The class, which was held in period 6 on Friday, was so popular that boys didn’t want to leave at the end of the sessions and often were still working at 4.30. “The feedback has been phenomenal and many parents have said thanks, saying their sons talked about what they were
creating with so much enthusiasm that many parents wanted to get involved. “Next year, I would like to have more mentors for the boys - gurus who can teach the boys things I can’t. It was would be great to involve our Old Boy community in this,’’ Ms Marsh says.
Ms Caroline Marsh and Ms Christine Rayward have been accepted as members of the International Boys’ Schools Coalition Action Research team for 2016-17, researching Collaboration and the Power of Learning Groups. Their action research will focus on collaborative learning through Genius Hour projects and they will be working with 10-25 Year 9 boys as part of the action research. They will participate in regular guided online discussions and, in June 2016, they will attend the IBSC Conference in Vancouver, Canada for a two-day training programme. They then undertake their own research and present to an international audience at the 2017 IBSC Annual Conference in Baltimore, US.
What the boys think
The boys say that one of the hardest things was choosing the topic, but once that was sorted, it was full steam ahead. All agreed that setting their own learning and researching goals, learning how to use apps and finding a way to solve a problem was the key. All the boys spoken to agreed they were lucky to have had the experience. Zach Gallagher and Jack Elvy decided they wanted to build a bike driven by a chainsaw. Zach had an old chainsaw lying in his garage, and after discussion in class about it, they took it from there. “We started researching the history of dirt bikes and how they began and used elements of this research to make our bike. The end result is we have a bike that moves, although not at a super fast rate.’’
James Goodman and Jamie Marshall-Lee decided to focus on producing a piece of music from scratch. “We researched some musical history, used Garageland, made some loops, created sounds we wanted, edited and produced it. We were proud of what we produced and wanted to share the things we had found out. For us, the best thing compared with normal learning, was we got to feel the creativeness of what we were doing, and were able to work at our own pace.’’
Will Greenslade, who comes from a farm, was interested in the impact that pests such as possums and ferrets have on other wildlife. He chose to share his findings through a Power Point and by writing a speech. “It is great to be able to choose what we want to learn about, especially if it is something that is not covered in one of our school subjects. I found I learnt such a lot, especially about the ways ferrets are causing the extinction of birds and are changing their diets to include kiwi,” says Will.
“The enthusiasm spills over into other subjects and you go into your next period buzzing’’ Will Greenslade
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College Issue 30 2016
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