As great as it would be to be able to let imaginations run wild and give the children chance to truly direct their own learning, it just isn't possible. There is a curriculum which must be followed and topics which the children are required to learn. In this case I have to teach about "The Vikings"!
Oh by the way, did I mention I was in Finland? I don't think I did. So yes, I am in Finland, I can speak a few words of Finnish, most of them to do with maths and all of them I learnt when I got here. As you can imagine there are all kinds of issues arising from the language barrier and you might be wondering how I manage to teach anything at all? Well that is not the topic of this post but just be I can tell you that teaching a knowledge based subject like history has a whole different set of problems to overcome then a very visual maths topic.
The language barrier has actually proven to be quite helpful in this case as it stops me from lecturing the children on the Vikings for the next week and boring them to death with brooch design details from various Viking cultures and in depth discussions on philosophy and what it was to be a Viking. As you might tell, the Vikings are a particular favourite of mine. When Sugata began testing SOLE's in Europe he went to schools in Italy where he gave them questions in English. This meant that the children had to work out the translation before completing the task. My lack of Finnish speaking skills gives me the opportunity to test the children's ingenuity as they navigate the difficult world of internet translations to find out what it is they should be doing.
So here is how the project will run:
1. Each session starts with deciding the question to be answered. The aim here is to come up with an open ended question which the children will find interesting and can research.
2. They then work in groups of 4 or 3 and in keeping with the rules of the experiment can change group at any time. In these groups they work at 1 computer to try and answer the question.
3. As they answer the question there will hopefully be a lot of collateral learning taking place as they read and research around the topic. Everything they learn they have to write down on A3. At the end of the project they will make a presentation about the Vikings.
4. At the end of the lesson each group feeds back something that they learnt that session.
Oh by the way, did I mention I was in Finland? I don't think I did. So yes, I am in Finland, I can speak a few words of Finnish, most of them to do with maths and all of them I learnt when I got here. As you can imagine there are all kinds of issues arising from the language barrier and you might be wondering how I manage to teach anything at all? Well that is not the topic of this post but just be I can tell you that teaching a knowledge based subject like history has a whole different set of problems to overcome then a very visual maths topic.
The language barrier has actually proven to be quite helpful in this case as it stops me from lecturing the children on the Vikings for the next week and boring them to death with brooch design details from various Viking cultures and in depth discussions on philosophy and what it was to be a Viking. As you might tell, the Vikings are a particular favourite of mine. When Sugata began testing SOLE's in Europe he went to schools in Italy where he gave them questions in English. This meant that the children had to work out the translation before completing the task. My lack of Finnish speaking skills gives me the opportunity to test the children's ingenuity as they navigate the difficult world of internet translations to find out what it is they should be doing.
So here is how the project will run:
1. Each session starts with deciding the question to be answered. The aim here is to come up with an open ended question which the children will find interesting and can research.
2. They then work in groups of 4 or 3 and in keeping with the rules of the experiment can change group at any time. In these groups they work at 1 computer to try and answer the question.
3. As they answer the question there will hopefully be a lot of collateral learning taking place as they read and research around the topic. Everything they learn they have to write down on A3. At the end of the project they will make a presentation about the Vikings.
4. At the end of the lesson each group feeds back something that they learnt that session.
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