The Seniors
Once again only three pupils. I had already begun collecting information for a project with the whole school. When the road had been built I had read a story on the first teachers journey to Matau in 1896. The seniors had found it interesting and I had made the suggestion that they could collect other stories and we could publish them somehow on CD. We had previously talked about preserving local history and donating it to the museum. In fact the school has an excellent history of doing this. They looked at what information already exsisted. This included stories of the early maori and the first Europeans to the district.
Next they decided to try an interview at least one person from each decade as far back as possible. The questions they asked were very simple. How did you get to school? - and - tell us about one special trip to town. The result was fairly spectacular and they have about ten results that overlap but stretch back to the 1930's.
After a visit from Rachel our IT facilitator the decision was made to record the information using Frontpage and recording it onto a CD.
This quickly bogged down and they were understandibly worried about the prospect of typing up all the interviews. I have since got an adult to do this for them and they are now setting about designing and planning all the pages.
There were two things that emerged from this. One was that it wasn't really their project. It was one I had foisted on them. It was only the stories that emerged from the interviews and Rachels' example of her families wartime archives that started them going. The next was the huge amount of computer time required. Currently we have two using computers on Frontpage and one researching on the internet and scanning pictures. As we aren't networked this requires a lot of running around with a pendrive.
Co-operation, teamwork, leadership, independence, and ability to organise themselves is slowly beginning to emerge. Being such a small group and tackling a fairly large task was always going to require co-operation and teamwork. But there have been disagreements and this has required some leadership skills in that someone had to make the decision. Also they are getting to the stage where they have to trust each other to get the job done and to trust themselves to be able to do it. This is my definition of independence and they are now at the stage where this needs to start happening. The next two weeks will be fairly interesting.
Next they decided to try an interview at least one person from each decade as far back as possible. The questions they asked were very simple. How did you get to school? - and - tell us about one special trip to town. The result was fairly spectacular and they have about ten results that overlap but stretch back to the 1930's.
After a visit from Rachel our IT facilitator the decision was made to record the information using Frontpage and recording it onto a CD.
This quickly bogged down and they were understandibly worried about the prospect of typing up all the interviews. I have since got an adult to do this for them and they are now setting about designing and planning all the pages.
There were two things that emerged from this. One was that it wasn't really their project. It was one I had foisted on them. It was only the stories that emerged from the interviews and Rachels' example of her families wartime archives that started them going. The next was the huge amount of computer time required. Currently we have two using computers on Frontpage and one researching on the internet and scanning pictures. As we aren't networked this requires a lot of running around with a pendrive.
Co-operation, teamwork, leadership, independence, and ability to organise themselves is slowly beginning to emerge. Being such a small group and tackling a fairly large task was always going to require co-operation and teamwork. But there have been disagreements and this has required some leadership skills in that someone had to make the decision. Also they are getting to the stage where they have to trust each other to get the job done and to trust themselves to be able to do it. This is my definition of independence and they are now at the stage where this needs to start happening. The next two weeks will be fairly interesting.
posted by Eastern Districts Schools at 1:43 AM
1 Comments:
"Co-operation, teamwork, leadership, independence, and ability to organise themselves is slowly beginning to emerge." These are really important LLL skills - & they don't happen (for most kids) without the opportunities you are providing for them Richard. Stick with it even though sometimes you think it might be easier to work in different ways - with your guidance and practise in a learner-directed environment they'll learn these skills which will serve them well in the future. Are they going to link their project to your school site so we can see it too?
Post a Comment
<< Home