Tuesday, December 8, 2009

A Classroom Project - An Amazing Life









Today, we worked over a couple hours to create something magical - a timeline of Ben Franklin's life. I feel it is magical for several reasons. Children picked an aspect of Franklin's life to research (one skill) and then were encouraged to write a paragraph about that aspect (another skill), and then put their research in chronological order (yet another skill).

Another reason that this is the type of project I love is the way that each child was allowed to shine. When picking a topic to research, students picked something they had interest in. Stanley researched Magic Squares while Lea picked the glass armonica, which she had seen in Philadelphia. Toussaint wanted to learn more about the war and the Declaration of Independence, while Freya was fascinated that Franklin invented swim fins at the age of 10. And so on.

Finally, group projects such as this one tend to bring children together. They had to work in close contact while adding their illustrations, and contributed ideas to each other. As they rubbed shoulders (literally), they encouraged and complimented each other's work. And, finally, they looked at the final project - proudly displayed in the hallway - and said, "Didn't we do great?"

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