A Closer Look at Learning...

As we get closer and closer to Kenya and our school days are limited, learning has really been on my mind.  What will the kids do to learn?  How do we measure learning?  And, what learning is the most important?  The past two days have been great for both Marquite and Natalie in regards to learning; this post will focus on Natalie's learning activities and a future one will focus on Marquite's.

Natalie and Grandma working on crocheting.

 One of the things Natalie is going to work on while in Kenya is learning how to crochet.  You can see the focus on her face in the picture above.  Believe it or not, crocheting has been mentioned by innovative educators as a great thing for young students to learn.  Any guesses as to why?  Well, here is what some people are saying: crocheting helps students learn to code and coding is one of the biggest areas of need that we can see in the future.  Interesting huh?  How does crocheting yarn with a needle(s) connect to one of the most in-demand skills of the future?  Well, apparently there are patterns that are a part of crocheting and these patterns are written in code, it helps young students conceptualize the patterns and gives them a basic understanding of how coding works.  While that is all well and good, I think that crocheting also teaches patience, trial and error, focus, and the time spent with Grandma is also important!

Another tool we are going to take advantage of is on-demand personalized learning with technology.

Natalie with her iPad and IXL

Reading A to Z is a fantastic site for young readers.  It provides thousands of books in many different formats for ease of use.  The part Natalie and I both appreciate is that there is an entire section of the website dedicated to leveled books.  Natalie knows from her assessments at school that she is reading at the L level.  So today, she simply pressed the icon on her iPad to go directly to the website, clicked the letter L at the top of the page and chose a book from a virtual bookshelf.  These high interest, leveled books are phenomenal!  Today, she just happened to find a book on Kenya that was level L and she read it and learned all about Kenya.  The book highlighted the new vocabulary and had a easy to use glossary at the back and big bright photos with captions.  It was a great learning experience.

After she read, she clicked the IXL app and worked on Math for about 10 minutes and Language Arts for about 10 more minutes.  IXL is aligned to the Common Core and breaks things down in a standard type format while being gamified for the kids.  It is responsive, adjusting when the student gets something wrong, and encouraging to help them want to master a skill.  Take a look at a few of the report options below.

Time Graph and Pie Chart

List of Skills and Progress

These are just a few of the learning activities that Natalie will be engaging in during our adventure.  I look forward to learning along with her and watching her grow and develop as a learner!  Please feel free to ask us any questions or give suggestions if you have them!  I am just as, if not even more, excited about Marquite's learning activities and I hope to share more about that soon.