“What if YOU were the director of the Children’s Museum?”

PERSPECTIVE:STEAM powered exploration to answer…

What’s YOUR perspective?

Let’s take a closer look…..

……Not everyone’s view is the same……

“It is better to know how to learn than to know.”-Dr. Seuss

Action Plan Implementation Report:Diane Lohr and Karla Gearhart

Briefly describe your action plan and explain how you implemented it.

Our plan was to find ways to collaborate with fellow STEAM participants including community resources to explore the idea of looking through the eyes of a question. Karla Gearhart and I planned and carried out a field trip to the Children’s Museum through the generosity of Lois Winslow to further investigate the concept of perspective. Our plan was to have students explore the problematic scenario of “What if you were director of the museum exhibits?” We started with pre-visit questions for the students, such as “What do you expect to find at a museum? Do you think it will be the same as what we will find at the Children’s Museum?” At the end of the visit, as a whole group, we recorded what the students had discovered and what they had written in their journals as the day progressed. Back at school, this summary continued with the students writing and illustrating their plans for possible new museum exhibits.

If, from your perspective, your action plan impacted student learning, give specific examples to support your view. If, from your perspective, your action plan did not impact student learning, share your thoughts about why that didn’t happen.

We feel as though while we were able to get the students to reflect on their perspective while at the museum and during the follow up activity, however, the carry through does not seem to be there on a daily basis. Students have been slow to translate the concept of perspective to other lessons on their own with much prompting and recollection of the discovery and exploration that they experienced at the Children’s Museum. It has been (and will continue to be) a difficult challenge to overcome the classic “what is the right answer?”

How has your action plan changed or how will it change your instructional practice? We will continue to encourage thinking creatively and looking at questions and answers in the form of expression through each individual’s perspective.