Calling the turtles home (or: thoughts on purposeful learning)

This half term's Mantle has been around turtles. The children's client was a chief from an island (co-created and located in the Polynesian islands). The chief was concerned: there used to be many turtles on the island - it is named 'Honu Island' after the first turtle - but there  no one had seen a turtle there for the past ten years. 

The children's commission: to find out where the turtles were going, why they weren't coming to Honu Island any more, and how they could be brought back. 

After five weeks' work, today Turtle Watch called the turtles home.

To celebrate this, I shall be thinking about the meaning and purpose that Mantle of the Expert  gives to children's learning. 

Tracking the turtles:
Having named and tagged turtles, the children took ownership of them. They were invested in them. From this point, they undertook a twice-weekly check of where they were using a turtle-tracker up on the wall. This required them to write sentences using compass directions and naming oceans. The first time they did this it was hard and they weren't sure. However, since then the first thing the children have done each day is to run up to the turtle tracker and talk about where their turtles are. 

A good way to learn ocean names and compass directions. 

Spontaneous split-pin work:
My Year 2 children love D.T. and are great at designing things. However, they don't always like my suggestions - they tend to feel like they know what they're doing just fine.  I've been trying to get them to use split pins in their own work for a long, long time. They just haven't been interested.

When cleaning up the beach, though, a couple of them suggested we might need 'a grabber'. I found out how to make a grabber using split pins, and suddenly the whole class was absorbed in working out how to use split pins to complete a fairly challenging D.T. task. 

Split pins, with a purpose.


Purposeful writing, of course:
The children thoroughly enjoyed making posters about the turtles they were tracking (purposeful - for visitors to learn about our turtles, and meaningful - the posters were about their own turtles). They also wrote letters to persuade business owners on the island to move their businesses, in order to create quiet beaches for turtles. 

A mistake I made, though: the children at no point received a response from their letters. This meant that they are still, right now, concerned that the hotels haven't moved, that turtles are going to get squashed by tourists and that cruise ships will disturb the ocean. Next time I shall ensure the children see the result of their work. 

Human geographical features:
I love making maps with children. I love trees, volcanoes, mountains, secret caves, deep dark forests and other such features. What I enjoy less is naming human geographical features. And teaching children the difference between the two. However, when re-designing the island to make it suitable for the turtles, the children made maps showing where the human features could go to allow for a peaceful turtle habitat, complete with symbols and a key.

The children were surprised when they met hotel owners who, despite the meticulous planning, were reluctant to move their hotels to the other side of the island. 

Turtle statues:
Once the children had completed the commission, the Chief (adult in role) invited them to create statues of their turtles to mark the moment turtles returtned to the island. Clay work is always fun, but never have I seen quite such enthusiasm for it. There followed a deeply satisfying 30 minutes of clay work, resulting in some high quality and meaningful turtles..

The return of the Turtles.
And of course, every session over the past few weeks has been leading up to the return of the turtles. Having cleaned the beaches and ocean, spoken to various island inhabitants and tracked their turtles, it was time.

Calling the turtles home was a lovely moment. Small children calling 'honuuuu, honuuuuu' to an empty playground, (at midnight and full moon, of course), then being invited to represent their turtle in chalk once they'd spotted it, was an exceptionally good way to spend a Wednesday afternoon)


Small note:
Sometimes, I worry that the children are not doing enough 'curriculum' learning when we Mantle. However, what I do see is that the learning  is deep and purposeful. This in turn gives children the boost they need to tackle more challenging tasks (see split pins, above). So really, it's all good.