With the help of a $4,000 grant, JoLynn Williams and Liz Bailey of Okte Elementary in Clifton Park are creating a new way of learning.
Williams, a first-grade teacher at Okte for the past seven years, and Bailey, a library media specialist, were awarded the summer stipend to develop discovery boxes, which help kids learn different concepts using objects and clues.
The grant was provided by the Capital Region Teacher Center, a group funded by the state Department of Education, and will cover the creation of 10 such boxes, which are designed for first- through third-grade students.
The four boxes already created by the pair cover diverse topics such as butterflies and Thanksgiving.
`I love the idea of the active learning process where children have to actually go through these documents and determine importance,` Williams said. `You give them the materials, and they go off. They start their learning, and it’s immediate.`
The boxes include various objects that the students have to connect to a common theme based on clues. For example, one object in the butterfly box is a drinking straw, which represents one of the body parts on a butterfly. In the Thanksgiving box is a croquet ball, which represents an early form of the game taught to pilgrims by Native Americans.
The project is part of a districtwide `professional learning community` goal.
`We’re not just responsible for teaching the material and hoping that most of the kids will pick it up,` Bailey said. `We’re responsible to make sure that the students are learning the material.`
Bailey worked at Schenectady Christian School as a media specialist and English teacher for 15 years before coming to Okte last year. She contrasted traditional learning, which she called `Teflon learning,` with the discovery boxes.
`When they sit and they touch and they do things with their own hands, with their own eyes, using all of their senses, they create their own meaning and that is what I like to call ‘Velcro learning,’` Bailey said. `That’s going to stick with them and be part of their body of knowledge from then on.`
Williams got the idea of the boxes after discussing with a parent one of her students’ learning troubles. She knew the student liked to collect things, so she suggested an independent study ` unique for such a young learner ` and the idea turned into a discovery box.
`Their charge really is to look at these objects and figure out how they’re connected to the topic,` Williams said. `Eventually they work like a researcher.`
`This is exactly the way young researchers should be doing their research,` Bailey added. `We’re providing them with some rich resources and some manipulative objects.`
The $4,000 grant covers the summer stipends of Williams and Bailey, and Okte has pledged to pay for any costs associated with the materials inside the boxes. Williams said that part of the grant required her to present the concept to a staff meeting at Okte, and that she looks forward to such a presentation on a districtwide level or even at a national conference.
`These boxes are really to support teachers in making sure that kids will learn,` Bailey said. `This is something that is going to promote the learning goals of our school by focusing on the learner instead of the teacher
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