Thursday morning, we had an extended Pastoral Care session, in which my students commenced writing their proposals for their Personal Learning Projects that they will be completing next term. Once they have decided on their area of interest, I will use my professional network to link them up with a mentor, who will help them in the completion of their projects. They were blogging, posting on our class website message board, and beginning to establish their own Personal Learning Network by setting up their Google Reader accounts.
Hopefully they can become truly networked!
After recess, they were finalising their Ancient History research projects, the product of 6 weeks' work. Tasks like comparing and contrasting ancient and modern religions, redesigning a legacy of a civilisation, and creating the laws that they would have invented had they been in power are rich, promoting deep learning. Not having had an opportunity as yet to have an in-depth look at the work they have produced, I am very excited to see what they have developed.
In the next session I had arranged for the students to take advantage of an opportunity set up by the Department of Educatoion and Early Childhood Development's Next Practice Division - a video conference with NASA astronaut Rex Walheim! The topic for year seven next term is 'Space Rocks', so it was a great opportunity to hook them in, and although he didn't get to answer the questions the students had prepared, they were still enthralled, finding out the truth about going to the toilet in space (vacuums are involved!) and discovering that after a few days in zero gravity, your back starts to ache because you grow a little bit. Thankfully, the technology even played nicely, the only glitch (a faulty cable to the theatre's sound system) being overcome with a microphone held up to my laptop speakers.
The day finished with the students presenting their terms' learning to an audience of year nine students and some other teachers. We heard the story of Cleopatra's life, the story of a young Aztec girl sold into slavery, and saw a functional recreation of Roman aqueducts, among many other amazing presentations. They assessed each others' work, providing praise and constructive criticism.
While I was there the whole time, guiding, leading, monitoring, providing feedback, suggesting new directions, the day was not about me, it was about my students, and what they were learning. It was amazing to finish the term on such a high, and makes me dread leaving them in just 10 short weeks.
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