The Value of LEARNerS Time

Day 20 of #28daysofwriting.  It was a great day today,  got most of my to do list done.  Saw some students experience success and have decided I will be changing some of my routines next week to address some of the needs of my class.  Went out for a drink after school and caught up with good friends.  So really sitting down and writing is the last thing I wanted to do, but I’m going to be stubborn and the fear of failing outweighs anything else!

Today I am going to keep it simple and talk about something new that I tried today.  I have been tasked with adjusting some of the programmes in the Junior Syndicate and one of these is Junior Developmental time.  This time has been the time students are given to just be students, to play and create.  I think this is so important for students but it did need a tidy up, a bit more focus.

Last year I helped introduce maker time into the Senior Syndicate and we tied it to our inquiry learning topic.  It was definitely about student creativity but slowly you could see ideas from the students learning coming into their creation and the conversations the students had slowly became more precise and technical as they learnt more about the topic.

In the juniors I wanted to try and keep it more open and allow students that Genius Time where they can explore their passions.  But it needed a tie in.

So we used our school Values - Lifelong Learner, Excellence, Actively Involved, Respect and Nurture.

These form the basis of our LEARNerS - with S being success at the end  

There were a range of activities the students would be choosing from; Lego, wood blocks, puzzles, water play, playdough… you get the idea.  Students could also research in books and use the iPads to learn more about something they are interested in.  Knowing this I tried to tie a few different skills to our school values.

So I came up with the following areas the students needed to think about and write about (at this stage)

1. Actively involved: This became about how students worked in groups to achieve something.
2. Excellence: Try something new or improve on last time.  Whatever you do must be challenging.
3. Lifelong Learner: Find out about something you are passionate about and record new learnings.

I just whipped up a couple of quick graphic organisers for students to use but later I will develop some templates using ComicLife or teach students how to share their reflections using iMovie.

The students worked really well and it was nice to be able to walk around and ask them what value they were focusing on.

So  I guess the point is that by tying in ideas from different parts of your school's programmes you can double up the effectiveness.  Because today I got to see my student getting to work on things that really excited them while they were actively thinking about our schools values and how they were helping them.