~Cinderella~

The activity I was doing was a group project the first class of EDS-150 and our instructions were to draw and write the story of Cinderella.

There were four members in my group and four sheets of paper. It was a very difficult task to complete because we had to make sure that our story line and pictures we drew made sense. We decided that it would be best to decide as a group what to make the story line instead of each member doing their own drawing.

Working together as a group to decide upon the story line with complete stranger was very challenging but a great way to get to know my peers and built a community. I noticed that my peer in other groups each had a totally different task. After observing them I noticed that each group’s task required different levels of thinking. One group’s task had instructions to sit and color picture of the Cinderella story and they could not talk to each other. This did not take much thinking at all. In fact the members of that group said that they did not learn anything from their task and they did not get to know each other or develop a community. My group did have an opportunity to develop a community and get to know each other and our only instructions were to draw and write the Cinderella story.

I decided to place this experience under “the nature of learning” because through this experience I learned that the less instruction a teacher gives the more thinking and learning the students will acquire. Because I have learned this I will now develop activities in my class room that have less instruction and require more thinking of them and I know that the more m y students are thinking the more they are learning and developing into life long learner.