As part of any e-learning programme, it is sensible to provide students with a balanced set of activities whilst ensuring that we are aligned with our regular school curriculum. In order to kickstart our new learning units, for example, in Class 3 and 4 (Year 5 & 6 UK / 4th & 5th Grade US), teachers organised some fun activities for children that would give them time away from their computer screens.
For Class 3’s IPC unit, The Great, Bold & Brave, children have started learning about ancient Greeks – and what better way to get a taste for this unit than to do some Greek cooking! Students were given the opportunity to prepare one of two dishes typical in Greece: Greek yoghurt sauce or Greek butter cookies! In the process of having to prepare one of these dishes, we hoped to “hook” children into their learning for this topic about the ancient Greeks while giving them something delicious to eat!
During the process of preparing one of these dishes, children took pictures in order to create a slideshow of their work along with a reflection (showing what went well and what didn’t). Some children also made a short video, which showed the highlights of their cooking experience. We are very grateful to parents at home for helping to facilitate this cooking experience, and by the looks of the media we have received, it’s clear children had lots of fun in the process!
For Class 4’s introduction to our IPC unit, ‘Fairgrounds’, we invited students to film themselves presenting a magic trick. Following teachers’ magic trick examples, which were also filmed, children were given the challenging task of coming up with “magic” that had to later be explained in terms of science for their knowledge harvest! For this activity, children uploaded their videos of magic demonstrations to our exciting new tool, Flipgrid, enabling their videos to be shared quickly and safely across the year group.
The Flipgrid web application has been a great success! Allowing teachers to spark discussions by providing a platform for teachers and students to share short videos with one another, we have since used Flipgrid for several other projects across the curriculum – and we love the learning that’s taking place with this platform!
As always, you can find additional information about our IPC units along with access to relevant online resources via our Classroom Flipped website (http://classroomflipped.com/).
