Читать книгу Student Learning Communities - Нэнси Фрей - Страница 29

Cube It!

Describe it

In one year's time, San Francisco grew from a city of 900 people to a whopping 56,000 people!

Describe how this happened so quickly, giving as many details as possible.

Analyze it

What were some of the problems that resulted from such a huge growth in the number of people in California during the Gold Rush?

Apply it

Many people came to California as a way to get rich quick, with no intention of mining gold.

What were some of the different ways that people made lots of money as a result of the Gold Rush?

Take a stand

Do you think it is better to get rich quickly or to stick to a slower, but safer method of making money? Why?

Reinvent it

If you had lived during the Gold Rush period, what other ways might you have been able to make money without having to mine the gold?

Choose a different perspective

Do you think you would have wanted to move across the country to California to search for gold? Or, as a member of a family, would you have argued against it? Why?

After the period of in-group discussion, each group shares their question and their thinking with the rest of the class. At the completion of the activity, students rank-order the questions in terms of difficulty, which in turn provides the teacher with feedback she can use in designing future collaborative learning. Over the course of the year, Ms. Czarnopys wants her students to learn the content, of course, but she also wants them to develop social and emotional skills while they learn about themselves and each other. SLCs help her pursue both goals.

A practice such as Cube It can be easily adapted to a live virtual session, with each group weighing in on their decisions. Importantly, the outcome is that students have regular experiences with listening to one another in small groups as well as the in whole class. In addition, they gain further experience with interacting with one another, an important skill we've all come to appreciate in our own virtual work meetings!