I have encountered many different school experiences that have impacted my developmental pathway at every stage of my life. An impact experience that I specifically remember was in 6th social studies in a project activity that we spent weeks preparing for. The classroom project was based around a living museum where each group was assigned different parts of the museum such as medieval, ancient Egypt, and other parts of ancient history on which the class was based. While this took place a long time ago I still remember parts of the assignment and I can see how this impacted my developmental pathway. I was assigned the medieval portion and we had a few weeks to prepare for this project which took place throughout the 6th grade hall and we had our section to present our project. We spent our time researching different portions of our era of history and preparing many physical artifacts that could be used to present to our teachers. At the end of the project we decorated a wall of a castle and many different objects we could use to present history. We presented this to all our classmates and teachers as if it was actually a museum.
This project impacted me in a few different ways, especially with the fact that I am a history major now and also I can look back and see why this project worked out well for the teacher. This assignment impacted me on a personal level because there were multiple levels of creativity which allowed our group to express our knowledge in multiple ways. This in turn helps the students learn because the creativity makes them focus on really caring about the project which helps them learn and master the subject they are learning about. We were also able to express our knowledge of what we have learned which also helps us retain information better since we are more readily able to share it rather than storing it away. The history portion of this reinforced my liking for history because every single year of my educational lifetime I have enjoyed my history classes and this class deeply impacted my interest in history. All these educational experiences I have had in my lifetime have led me to where I am today which is focused on education and history.
Thanks for sharing your impactful experience Shane. Why was this a developmentally appropriate strategy for 6th grade students? How might you conduct such a project with older students?
Peace,
Dr. R