This year, over the course of a half term, I allocated some time for the children to plan and carry out their own projects in school about anything they wanted. This was based around Google’s ‘20% time’ in which employees can spend 20% of their time working on their own ideas. My instructions were that children must be able to state what they are learning at all times, in addition to what they have learnt previously and what mistakes/lessons have been learnt. This kind of learning directly addresses the ‘learning muscles’ referred to in many books and research papers. It also focuses on the higher level of blooms taxonomy, creating.
Overall the project was reasonably successful. Some groups were obviously a lot better than others and needed little guidance. I carried this out in year 5 so they were reasonably independent. If trialling this in lower years I would consider giving example projects to the children, especially lower ability, so that their projects would have more structure. I would also give older children a copy of the (new?) national curriculum and ask them to highlight which areas they would address during their project. This could help to focus them on learning specific to the curriculum.
Below are some pictures of some of the projects, along with some examples of the ‘learning records’ I asked them to complete.
Steve