This
Tuesday we went to Shirley Warren Primary School to do two lessons of our own
planned teaching. we are doing two pages in a multi modal book about article 19
in the Children’s Rights about keeping children safe. We had made a plan before
we went to school and started out presenting what we wanted them to learn today
so that there was clear goals for them. If we had had the time we would have
let them set their own personal goal as research shows that children are better
motivated when they have impact on their own learning. (Department of Education
and Early Childhood Development, 2013)
We chose to do an
animation with them and had a little conversation about what it was. In the
beginning they did not know what it was, but as we came up with examples they
all knew animation films. We showed the children an animation that we made
ourselves and then showed them how to do it. We saw examples of what could
happen when you move the camera. Every child tried to write a letter and took
pictures. The animation they made was writing article 19. On a white board
letter by letter and taking still pictures so in the end it would look like a
movie. The children did great on this task even though it was their very first
time doing animation. Animation is supporting storytelling, visual
communication and problem solving (Move Forward, 2013).
What
was a problem with the project was the time frame, we and the teachers new that
already. But unfortunately it did have impact on the structure of the teaching.
After
finishing our lessons we sat down in a circle with the children and all had to
say what the best thing from today was and most importantly why!
The
interesting thing was that every child liked the animation session best. They
were a bit troubled with explaining why but after some time they all agreed
that it was because they have never tried it before and they liked learning new
things. This is a great base I think. This lesson clearly brought joy and
innovative learning for those children (Halsey, 2007) Those 5 year old children are
motivated and are working engagingly with new things and that I think is
promising for their future.
The
children were extremely well behaved an easy to work with. To compare with a
Danish kindergarten class this would be the same level. They would be much more
‘wild’ and it would be a hard job to get them to listen. I know we had a small
group of only 5, but that did not change the fact that they were very well
behaved.
Bibliography
Department
of Education and Early Childhood Development (2013) Personal Learning Goals
[Online] Available at http://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/support/pages/goals.aspx [Accessed 30 March 2014]
Move
Forward (2013) Animation as a learning Tool [Online] Available at http://www.viauc.com/schools-faculties/faculty-of-education-and-social-studies/exchange-programmes/Pages/animation-as-a-learning-tool.aspx [Accessed 30 March 2014]
Halsey,
S. (2007) ‘Embracing emergent technologies and envisioning new ways of
using them for literacy learning in the primary classroom’ English Teaching; Practice and
Critique 6 (2) pp
99-107
The fact about children having an impact on their own learning is one that I am anxious about as well. If we had more time I would have rejoiced in allowing the children to interact more with the ideas. However, my group were conscious of trying to get the task done. This may have impacted on the amount of work the children did. I would have liked the children to have more ownership. This is something I will take forward into my future career.
ReplyDeleteThe time limit was definitely a disadvantage to both ourselves and the children. It is difficult to teach each child the new skill and create the page without taking over. I definitely struggled at first to give the children the responsibility as I was worried about meeting the criteria in the time frame. However, once I let go the ideas the children had were better than mine!
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