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.

Term 3 Adventure Learning Plans

Over the past two weeks Room 2 have been exploring what they would like to do for their Adventure Learning projects for Term 3. Their chosen topics had to challenge their thinking, be something that they would be able to work on for the whole term and if possible help to make positive change within our local, national or global community. This term we are trialing a planning template to enable the children to plan in greater depth. Each group bullet pointed their main ideas and then met with me for a student led conference. Because I teach year 4 children I personally find that when they share their ideas orally they will express them in greater depth, compared to only recording them in written form. You'll notice that their ideas of what they already know aren't all correct. I purposely haven't corrected the children as I want them to self-discover this for themselves. 


Here are the topics children have chosen for Term 3

• Designing a new playground for Morningside Park
• S.P.C.A
• Shark finning and how to stop it happening in NZ waters
• The solar system
• Factory farming 
• Cooking with a focus on traditional Maori cooking
• Dubstep Dancing 

Here are a couple of examples of our Term 3 planning proposals

A new playground for Morningside Park

What do you plan to do and why?

We want to design a new playground for Morningside Park. Children don’t really play on it because it’s been around for too long and it’s boring. It’s boring because there’s not much stuff to play on and it’s not colourful.  There’s only monkey bars, a slide, two swings and a tunnel. People have been tagging on the playground under the bottom of the tunnel. We want to write a letter to the Whangarei District Council asking them if they can make a new playground for the Morningside School. We will send them a design of what we want the playground to look like. We think if it’s nice and colourful and no more tagging that children will want to play on it.

What do you already know about this topic?

• That playgrounds are fun to play on and it’s something to do outside.
• We know that the council made Mander Park into a cool playground about a week before Stella moved to Morningside Road. There’s a big space rocket and it used to be way too high for little kids, but now there’s a little playground for the little children.
• The Town Basin playground has got lots of things that you can play on. It’s safe because it’s got soft mats underneath the playground. It used to be all concrete.

Write down your ‘I wonder…’ questions

• I wonder how you make a playground?
• I wonder what equipment you will need?
• I wonder if we could involve local businesses if it’s going to be a nature playground?
• I wonder what the council will say?

What research are you going to do? What are you going to spend time doing?

• Looking at other playgrounds on the internet and visiting some playgrounds in Whangarei.
• Designing our playground.
• Researching some nature playgrounds.

What resources do you need? What help do you need?

• We will need builders to help us make it if the council says yes.
• We will need help with writing a letter to the council.

Factory Farms in NZ

What do you plan to do and why?

We are going to learn about the chickens in the factory farms. We want to know how an egg is made and how they force them to make them. We want to learn about this so we can help stop factory farms in NZ.

What do you already know about this topic?

• We know that they force them to make eggs
• We know that the chickens need our help and that they can die
• We know you need a rooster and a hen to make an egg or you need an incubator.
• The chicken eats the food and the food produces an egg.

Write down your ‘I wonder…’ questions

• I wonder how a chicken makes an egg?
• I wonder why they capture the chickens and force them to make eggs?
• I wonder why people put chickens in small cages?
• I wonder where the farms are?
• I wonder how we can help stop the factory farms?
• I wonder why chickens are different colours?

What research are you going to do? What are you going to spend time doing?

• We’re going to look up where the factory farms are
• We’re going to find out how chickens lay eggs and why chickens lay different coloured eggs.
• We want to visit a free range egg farm and see how they’re different

What resources do you need? What help do you need?

• An iPad for researching.
• We need to talk to an expert about factory farming and free range farming.
• We need help organising transport and a letter for our visit to the free range farm.