I love Friday mornings at The Berkeley School. Each K-5 grade level has a unique tradition that engages students in their intellectual learning linked to important social learning as well. In the K/1 classrooms, parents and family members are invited in for Free Friday, a chance to explore materials, collaborate on reading, writing, and math activities, play games and puzzles, and put the child in the role of expert and guide to demonstrate (and thereby consolidate) his/her learning.
In the 2/3 classrooms, parents and family members join students during a Reader's Workshop period. Children without family members present often spontaneously gather together in groups and simultaneously read and share a variety of (often non-fiction) texts.
Friday mornings at the 4/5 level usually begin with a "Cerritoberry" period, in which all students and teachers from both classrooms come together to do an activity (or play a game) that promotes communication and collaboration. For today's activity, students were broken up into groups of 5 or 6 and given the following survival situation (drawn from secondary Scouting curriculum, which uses it for the purposes of teaching content, whereas for TBS it was used for teaching critical thinking, communication, and collaboration):
You and your companions have just survived the crash of a small plane.
Both the pilot and co-pilot were killed in the crash. It is mid-January ,
and you are in Northern Canada. The daily temperature is 25 below zero,
and the night time temperature is 40 below zero. There is snow on the
ground, and the countryside is wooded with several creeks criss-crossing the
area. The nearest town is 20 miles away. You are all dressed in city clothes
appropriate for a business meeting. Given a group of items you’ve recovered
from the wreck (a small ax, a can of Crisco, newspapers, a lighter, etc),
create a list of the items in order of importance for your survival, followed
by the uses of each item and the reason why you have it in the order you’ve
chosen.
