Encourage tinkering with ideas, relationships, connections. Set up situations where students have to find information not readily available in school texts. Provide opportunity for students to design open-ended explorations of the concept. Provide multiple options so students can plan a unique "proof" of learning.
Choose activity and begin collecting materials.
Objective: To personalize their learning in some meaningful, unique way.
Activity: Children choose an activity with teacher's help and begin collecting materials. Examples: Construct a mobile of living things. Construct a mobile of nonliving things. Do two sculptures in clay: one living, one nonliving. Write a poem about how living things grow. Do seed mosaics. Encourage them to use the materials they collected in Step Two.
