Open House – Open Minds: Culminating Project for the End of cycle one.

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Peter Simons tells us the story of a culminating Learning and evaluation situation that focuses on Cross-Curricular Competencies

As a final project in cycle one, I wanted to give the children a chance to shine.
I also wanted them to apply many of the skills that we had worked on over the two years.
I wanted to focus on several cross curricular competencies:

The BIG Question

The sub-questions

1. What can we do now that we could not do before in Cycle One?
2. What were the best things we did in Cycle One?
3. What were the problems?
4.  How could we show our parents in an open house?
   

What we want to show and how

We brainstormed about the first three questions together and came up with lists.   I then wrote their lists into a play format.  They then decided who would be best suited to say each line ( CCC 3 )  Lines were assigned equally ( CCC 2 ) and the children became practicing their skits.  (See the sript)

Example:  One girl was given the line “We often forgot to change our shoes”.  She then had to get a child or two to work with her, and come up with a 10 second “clip” that would go along with that line. ( CCC 8 - CCC 4)

As we practiced the children offered suggestions for improvement. (CCC 3 – CCC 9)

Each child chose a song that they would sing as a solo or in a small group. (CCC 3 - CCC 8)
Ten additional songs and dances were chosen by the class in a vote. (CCC 2)

Inviting the parents

We worked on invitations.  Each child wrote an invitation to their parents inviting them to the open house, with an RSVP paper to be returned to school that would show the number of tickets needed, who they were for, and what they would bring to the reception which would follow in the outdoor classroom. The children then made numbered personalized tickets to be sent home, as well as a number to put on the chair that was reserved for that person. (CCC 2 - CCC 4)

Planning the open-house

I then asked the children 4 more questions:

1. Besides your family, who in the school should we invite?
2. How should we decorate the classroom?
3. What will you wear?
4. What jobs do we need done the day of the open house? (ushers, greeters, master of ceremonies, food passers, juice pourers etc)

We brainstormed and made lists.  The children made more invitations and tickets, many decorations, decided what to wear, (CCC 4), and jobs were assigned for each person for the day of the event (CCC 8)

The culminating event!

On the day of the event, the children ran the show.  They had to deal with lost tickets at the door (CCC 2), people with no tickets (Who are you and why are you coming? – CCC 3).  One child was absent, and was replaced in a skit without intervention by my part. (CCC 2)
As for the presentation itself, it went off without a hitch.  Clearly, the children were cooperating (CCC 8), and they were communicating appropriately (CCC 9).



At the reception, the food was passed to all the adults first (CCC 3).  They really did work together as a team to make it all happen. (CCC 8)  All in all, it was a great project.