P1
The Postcards Cycle in detail
Plan
While my research was continuing I had an idea. There were friendly people all over the country in the TA forum and I knew that we were just about to start a topic on the British Isles with year 3 in school. After a conversation with my year 3 teacher I put these two ideas together. I thought I'd ask people on the forum if their schools would like to send us some postcards. This connected back to theories I am very familiar with about children's need for real objects to stimulate their learning (John Holt "How Children Learn"). The postcards could form part of a display which I would then use on the blog. This would promote both the blog and the TA forum whilst enhancing the children's learning experience.
Do
I asked for people to get their schools to send us postcards.
One of the people in the TA forum shared some pictures of a project she'd done a few years ago which had involved getting people to send postcards to her school. She lived in Shetland and she said her school would like to send us some postcards. She showed those photos on the forum and agreed I could put them on the blog.
Someone else from Cornwall said he'd get involved too. I sent them both the school address by private e-mail. We got the postcards a couple of weeks later.
Review
The class really enjoyed reading the postcards from the children in Shetland and Cornwall. Those two places are just about as far away as you can get from our school and still be in the UK.
They also enjoyed writing postcards back about what our area is like and this helped the class to meet one of the writing targets for this half term (to write an informal letter). My teacher joined in happily with the idea and altered some of her plans to accommodate the additional material.
The display was then featured in the Classroom Displays Blog
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