Joyous Chinese Cultural Center

The following was posted last week on my classroom blog.


We had a wonderful day of learning at the Joyous Chinese Cultural Center. We went to sessions on making dumplings, doing Kung Fu/Fan Dances, doing paper cutting and doing calligraphy. Check out the photos below to get a peek into how we spent our day.  Thanks so much to all of the chaperones who went along and were so helpful all day. (If you get this post by email, you will need to go directly to the blog to enjoy the Haiku Deck.)

Voyage

At my school, we take our students on Outward Bound type trips that we call Voyages. On these trips we might hike, camp, snow shoe, sled, rock climb and/or do team building activities. The trips start small in Kindergarten and build in challenge and length as the students reach 6th grade. In first grade, we go on one overnight trip in the fall and then take two one day trips in the winter and spring. Today my crew went on our last Voyage day of the year. We went hiking and rock climbing. This is my favorite trip of the year. You can get a taste of what our day was like in the Haiku Deck below. (If you get this post by email, you will need to go directly to the blog to view the deck.)

Worms, Bees and Haiku Deck

I have been wanting to write a blog post for my classroom blog that tells a little bit of the story of our most recent Expedition called Down to Earth. I also had heard good things about a new app called Haiku Deck and wanted to learn more about it. Yesterday I merged these two items on my "to do" list and came up with the Haiku Deck below. The app is very easy to use and I think the final product looks nice. I will be posting this Haiku Deck on my classroom blog next week after Spring Break to give the parents a view of how an Expedition works.

The Joys of Expeditionary Learning

I teach at an Expeditionary Learning school. While we do try to follow much of the Expeditionary Learning philosophy, we are also part of a larger school district and sometimes make modifications to how we teach to fit district requirements.

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.