Collaborating and Creating...

This week are capitalising on the power being able to 'create' can bring to our learning. For the last few weeks I have used my guided reading sessions to help my groups strengthen their connections to our inquiry focus of Space. To do this we have explored new vocabulary in context, identified the main ideas in the text, summarised the key points, searched for information, made connections between ourselves, other texts and the wider world, formed opinions and made evaluations. In addition to this I encouraged my more able learners to participate in dialogic learning conversations to help move their understanding to the next level. All strategies that are embedded into our reading program and help us make sense of new learning.

What excited me were the connections made during our visit to the Stardome. The conversations around the displays were rich, and the curiosities sparked during our reading time, explored further through the many rich questions that were asked of the experts. Luckily for us the Stardome educators were very happy to engage in these conversations over and over again, especially the ones that took place around the display of Yuri Gargarin parachuting onto the farmland. 

When I saw how much knowledge and content vocabulary my students were recalling and using without any prompting from me, I saw an opportunity to build on this further by providing an equally rich platform of opportunity to create DLOs that would enable them to share their new knowledge in an authentic way. So with that in mind, our literacy sessions this week are affording us the time to do this. 

We began today by recalling facts, skimming and scanning to find the information in our texts that supported our opinions, planning our storyboards (most groups have chosen to create an animation or an explainer movie), collaboratively writing scripts and purposefully using the content vocabulary needed to make connections to the learning in our inquiry lessons. The best part... every student was focused, engaged and on task! I can't wait to see the finished products.

Update: Here is an example of one of our finished DLOs...

Link to Sakina's blog post