Today is report card writing day. I am one of those teachers who generally hates marking. I try and give mark-free feedback along the way as much as possible to keep students working on improving rather than obsessing about marks. But when it comes to report cards, a mark must be given, along with supporting evidence.
In my recent LTO positions, the "regular" teacher has left me more "traditional" units which overlap with their time in the class. I have also had some planning time LTO work where I rotate from class to class for 30 minute blocks of time, which has made more hands-on projects very challenging in terms of storage as well as set-up and take-down. This has left me with less freedom to do hands-on activities.
I really believe in the idea that we learn best by doing, by trying things out, by making mistakes and learning how to adjust and problem solve our way through a challenge.
This spring I have focused on making much of the learning hands-on. For science, the students created their own building companies. They created a name and logo for their companies. They had to apply their math to create and follow a budget for supplies and to draw out accurate building plans. They had to apply their understanding of internal and external forces. They had to determine and delegate smaller jobs to bring their project together, and so on. I incorporated building and safety permits, fines for noise and safety violations...you get the picture.
For language, they created and filmed book trailers or highly detailed book posters. For social studies, they took on roles throughout the study of first contact, and are working on building either a Fakebook profile or news article about a specific person or topic.
What I'm finding is that the more hands-on the activity, is, the more the students are engaged. They enjoy sharing their work and take a greater pride in sharing it than any more traditional paper-and-pencil tasks. This was not a surprise to me. What was a pleasant surprise is that the marking is becoming much more enjoyable to me as well.
My tea is nearly ready as I sit back and watch a second batch of book trailers. Netflix has nothing on my students in 5A!
