Interest Projects - All Wrapped Up For Christmas

It has been so satisfying for many of us sharing our term four interest projects.

One way we ensure that we are taking ownership, accountability and responsibility for our learning in Room 14 is through the sharing routines we have. During our first I.P. this year, sharing in front of the class seemed a little daunting for some. However, the encouragement shown for each other and the ability to give constructive feedback has grown to such a level that sharing interest projects is a positive experience and a time for celebration. The conversation arising after the sharing of an interest project is genuinely exciting as students often realise that they are the most knowledgeable person in the room about their chosen topic, which can be so empowering when answering questions from their peers.

Those who initially found driving their own projects a challenge have made great progress. Being handed more responsibility and knowing that the teacher is only assisting as a guide was something to get their heads around at first. Of course, there are still things that all of us could have improved on this time, but our skills and attitudes for self-driven inquiry projects have grown a lot as a class.

We had a 'How Stuff Works' theme of sorts this time. It was wonderful seeing how deep some students could get into their questions and how they could communicate some very technical, jargon-filled scientific explanations in a way that we could all understand. Jacob's 'How do batteries work?', Kerryn's 'How does lightning work?' and Izyah's 'How do earphones work?' projects were nice examples of this.








Before putting together our presentations, we co-created a sharing rubric together that included what we thought would make a great presentation, as well as a couple of aspects of our last I.P. sharing days that we needed to work on. We assessed ourselves after receiving feedback from our peers and Mr K. See the completed rubrics in our digital portfolios.



Next year we will look at how the I.P. format could fit in with our learning programmes. For our Year 6s that are leaving us, we hope that these interest projects have given them a chance to further develop their 21st century learning skills and attitudes, which we hope they can utilise wherever they are heading.

Cluster Tech Challenge

We recently had our cluster technology challenge. Our class and Room 5 at Bamford School took part.

The idea was that we would be undertaking the same challenges from our own schools, but would key an eye out (digitally) about how the other teams were doing.

The first challenge was to build a free-standing tower using certain materials that could raise a flag.

The second challenge was a paper planes contest. Students could enter both a 'flight distance' and a 'flight time' competition.

These activities linked well with our Forces and Motion theme, so children were able to use some of the language and scientific terms we have been learning about.

Thanks to Wayne for coming along, giving a hand and showing us your own paper plane designs.



Check out the Linwood Connected Kids blog for some of our reflections and more info.

Term 4 Interest Projects: How Stuff Works

Our inquiry topic/theme has been split in two this term due to student demand for one last IP (Interest Project) for the year. Our class theme, which is science-based and looks at forces and motion, will be condensed to make way for the more student-directed interest inquiries that we have become familiar with this year. 

The theme for this term's interest projects is 'How stuff works', which lends itself well to our forces and motion theme for those who have chosen questions that are connected to learning about the physical world in some way.

The basic guidelines for IPs is the same as we have done before.
We need to:
1. Write up a basic plan that includes our initial driving questions and resources required.
2. Create or continue an IP blog that we update each week about our progress.
3. Share our learning journey at the end of term.

We will have at least one IP workshop each week. This is an entire morning or afternoon that we can spend on our independent inquiries. Many of us have also been finding information at home or using organisation time before school to work on our IPs.

Lots of interesting questions are driving our IPs. It will no doubt be a great learning experience for all of us as we go from novices to teachers when sharing our journeys at the end of term.

Some plan examples from our wall:

Phoebe's initial plan

Athalia's initial plan

This past week we have been making sure that we are taking action with our IPs. Some of us know from experience that time can seem to slip away if you are not thinking carefully about how you use it and reflecting on each IP workshop. Here is what we thought taking action would look like as we begin to get deeper in our projects...

Don't forget to check our interest project blogs to read about how each of us are going!

Marble Tracks

This week we have begun our Forces and Motion unit of inquiry. Gravity and friction are the key ideas we have been investigating, and have been the focus of two hands-on technology challenges in our classroom.

In the first challenge we were required to make a ramp to certain specifications. We then predicted how far a marble would roll along the ground when let go from the top of the ramp.

After measuring the actual distance rolled and comparing with our estimates, we had some great discussions around our understanding of gravity and friction. It was most interesting hearing what everyone thought was in the centre of the Earth. Answers included "special stones", "rocks" and "black stuff". Some ideas there for further investigation.


The second challenge features in the video below.



As predicted by some of us, it certainly was a challenge working in groups of 4 or 5. Many people often have different ideas on what will work best in situations like this, so the designated 'team managers' had a busy job.

We agreed that some of the construction work wasn't pretty. But it was good to see everyone searching hard for materials that could serve a purpose (you may have noticed all of the random maths equipment and stationery items being used!).

A couple of groups managed to complete the task and others came very close. The most common challenge was the marble losing too much speed by crashing into walls. All groups realised that they needed to do what they could to maintain the marble's speed (provided by gravity), while keeping it on track to cross each piece of masking tape.

We will be reflecting on what we noticed during this challenge, while exploring more of the physical world around us over the coming weeks.

Our Window Bottle Garden

We are excited to finally have our window bottle garden planted. This has been a side project to our Consumerism unit from last term, when we watched a TED Talk about people growing their own vegetables in high-rise apartments. We liked the idea so much we started searching for ideas on how we could make simple planting systems in our classroom.

Take a look at how our finished garden is looking...



We would like to say a special thanks to Yvonne and Emily for the plants and seeds, Wayne for his handy work with a drill, and Sheryl for her gardening tips and support mucking in.

Along with the team in Room 14, this was a real team effort.

Consumerism - Sharing Our Thoughts and Ideas

We have had a busy last couple of weeks preparing to share our individual learning about our Consumerism theme. These are the projects that were outlined in this previous post.

One of the challenges we faced when having our own Interest Projects in Term 2 was managing our time. So, when we were given the presentation date for our Consumerism projects, Mr K also shared an individual timeline with each of us via Google Docs. We had to complete an outline of how we would be using our independent learning time at school in order to be ready to present on the sharing day. In a sense, we had to 'plan backwards', having an end product in mind, then deciding what steps were needed to get there and how much time would be required to complete each of these steps.

We developed project assessment rubrics for each of the project mediums we chose (animation/screen-casting, TED style speech, or posters). These rubrics were also shared with us via Google Drive, where Mr K wrote his feedback on our projects while we were sharing to the class, and we completed a self-reflection section on the same document after. Over the coming weeks, we will be adding footage of ourselves sharing and/or other images from our presentations. This could be a very effective way for teachers and students to co-construct learning documentation going forward.

It was great to see the differences in the projects that were shared. The animations all had a different 'feel' to them and a range of filming methods were used. The TED-style talks were very successful as many children surprised us at how confident they could be in front of an audience. It was also exciting to see these students giving each other constructive feedback and researching presenting tips as part of their journey. They really thought about what an effective talk would look and sound like. The group that were creating posters carrying environmental messages had less time available to them (as they were also in our gardening group), but still communicated some thoughtful ideas.

We hear the word 'self-manage' used a lot, but we know that everything that is involved in that (managing our time, resources, decisions, emotions, etc) takes ongoing development and practice. As evident in our most recent projects, it has been great to see the progress of individuals and the honest reflections everyone has made about successes, challenges, and the cause and effects of these.

Here are a few snippets from some presentations. See our individual portfolios and media galleries for more footage.

Consumerism - What Needs To Change?

This term we have read, heard and viewed a lot of interesting stories and documentaries about our basic consumer cycle. By this, we mean the 'work, get paid, buy stuff' cycle we blogged about several weeks ago.

The more we have learned, the more we have come to accept that we all play an active part in this system, and in many ways we are dependent on it. As kids, we have fewer choices than adults, but we know that one day we will be the leaders in our communities and will have more of an influence over the people and places we interact with.

Last week we watched a documentary called The Story of Stuff. It explains how our materials economy works and the negative impacts it has on our planet right through the system, from the extraction of raw materials from the Earth, to when we dispose of the products consumed.

We have learned a lot about note taking. Through taking both written and visual notes, we have been able to pull out what we believe are the most important pieces of information from the videos/texts we have been using to gain a broader understanding of this topic. Some of the notes taken about The Story of Stuff truly were hives of information that we could call upon later. We have examples on display in our classroom.

Many of us have been talking about how we need to change the way we live in order for us to have a more sustainable future. But would anyone listen to us? Aren't kids too young to know what's best? We watched a TED Talk by Adora Svitak called 'What adults can learn from kids'. The consensus we made from this is that kids do come up with great ideas. If we are to be adults one day, surely we should have a voice about the world that is waiting for us.

This week Mr K put a question our TV - 'What needs to change?'. It was great to see the responses. Through our statements, we can see a deep understanding of this topic being developed and how far we have come from the first Chalk Talk routine. From Jacob's quote about how if consumers stop buying certain things, companies that negatively affect our environment will go out of business, to Jen's statement about how Boxing Day sales and other huge consumer 'field days' can be chaotic and leave people possibly feeling like they need to buy lots of things they don't really need.

(We have put our names to our individual quotes on our classroom walls)

So where to now? Well, we have all decided on one of three project ideas to pursue...

1. Create and present detailed explanations about how our materials economy works
2. Create and present a TED Talk of our own, sharing some of the ideas we have to fix the consumer system.
3. Create visual displays that carry strong messages from us about how we can make positive changes to our school environment.

The animations/screen-casting group have begun learning about storyboarding, with some already drafting their creations on large displays.

The TED Talks group have started investigating what makes a good speech, as well as how using Google Slides for a presentation allows them to read their own speaker notes while projecting the slide imagery through a screen using Apple TV.

The visual displays groups have been brainstorming things we do at our school that have negative environmental effects.

Over the past two days, we have been discussing a lot about what success will look like for these projects. We are all striving for excellence, which is in our learner licence criteria, and are trying to become 'learning leaders' by shifting the thinking of others. We look forward to sharing our presentations with you.

Sharing Our Interest Projects

Today was a chance to celebrate the journeys we have each been on for our Interest Projects (I.Ps).

All I.Ps had a 'Past, Present, Future' focus, linking with our Looking Back to Look Forward term 2 theme.

Last week we spent much of our independent learning time preparing what we would share today. For some of us this was a slightly daunting task, as we have realised more and more that we are the ones who own our I.Ps. Although we did follow a simple generic structure, they were created by us, for us, and were to help develop our independent inquiry skills and knowledge of the research process.

Today while sharing we were required to share:

• Why we chose our I.P.
• Our big question and our smaller driving questions.
• What we did and what we learned.
• Our I.P. highlights and challenges.

We were also required to actively seek feedback from the audience about our learning and process. 

Some of the highlights from today were:

• We were able to see and hear about what others have been doing. This includes our higher performing students, whose projects could be seen by others as benchmarks for how the journey may look when carried out to a great standard, allowing many of us to identify what we could do better next time. 
• The majority of us were able to use what we have been learning about in our literacy groups in a new context. Some of these things included note taking, identifying key words relating to our IP topic that we could use in our research, understanding subject-specific vocabulary and creating a glossary of terms, and citing references from a range of sources in our research. 

We will soon be completing I.P. self-evaluations and ensuring that our learning is evident in our digital portfolios. Remember to check out the blogs we created for these projects, which are listed on a subpage at the top of this blog.

We may undertake new I.Ps in term 4, but we will see how our other inquiries unravel.

Chalk Talk, The Environment And Buying 'Stuff'

This week we have been looking at a number of provocations around our Term 3 theme, 'Consumerism'. Early discussions, thoughts and ideas have been meaningful and will seemingly set us up for some powerful lines of inquiry this term.

We began by defining what we mean by "the environment". For those of you who know a little about our Room 14 values and vision, the term 'learning environment' is a common part of our vocabulary. But this is not what we mean by 'the environment' in this new context, so we needed to clarify that this was considering the natural world and all that exists in it.

Mr K then shared with us this simple diagram:

We all understood this. This is how the consumer system basically works, isn't it? You work, get paid, then buy stuff. Work, get paid, buy stuff. And it goes on.

But how does this affect our natural environment?

We were introduced to a new thinking routine called 'Chalk Talk'. In this routine, students are in groups of 3-5, gathered around a sheet of paper. They are given an idea or a question to discuss. Only this is not a verbal discussion. Students need to convey their ideas by writing or drawing diagrams and images. Any responses to what others say, need to be in written form. The outcome here is that we have our thinking represented visually. It allows for students to have no interruptions, while giving those who are often reluctant to share their ideas with a large group the confidence to have their voice heard.

Our question was:
What effects does this system (diagram above) have on the environment?

Our responses generated a lot of interesting ideas for discussion. Most groups mentioned the cutting down of trees for wood and paper products and how deforestation is an environmental issue. Phoebe's thoughts about plastics, most notably that oil is needed to make it, really fuelled conversation. We talked about the distance in which many of the things we buy travel before they even get to us, and what happens when we are finished with them.

Mr K used the coffee he bought before school as an example. He walked into his local coffee shop in the morning for a cup, that was made of printed cardboard with a plastic lid, filled with coffee, sugar and milk. He handed over $5.00, consumed the coffee, then put the cup in the bin. Is that the end of the cycle? We suspected that it probably wasn't. Once our red bin is collected by the City Council, most children knew where the contents ends up.

We then used a personal example - A meal from McDonalds. This led to a very lively discussion about the whole chain of events that happens before we hand over the money for one of those.

So what? We wondered how this system can be improved. At this stage, we aren't quite sure. But we do know that with food, the best way to make the system environmentally friendly is to produce your own.

Room 14's new challenge is to work out how we can grow vegetables in our classroom. We will be using recycled materials to design and build containers or structures that can house our produce. We will also be investigating how plants even grow (!) and how we can maintain them, while making links to other learning areas, like measurement and statistics, where possible. A number of us have already been generating ideas about how this will link with our explanation and persuasive writing focus too.

Today we watched Jamie Oliver's TED Talk about how we should teach every child about food, which was really the icing on the cake (maybe not the best pun) as to why we should be learning about how to grow our own vegetables and how this may benefit us in the future.

Our next step is to decide how we will group ourselves, where we will find information and materials, and how we will design these systems.

Here are our responses to the Chalk Talk routine:

Sharing Our Board Games

These past two days have been very rewarding for so many of us who have finally had the chance to share the board games we have been working on for several weeks.

As you may know, our aim was to design and build a board game that would consolidate our learning from this term and help to teach others in our school about human migration.

Here is some footage from the last two days:



We were happy to see so many children engaged and excited by our games, as evident in the written feedback forms we created for each game. However, it will be interesting for us to really reflect on these board games.

These questions may hold some importance...

• What does the feedback we received tell us?
• Were we able to keep to the design brief and actually teach others about human migration? 
• If our board game was not ready by today, could we have done things differently? 
• What did we learn from this project that we can carry forward to future projects?

Our individual reflections on our migration inquiry are currently being completed and will be visible in our learning portfolios.