BUILDING UNDERSTANDING OF MAYCOMB COUNTY FROM TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - LITERALLY

DEVELOPING UNDERSTANDING OF CONTEXT IN ENGLISH THROUGH DIGItal TECHnologies and makng

The development of maker skills, design thinking and digital technologies capacity is not the sole responsibility of a hand full of keen teachers allocated a subject that a few students are fortunate enough to enrol in. To prepare our learners for a world where problem solving, digital competencies and design thinking routines are essential we can have significant impact if we start to combine this and truly embed it across a range of subjects. 

This project is one such example of this. Working with the Head of Faculty and the Year 10 English staff we brainstormed some ideas about how we could include fabrication in a meaningful way to help students increase their understanding of concepts connected to the texts they were studying. We came up wth the idea to use the laser cutter to collaboratively produce a large model of Maycomb County - thus helping the students understand the relationship between places in the text, promoting close analysis of locations and events. One of the teachers had the great idea to also include phrases and key ideas that ink to each place and suspend these above the model.

Access Pinterest board here

After consulting with the English teachers around what would help this come to fruition the document below was developed by me as the coach - outlining timings, requirements of the English staff and Coach with resources such as the tutorial videos developed. What this meant is the task provided opportunities for teachers to use new technologies such as Pinterest in  a supported manner,  teachers could book a team teaching session where I was able to work with classes and them and students were also empowered to be active knowledge constructers and problem solvers through sessions where they could proactively seek help - accessing videos, lunchtime catch ups or through the peer support network .