Last week, we zoomed into the following line of inquiry:
How architectural designs have changed over time.
As we used the thinking move of "observing closely and describing what's there", we sorted photos of various architectural styles into five groups based on the features we noticed.
As we sorted, we were also working on developing our social skills as well as our communication skills.
The first video below shows our first attempt at working together as a team. In our reflection discussion which took place afterward, many of us mentioned that having multiple conversations taking place at the same time made it difficult for us to communicate ideas to each other. The positioning of our bodies also made it hard for us to hear our classmates who were far away from us.
After reflecting, we improved the quality of our discussions in several ways.
First of all, we decided to sit in one large circle so that we were able to see everyone.
Secondly, we took turns to talk to make sure all of our opinions were heard.
Thirdly, we placed the photos and paper in the middle so that everyone was able to reach them.
Take a look at this video showing our second attempt!
In this learning process, we used our thinking skills (metacognition) as well to improve the quality of our discussion without relying on the teacher to tell us what to do! This way, we are becoming more independent in the decisions we make in our learning journey.
Below are the groups of architectural styles we found out about. We were also able to order them into a timeline just by judging from the features!
