One of the best things about being a critical skill teacher is reflecting on a successful challenge. Over and over, I see children going far beyond the requirements of the challenge. Over and over, I see students challenging themselves much more than I would have. Over and over, I see their enthusiasm, delight, and pride in team achievement.
Recently, my multi-age class, self-named "The Great One-Two," completed a challenge on the solar system. They were asked to present the "important" information from our just-completed unit on the solar system to our sister multi-age 1/2 class. Their biggest challenge was to determine what was the most important information and how best to present it. The minimum requirements were to produce a visual and/or demonstration, a written explanation, and an original song or poem.
For the presentation, we ended up with three demonstations and a visual, lots of written explanations, a big-book, and 3 original poems (one of which was turned into a rap song performed by the entire class.)
The presentation ended with the recitation of an original poem written by a second-grader the previous night, entitled "Space and Friends." It mentioned every participant by name (including our aide and myself) and made positive comments about each person's contribution. It was written in the true spirit of collaboration and community.
This year, dealing with the wide spread of a 1/2 classroom, I am impressed with how well the critical skills model includes and encourages contributions from all students at their own level. The critical skills model allows truly gifted students to challenge themselves. By removing artificial limits to their efforts, the critical skills classroom enables these students to accomplish much more than we might ask of them. With the help of our aide, my special needs student also contributed individually, painting a planet and dictating a report about it. Our collaborative model allowed her to work in small groups and feel comfortable contributing to group decisions and research.
While working on the challenge, the class did many other unrequired tasks which contributed to the quality of their solution. Some students decided to write individual books about the solar system, drew pictures of it, created a diarama of the solar system, and brought in materials from home. They also developed their own quality standards for the presentation.
At a crucial juncture of this challenge, my class decided they wanted to create a large visual of the Milky Way. My immediate reaction was to tell them we did not have time.But I went with my second reaction. I knew the importance of student ownership, and I said okay, warning them that it was late in the process and they would have to work hard. They did. That Milky Way visual turned out to be a key element in the presentation. It became the background for our solar system demonstration (which we acted out).
Letting go is what I have struggled the most with. The night before the presentation, I was writing in my journal about how nervous I was. We weren't ready. We weren't going to pull it off. I was just going to have to trust in the process. I did and they did a wonderful job. That letting go, as difficult as it is for me, seems to be a key element in facilitating student ownership and achievement.