School life

 What is school for? 

We brainstormed different things about learning - what is it important to learn? What would you like to learn? What helps us to learn? What makes learning difficult? What could you help others to learn? 

This brought up a lot of discussion as children moved around the room writing their ideas on the different sheets of paper. This 'bus stop' activity where they travel around the room and stop at each paper to write ideas helps them to have their own ideas heard, but also allows for mixing and discussion along the way. 

We then looked at photos of schools in different countries and thought about what might make it difficult or might help learning in each situation. 

We then thought about possible schools of the future. I posed a scenario and they had to think about advantages and disadvantages about it.

"The year is 2050. Schools have been declared 

too expensive and have been abolished. 

All children will work from home at online schools.

Students can choose any online school to participate in 

and could be working with children from 

many different countries." 

It was an interesting exercise as many at first were keen on the idea, but when they started to think about it they came up with many possible problems. 

There were several choices to expand thinking - designing an ideal classroom, thinking what makes a good teacher or a good friend and advertising for that, writing about what they would be like if they were a teacher etc.