Introduction
Can a story help children to reflect on their own behaviors and create more empathic attitudes? Can the manipulative activities of tinkering and making help children increase concentration, critical thinking and improve classroom behavior?
A story to reflect, laugh and create!
Students Age
7 YEARS OLD, attending the second primary school( Convitto Nazionale Gaetano Filangieri Vibo valentia)
Teacher: Bisogni Anna Rita
SUBJECTS:
We started reading Pinocchio during History Time in a 2nd Primary School class, we discussed and reflected and had a great time., then we considering chronological time and sequences with time indicators. The story has also lent itself perfectly to introduce principles of Civic Education and to reflect on the distinction between rights-whims and in general on correct behaviors. Connecting with Geography has created a magnetic labyrinth with the use of small magnets and spatial coordinates : Pinocchio in the land of the balocchi. During Art Hour, a Master Book was drawn with sequences of the story and in the hours of Technology to insert Pop Up elements, start a work of building the characters, a Kamishibai and, a Geppetto-Eating Whale (Tinkering), a Jumping Talking Cricket (Tinkering) also inserting online games with the use of Genially and the creation of a child-size Web App with the Marvel Pop App. We then proceeded with a reconstruction of some sequences of the story through coding and the robot Doc and a chessboard where to move our Doc-Pinocchio among the scenes drawn by the children (Storytelling).
The aims
- Learning by doing: related to materials, tools, and the ability to test yourself by managing to complete the various challenges;
- Stimulate thinking, ask yourself problems, look for solutions and reorganize acquired knowledge.
- Develop the ability to create stories and sequences of known and unseeded stories.
- Develop in students and students the awareness that objects can be designed and created by activating shared learning processes, useful to solve daily and non-daily problems.
- Bring to school the charm of the digital craftsman, the “maker”, the tinkering and the experimenter.
- Develop resilience, motivation to learn and improve self-esteem.
- Deepen the S.T.E.A.M. subjects through the creation of innovative training courses, both in content and methodologies.
- Acquisition of digital skills aimed at the production of creative multimedia narratives, info-graphics, audio multimedia books.
INTERDISCIPLINARY OBJECTIVES
History: Graphically and verbally represent the activities, the facts lived and narrated.
Recognize relationships of succession and contemporaneity, duration, periods, temporal cycles, changes, in phenomena and experiences lived and narrated
Geography
- Move in the surrounding space, orienting yourself through reference points, using topological indicators
- Topological and spatial indicators.
- Natural and artificial elements.
- The landscape and its elements
Technology
- Carry out tests and experiences on the properties of the most common materials
- Plan the manufacture of a simple object by listing the necessary tools and materials.
- Make a cardboard object by describing and documenting the sequence of operations.
- Everyday objects.
- The parts of objects.
- Structure report – function of an object
Art and image
- Creatively elaborate personal productions to express sensations and emotions
- represent and communicate the perceived reality.
Summary
Pinoccho and the SteAm is an educational project designed for primary school children that combines different subjects such as History, Geography, Civic Education, Art and Technology. It starts by introducing pinocchio’s story and proceeds from time to time with various laboratory experiences aimed at allowing children to produce artifacts with imagination and creativity through tinkering, related to the use of paper (paper engineering) and mechanisms (Rube Goldberg) and pop Up (engineering), and magnetism. Materials are studied; creation of pinocchio (Arte) characters and scenes. It uses the Project Based Learning method, so each lesson is preceded by reading some chapter of the story and continues with a laboratory where children question and try to create what is required, follows a first collective evaluation and improvements based on the suggestions received (Think, Make, Play, Improve).
Lesson Plan
- History: Introduction of pinocchio’s story and reading of the first chapters. We reflect on the characters, have fun with the scenes described, get passionate about the story and proceed with the first phase: creation of a pop-up book by Pinocchio. The reading of pinocchio’s chapters will always be preparatory to each lesson with attention on the chapters read to draw the educational thrusts and make the small readers reflect
- Art: creation of the Master Book and scenes
- Geography: construction of a steAm maze (Pinocchio in the land of the balocchi) with the use of cards, small magnets and wooden chopsticks
- technology: construction of a Kamishibai 3 hours, inserting Pop Up items 2 hours, whale eats-geppetto 1 hour, talking cricket 1 hour, Apps with Pop Marvel 2 hours, Coding games 2 hours, online games 2 hours
TIME:
Preparation time: The preparation of the work provided about 12 hours in total between study of the path, objectives and phases
Activity and Teaching time: (2 hours a week for about 4 months)
- Preparation: 10 minutes
- Non-STEM Subject 1 History and Civic Education: 15 hours
- history reading 3 chapters at a time and brainstorming and discussion
- Non-STEM Subject 2 Art: 6 hours (construction of the scenes of the Master Book and the characters)
- Non-STEM Subject 3 Geography 1 hour (construction of a steAm maze(Pinocchio in the land of the balocchi)
- STEM Subject 4/non-STEM subject 13 ore
- Tecnologia construction of a Kamishibai 3 hours, inserting Pop Up items 2 hours, whale its-geppetto 1 hour, talking cricket 1 hour, Apps with Pop Marvel 2 hours, Coding games 2 hours, online games 2 hours
TEACHING RESOURCES: Materials:
Complete edition book of Pinocchio, paper, cardboard, glue stick, scotch, colors, clothespins, sticks, straws, small magnets, here some cards to download.
Online tools:
Online game presentation on Genially created for children with introduction of activities to do, Pop Marvel app to create an application on Pinocchio.
All visuals belong to the Author – Attribution CC-BY