question: What are the ways that learning is fostered by community? How does understanding build when ideas are openly shared?
The first day of class is so important. Even after teaching for years, I am always nervous when I enter a classroom. We begin building a community of learners on the very first day of class, we give students a first glimpse of what we think is important, and we create a climate for learning. Getting to know the students I am going to be working with is always my first goal. I know that it takes alot of time, but giving everyone a chance to talk and share is time well spent.
I opened our class by asking everyone to talk about something that they were curious about. I was hoping that this type of introduction would start us off by demonstrating the power of our following our own interests and what happens when we allow our curiosity to guide our learning. It was great. There were lots of amazing things that the students shared.
Caitlin can wiggle her nose (and does so when she is intently concentrating) and Laura just got her first kayak. Audrey reviewed the lyrics of Kanye West because she heard that he professed his love for Kim Kardashian in them. Beth introduced us to plarn...and Kyle pointed out that people use plarn to make "bags out of bags?" Jaime and her brother made a mess in the kitchen trying to figure out if liquid really would shoot out of a blender. Kortney plays soccer and discovered that female soccer players get more concussions than male soccer players because men have stronger necks and Megan is curious about whether or not holistic medicine works. Sam, a girl after my own heart, loves TV marathons and wonders who ever thought that drinking milk from a cow was a good idea. Sarah, loves historical mysteries (though she hasn't seen Brad Metzger's Decoded...and she should). Haili thinks babies are fascinating and Stephanie is curious about twins. Becca got to go on a great vacation to Puerto Vallarta but still she wonders if time shares are really worth it. Both Kyle and Jess are curious about cats and dogs... what do they know, and are dogs really all that smart? And Danielle's own experiences in theatre propel her curiosity about children's imagination. I suppose Taylor sums it all up by noting that she is curious about what makes people interested in certain things....
The greatest thing about this beginning to our class is the way that each student's interest sparked interest from the others. I wish I knew everyone's names so I could talk more specifically about these connections...in fact, I wish I had a tidy little map that showed the connections. More than one student chimed in over the Kanye West story and several students had been on vacations involving time shares. Caitlin was able to tell us about differences between the milk production between goats and cows. It was, an amazing display of social learning, and of the ways that we construct knowledge about things from a variety of sources.
After we spent some time getting to know each other we watched the video (To make a portrait of a Lion). I asked them to talk about what they noticed...
- Children's potential through discovery
- a variety of activity happening at the same time
- interactions between teachers and children (and specifically, that the adults stayed back from the direct involvement with the chidlren)
- a range of learning spaces (in and out of the school)
- amazing collaboration between children
- documentation that highlighted the expressiveness of the children
- sustained attention
- working in and through different media
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