Action Thinking

It was all sorted, or so I thought.

I sat in front of a class full of eager 6 and 7 year old learners. They are secret agents of thinking and learning and are very busy developing a repertoire of thinking tools to arm them for a lifetime of exciting learning. I began to share the exciting things I had planned for their learning when it struck me that agents of learning and thinking just might need to have some control of what drives their learning.

I put what I wanted them to know by the end of the term on sheets of paper in front of them. They sat in small groups at the learning intention they were interested in developing further. It was exciting to see how they worked collaboratively to develop how they thought their learning should look for each intention. One would be forgiven for thinking the children were planning a birthday party, they were buzzing with excitement and ideas.

We had a stop and think moment where we could share ideas with the whole class. One secret agent decided a good way that we should show our learning journey is by using a bus because we could all fit in a bus. I agreed and invited the other six and seven year old agents to provide input to how we should present our bus.

One child thought we would need to represent a petrol pump for the bus. This intrigued me and I questioned him further. The thinking behind the petrol pump was to have somewhere the bus could refuel or fill up. Sometimes when we are learning we reach our goals, we need strategies to help us, we could put the strategies in the petrol pump. I sit there unable to contain my excitement, what a fantastic year I am going to have teaching these little super secret agents of thinking and learning!

The children all contribute to planning a learning adventure that had meaning, purpose and relevance to their lives. They were able to discuss a range of activities they would like to pursue in order to meet the learning intentions placed in front of them. They piggy banked off each other's ideas and worked with me to plan a full integrated unit.

They were fired up and ready to dive into learning. I had planned what I thought would be an exciting learning journey however the journey they have planned is far more exciting. . .I had it sorted, or so I thought.