This morning during our Morning Meeting one student, Owen, shared his Expeditionary Learning notebook during share time. What makes this special is that this is not a notebook that we created at school. He created this at home because he is so involved in our latest Expedition.
Our first Expedition was a comparison of families. We began by studying our own families and then branched out and studied and compared our families to families in China. Owen was enthralled with China. He spouted facts about China, made books, drawings and banners with Chinese characters - both in school and at home. His mom told me how fascinated he was with the Chinese culture.
Then we began our second Expedition about interdependence between plants and animals. Our first case study is about how worms and soil depend on each other. Owen is once again enthralled with our topic - worms. He has already completed many self-assigned projects on our new topic. The notebook he shared this morning was just one of those projects.
His mom and I talked again and she said that now she thinks that what is inspiring or motivating him is how Expeditionary Learning works. He is drawn right into the topic by our mystery piece, by generating our own questions, by building our background knowledge, by having discussions around our guiding questions, by reading expert texts and more. I think that she is right. Owen is a learner and Expeditionary Learning blends nicely with his personal style of learning - it tends to do that for most students.
Owen with his homemade Expeditionary Learning notebook. |
Owen's worm puppets and backdrop from his presentation on how worms move. |
Owen's notes on his learning about worms. |