NJY Thrive Reflection

 (1) If they really care about the problem and are curious about the solution, they may create new knowledge that may not be new to the adult world but new to the community (the classroom) (2) If groups are formed such that like-minded people are together to pursue their own interests and yet willing to cross-fertilized ideas across groups.  (3) If ideas are seen to be improvable and everyone feel safe to share half-baked ideas to be refined in terms of quality, coherent and, utility and usability (4) If diversity is accepted and the class believes that new knowledge can be achieved through messiness, complexity and quantity of ideas, everyone is a valid contributor (5) If the teacher is willing to be part of the knowledge-building process by understanding and learning how students build knowledge and make changes to the design of scaffold, grouping, monitoring mechanism together with the students.  (6) If the teacher provides directions to seek authoritative knowledge bu...

 I interviewed 2 students to look at their work for the day. My purpose was originally to see if staying back indeed helped them to produce quality work. To my surprise, these are what I found. "I wrote a lot here and knowing that it only requires a few lines" "I saved and did not submit because I want to get the correct answer." "I do not know how to read (Mother Tongue) the question."  "Look, this is my video" - showing me his photography of the sky by the month. "I'm too lazy to download the video now for the art." "These are games for us to revise, I just anyhow do" - Do you know that answer? "Yes" - Running very quickly, showing me the correct answer. "I have forgotten to do the maths, I will do it later" - showing me the given the hardcopy. Conclusion: Reduce curriculum, Understand students as curriculum. Read again "curriculum and the child" Do something that the students really care ab...

 Improvement to Coin-box project to provide opportunities for students to sketch from imagination. Training the sense of proportion. By setting constraints that a square acrylic cannot be cut, the hole size is fixed, and zero-waste design (all cut-out material has to be reused). Can students imagine the possibility?  A paper mock-up may be used as a scaffold in this case if the students cannot visualise.