Empowering Learners to Make Choices in Early Elementary

Even WAB’s youngest students are empowered to make decisions about their learning.

Twice a week in Junior Grade 1, all of the classes come together to learn in a big group. The activity is called Community Time, and it’s an opportunity for students to build relationships with more students and teachers, explore their interests, and learn skills that will serve them as they grow older.

“We believe that students are best served when they are known by a group of teachers and their needs are being catered to by more than one teacher,” Early Years Coordinator Karen Lindner said. “There’s a lot of research to suggest that doing things collaboratively is better for kids, better for teachers, and better for schools.”

Now in its third year, Community Time in Junior Grade 1 has evolved to be more structured and more purposeful in meeting students’ academic and social-emotional needs. The time focuses not only on math and literacy and other subjects, but also on the way that children go about their learning, their self-awareness, and how they go about making decisions.

Teachers work together to plan big-picture questions related to their PYP Units of Inquiry, which they will use to provoke investigations across the entire grade level. Prior to Community Time, in each of their classrooms, they introduce the questions to the students and help them formulate initial ideas, so that when Community Time comes, the students are clear about what they’re doing.

Students are currently working through the unit “How We Express Ourselves.” For Community Time, teachers have asked students, “What big ideas do you have, and how can you express them?” 

The students then go from classroom to classroom to explore the different materials available for them to use. So, for example, if a student’s idea is a dinosaur, they have the choice to use the paints available in one classroom to create the dinosaur, the clay in another room, or markers, building materials, or any other items the teachers have.

“We’re supporting their individual passions, and we’re helping them learn to socialize, and we’re doing it through play, which is so important,” teacher Sandra Christiansen said. “I see students making plans and being purposeful about how they create.”

To learn more about how the team of teachers work together, plan collaboratively, and implement Junior Grade 1’s Community Time, tune into Episode 18 of The WAB Podcast.

 

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