We colour the world, not with the darkness of our pasts, but with the rainbow of our hope.
Jenim Dibie
Summary:
There are many challenges in today’s world. The primary role of the teacher is to teach, but also enable children to live and fully understand the world. Sometimes, certain concepts are easily understood and taught. Other times, teachers need to use a different approach, a metaphor, to present certain concepts.
Our activities focused on colours and shapes. The basic, core idea was to teach children colours and shapes through math and games in their mother tongue and foreign language (English language).
The underlying concept was to teach children to accept differences, break stereotypes and see under the surface. Colours and shapes were used as a metaphor for differences among people; their appearance, beliefs, habits, competencies, capabilities and knowledge. We are all different colours and shapes. We colour the world.
The activities took place during the Festival of Science, 8th – 11th April 2019. The main activities were:
1. preparation of students (pre-teaching the concepts)
2. preparation and creation of games
3. preparation and creation of code variants for Micro:bit
4. preparation and creation of Kahoot quiz about colours and shapes
5. presentation to the public during the Festival
The project website and the Festival gallery is here.
Games
The students were taught colours and shapes in their mother tongue, as well as English language. Also, they were pre-taught the concepts of colour and shape in math classes.
To make learning more fun and powerful, we used various ways to create games. Children created memory games, puzzles, cryptograms, word searches.
The created material is visible and downloadable here.
Micro:bit
Students created simple games, quizzes using Micro:bit. They created code on-site during the Festival, and participant could try and test the quizzes.
Micro:bit is a great way to start coding and have fun at the same time 🙂
Quiz Time
The students created a quiz in Croatian language, about colours and shapes. They used the tool Kahoot and created images and questions. During the Festival, visitors got to play the quiz using their mobile phones.
In-Classroom Discussion
Students were divided into groups. In each group, every student got a post-it of a different colour. Then they discussed in group how the colour makes them different. We also used shapes in the same way. Through games and role-play, we talked about stereotypes and how they got resolved in the past (like women’s right to vote).
In this activity, we addressed stereotypes and differences such as: nationality, religion, race, gender, beliefs, appearance, body shape, capabilities, interests, skills and knowledge.
About
The activities were conducted in primary school “Petar Zrinski” ÄŒabar, branch school Tršće, as a part of the Festival of Science, taking place 8-11 April 2019. The activities were conducted with 8th grade students and presented to the public. The group of students was mentored by Mirela RadoÅ¡ević.
Mirela RadoÅ¡ević holds an M.Ed. in ICT and English language and literature, and has been teaching for 13 years in primary school “Petar Zrinski” ÄŒabar. Her main focus is to shift the education paradigm to assist students in gaining knowledge of the STEM area through games and inventive teaching methods in order to familiarize students with STEM. Also, she is determined to promote STEM for girls and challenge the stereotypes.
You can view the project’s website here.