Moving Out of the Comfort Zone

I run Adventure Learning throughout the whole year, so at times I come across children who pick the same type of projects each time e.g. a child who created a frog habitat last time and the following time wants to learn about turtles. If that's what they're really passionate about then obviously I support them. On the other hand sometimes it's good to encourage children to branch out and to work beyond their comfort zone. 

I've continued to take note of the types of projects and questions children have come up with over the years. In my personal experience they have always fallen into one of these four categories - a community project, something the child wants to discover or further explore, an innovative or creative topic or around nature. 

At the end of each term we have a celebration afternoon (see my other post for further information). In a nutshell it is a sharing afternoon where family and other classes are invited to come along to see the children's adventure learning projects. This year, I want to also include an awards ceremony at the end of the celebration afternoon. During this the children will earn a badge and certificate for their completed project. The colour of the badge will depend on the type of Adventure Learning project they have completed. No category is of a higher status than the other. They're all equal. If a child earns all four coloured badges they will then receive a gold badge. This doesn't mean that if they chose a discovery topic last time, that they can't do another one. It's simply a small incentive to give something new a go and another tool that children can use to support their planning during Adventure Learning. 

It will be the first time that I've tried this, this year so am interested to see what impact it has on Adventure Learning.