This year our province has implemented a new curriculum for K-7. I feel that this curriculum authentically acknowledges the whole child in education. One of the best features of our new curriculum are the Core Competencies (Communication, Thinking, Personal and Social) which are woven into all subject areas. This has been an exciting shift for me and I’ve been playing around with new ways to build the core competencies into our routines.
Using the Creative Thinking Profiles and the Critical Thinking Profiles I have been experimenting with different ways to engage my third grade learners and to scaffold them to analyze and critique their work.
-one day we took apart an electric pencil sharpener that died and figured out why it doesn’t work anymore!
I’m always on the look out for new tools, let me know if you have any favourites!
So basically, with little to no instruction (just the basics on how to treat the tech gently and my expectations for clean up) I let my grade threes go to it. They absolutely love it. Unstructured play gives opportunity for so many different social/emotional skills that are part of the larger picture of education: to help develop great people. They tinker, share, discuss, problem solve and just simply play-the true work of children.
After they have a 2 minute warning, they clean up and return to their desks to reflect. Sometimes I pull sticks from the “sticks of destiny” jar and students share what they have learned, sometimes we just move on to the next round.
So that’s “Figure it out Friday” in a nutshell. What a lovely way to spend a Friday afternoon…or whatever day of the week they twist my rubber arm to let them just play.