Thoughts on perseverance!

This year I wanted to take risks with the students by implementing tinkering and making. We have made the Scribble Bot (Blog) and now the automata by focusing on the learning skills and analyzing students choice of design to represent the main idea of the Grade 5 and 6 Social Studies.

 During the making process students are enthusiastic, persistent, engaged and articulate their creative thinking process. The positive mentality of perseverance and persistence depended on each others learning and thinking of the how and why of the function of the automata mechanics. Students stayed engaged and pursued learning together. Students became resourceful and imaginative in building a learning community valuing each others' thinking outcomes.

By taking risks with the students and developing our learning together, we gather resourceful thinking environments in which failing has a purpose for achieving.

Through many learning tasks students are engaged and motivated. Through the making with materials from scratch and designing, autonomy and ownership seem to prevail and be captured by a culture of cultivation by the students who are the makers, who are being meaningful and challenging their thinking with the making. The progression of thinking skills of self-regulation, problem solving. designing and retrying flow and flourish.

By observing and coaching through feedback, I made time for consolidations and reflections which provoked creative thinking skills that students unpacked allowing life long skills of getting through tough obstacles for creating.

The assessment is very rich since it is the actual process of making and documenting the learning. What counts is being able to analyze, pursue their own designing and naturally share, question and learn from each other. Students were constantly analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating, creating and recreating to achieve the automata function. The process is about the learning: How was the student thriving? Did the student have a sense of meaning in what he/she was doing? What role did they play in sharing? The students were thriving: by wondering, challenging their thinking and reflecting on the co-constructed criteria that explained the automata making process.

My learning thrived as well just as the students, I persevered the challenges of opening the maker education with my students. Like any tasks in class, reading, writing, blogging, Math, we need to give the opportunity for open discussions, inviting peer feedback, reflecting and transforming thinking for students to become resourceful, imaginative and creative.

My Self reflective questions during learning tasks:

How am I inviting the students to take risks?
How am I inviting curiosity?
How am I building a community for persistence and resourceful learning?

Evidence of the process: 

Padlet with the criteria and samples from Tinkering and Makers Ed sites:

Created with Padlet

Reflections

An audio reflection

Videos of explaining the process using Explain Everything App.

I would like to thank @maker_junior Alison Adnani for always inspiring me, for the Makerspace G+ Community and The Tinkering Studio Team for learning from them too,