What I learned at school today

I remember having a conversation with my son when he was in grade 9. His teacher had given him a self directed project to do. He got to choose the topic and the format for the presentation, he even got to create the rubric for assessment. What a great opportunity right? He didn't think so and neither did many of his friends. Ï remember him saying "It isn't fair. We have NO IDEA WHAT THE TEACHER WANTS. How are we suppose to do the right thing if he doesn't tell us what he wants?" Instead of being happy about the freedom he had been given he felt frustrated, afraid and very anxious. It isn't surprising either. Up until that point he had been taught that school was about creating a product that conformed to a series of guidelines determined by the teacher. He was told what was important to know, he was handed the information or guided to the information sources and he created very tidy projects to represent the learning he had been asked to master. He had le

To start off our shape unit the students and I read "Tout le Monde est en Formes" by Ed Emberley. After reading the book we went on a hunt for shapes with the Ipad camera. We had a great time looking around the room and the playground for shapes. We discovered that there are circles, squares, triangles and rectangles everywhere! When we got back to class we decided that we wanted to make our own pictures just like the ones in the book. We used the scraps from our scrap paper bins to create our own pictures using squares, circles, triangles and rectangles. Here are an online shape games we played when were were done our project. Apprendre les formes What did I learn at school today? Shapes are a lot of fun and students have a great time playing with them. What is your favorite shape based project? How do you introduce shapes?