Next week we finish our round of state-mandated testing. We have been on the review and test track since Spring Break…..well, really since the first day of school. Everything feeds into how they will do on this test, whether I want it to or not. Sure, we have done some great inquiry lessons, my kids have become real thinkers and questioners, and for the most part I feel like how they see themselves as learners has changed. But always in the back of my mind looms the question- is this important enough to be taking up time? Well, that tunnel vision is about to come to an end, when the final test booklet is in the box, and we have reached the light at the end of the tunnel…finally! I am giddy with the thought of what is to come!
Now, most teachers at this time of year are just counting down the days, wondering how to keep the kids busy for another 6 weeks when all they want to do is be outside. Meanwhile, my kids are ramping up, because they know that this last 6 weeks belongs to them…their ideas…their projects….their imaginations!! They are READY! The little seeds of creativity have been sown all year, and now all of the time can be devoted to growing. While a great number of teachers will be struggling to engage, here’s an idea of what we’ll be doing:
A student of mine decided to write an advice column in his journal, and ask other kids to submit questions for him to answer. The class thought it would be cool if he could really have his advice column in a newspaper- chaos ensued, and out came the class newspaper project. We’ll be diving into that next week.
My students have a huge interest in widgets, and spend a great deal of their choice time creating them. They started with the standard iknowthat.com kind, then graduated to their own designs on phun physics. Now they want to make them in real life, full scale. They want to turn my classroom into a giant widget- we’ll be planning for that as well.
Each student will be choosing an independent project to complete, we’ll finish and publish our stories for the writers celebration, and probably mess with an idea for a never ending story on wikispaces.
Will we “finish” all of this in 6 weeks? Do I care? The best thing about this part of the year is that we all get to soak up the excitement and knowledge of learning, and it’s really more about the process than the product. I love to sit back and watch …it’s a chance to really appreciate how far they have come, and how much they can now do without me. They don’t need me to lead their small group planning session because they have learned how to work together. They don’t need me to troubleshoot their tech issues because there is most likely some 9 year old in the room who can figure it out faster than I can, and they know that. Camera experts, scanner masters, fairly decent collaborators….yep, I’ll just sit back and smile, and hope that they are loving it as much as I am. I wish the whole year could be more like this, and I am really working on that, but for right now……WOO HOOO!!! I see the end of the tunnel!!
Wow!! This sounds like an amazing project. Imagine if the whole school year consisted of projects like this. It’s so sad that testing takes precedence over true learning activities. We used to run Rube Goldberg contests. Students were given access to a whole variety of building components (blocks, cardboard tubes, ramps) and physics gear (springs, motors, pulleys, buzzers) and were challenged to build contraptions that made something happen. We would see an assortment of alarms, door closers, mail delivery systems, etc. The activity was so rich in problem solving, science concepts, and math ideas and was probably the best learning experience the students had all year. We need more of this. Maybe you could document what is happening with your class and share it online.
I will try to take pictures and post them on the blog as we finish;)
Isn’t it a shame that we only get 6 weeks of this enthusiastic engagement of our learners creating their own knowledge/process/product. Our testing culminates next week.