Today was one of THOSE days. The ones where you love your job. You embrace the chaos. You listen to kids, get so involved in their learning, and you suddenly realize the whole day has flown by and it’s time to go.
I’m still thinking about thinking. Our current unit involves the creation of a country. I love this project, but it could be carried out in two different ways. This is about Point A to Point B.
Choice 1: Create a country. Draw the map, make a flag, and write some laws for the country. Read a paragraph about the Constitution and answer some questions about it. Bonus: Do a crossword puzzle with US Government words. The meaning behind it? Just making a country because the teacher said so. Our learning targets? You will be able to describe the purpose of the Constitution. You will be able to describe what a democracy is. You will know the parts of a map. These are basic state standards. I’d probably even throw in a “Scoring Guide” with a checklist of parts they need to be “graded on”.
Choice 2: These events are not in any particular order and in fact, some were completely driven by the direction students took the learning. Analyze types of government in our world. How do they compare with each other? What does a country need to have a “government”? Evaluate the US Constitution and determine what parts are the most important. Examine the flag of another country and explain what symbols you find in the flag. What traditions and symbols are in the US? Then, create a country. What does a place need to have in order to be considered a country? What makes a country stable? Write a constitution for the new country and describe it’s government. Defend your government by explaining what type it is. Design a flag that contains symbolism. Our Learning Targets: I can explain and justify what symbolism means to a country. The meaning behind it? Understanding what a country is and being able to apply the principles of government, symbolism, and historic traditions in a new context. How will I assess it besides my formative walk-arounds, observations, interviews, and notes long the way? They will choose a way to present their country to our class on “New World Museum Day.” We might even invite a few “dignitaries” to the event.
So, we’re right in the middle of Choice 2. I’ve heard some amazing discussions, some whole class and some as I walked around. Here are a few…
I heard a discussion about the most important part of a government and why a good leader was important. We talked about how one country changed their flag 24 times over the past 50 years and students determined that it must be an unstable government, lots of fighting, and perhaps even a country with anarchy or maybe they’ve just had bad leaders if they are a dictatorship. I saw the understanding of why the branches of government were defined over 200 years ago. I saw them struggle with finding what the most important parts in the Constitution are. I resisted every urge to give them “categories.” (Yes, it was hard for me to not rescue them.) I watched them create their own created-country flags, using colors like Red for “valor,” because as one student explained, some of the colors and symbolism are trends throughout the world.
Today? I asked them questions and before long I knew exactly what was happening… they were thinking and learning. It wasn’t just the on-the-surface-remember-and-tell kind of learning. It was the dig-deep-you-can’t-even-Google-this type of learning. It was awesome.
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