just look around for pieces that each group needed. I tried to capture the messiness and awesome learning as best as I could :) Our second attempt at collaboration came later in the week when we worked with our table groups to make a rocket! This time we had to think about a plan for what we were going to do before we started... yikes! Coming to an agreement about what our rocket should look like was not easy. Tears within the first minute definitely happened. We stopped working after 5 minutes and reflected on how things were going. This is what they came up with.
In the end, some groups ended up making one big rocket all together and other groups ended up adding a bunch of small parts that they all made to their poster like aliens, stars, ect. They were all proud of the work that they did! Check out their latest seesaw post :) Next week we are going to be diving into collaboration even further when we decide which world problem we are really going to focus on.
I am so proud of all the hard work that each of them have done to wrap up this PBL unit! When I look at their finished teaching books, I see very clearly that the learning goes way beyond their final product. Don't get me wrong, their teaching books are great, but they learned so much more than just how to write an "All About Book." In my mind, they learned how to wonder about something! I think it is pretty powerful to think that a kindergartener has the tools to learn more about something they are interested in and create something that teaches people more about it. I know that they will take these skills on with them to first grade where they practice "We Wonder Wednesday," and I hope they take this excitement for learning home as well. Instead of passively taking in the world, we can learn more just by opening our eyes to learning. We can learn so much from books, nature observations, playgrounds, videos, conversations with people, ect. Keep on wondering, learning, and teaching!
This week, we turned our fact strips into real pages for our teaching books! We worked really hard to re-write our facts with our best handwriting and to add a picture that would add meaning and make sense with our fact. We looked at some of the previous kindergartener's teaching books to get some inspiration while we were putting ours together. We noticed that some of their books had extra pages for maps, scientific diagrams, chapters, a table of contents, ect. Some students have even been adding in those extras. I can't wait for all of you to see these books!! They have been working so hard.
We have head our heads down, focusing on research this week! We have been collecting all the facts we can about our topics from books on Epic, videos on PebbleGo, and even more from Brain pop. This is our last week to collect our facts and then we move into turning those facts into pages in our teaching books. Our reading buddies came in to help us collect our last facts on Friday. I sent the list of topics that our class was wondering about to Ms. Shaw and she asked her kids who might know something about one of these topics. Based on interest and knowledge, the kids were then given a buddy that could teach our K kids something they might not know yet about their topic.
This week we dove a little deeper into our topics that we want to know more about. We wrote down what things we already know about our topic and a few questions that we had. Then, it was off to start researching.
So, what are our kindergarteners wondering about??? Here's there big list! We each narrowed down our personal wonder lists to a single wonder that we will start researching and learning about next week!
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June 2017
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