EDC 665 - Week 1 Blog

Think back to a successful learning experience you have designed - what made it successful? What was your role in creating that success?

Colonial Newspaper with 5th graders:
Last year I taught fifth grade. In California, fifth grade standards cover the American Revolution and colonial life. Rather than reading the textbook and moving on, I found a way for my students to gain a taste of colonial life while exploring, researching, and having fun.

Elementary school teaching lends itself to a lot of "down time" where a transition is occuring, students are finishing assessments, etc. Many students work at different levels and at different paces, also. I wanted to find a hands-on project that would both enhance each students' skills and interests, while still encouraging growth. I also wanted to use my skills as a teacher to develop the lesson based on my strengths.

My background is in journalism. I have an undergraduate degree in journalism and I specialize most in news writing. My students knew this about me, and they also loved reading the newspaper everyday (as is done everyday in my classroom and discussions occur--I find this a cheap, valuable, and vital learning experience). Then it hit me... tie news writing into what the students are learning in class! Colonial America became the topic and students brainstormed ideas, paired themselves into interest groups for specific pages of the paper, collaborated with each other's sections as not to duplicate and to make the paper more cohesive and of "one voice", and took charge. I had students advertising on the classified's page what the "fashion" and "arts" page was describing. Students were researching clothing from the era, prices that seemed reasonable to sell the items at, researching transportation and possible job market struggles, and digging into real-life information just to complete a fictional paper. They considered their paper to be accurate according to research.

Although I was simply the facilitator in this learning experience and merely planted the seed of an idea into their brains, they did the rest. I was there to give suggestions, advice, writing coaching, and support. I provided the materials and tools (books, Internet, etc.) and they planned, made decisions, problem-solved, researched and worked out their differences. I believe this experience was successful because it was open-ended in nature, but ultimately produced what my intial goal set out to do (in addition to providing an extra activity for that "down" time)-- to incorporate real colonial America into our supplemental projects and get their interest in writing, researching, the lives of the colonists, and working together as team members for the common good and goal of the group.