The Most Important Day of the Year (LS-DI-728)
The Purpose of Learning
This learning scenario focuses on developing learners’ skills to evaluate and reflect on constructive social aspects and how they learn as individuals. The aim is to show that when an individual takes control of learning, the need of the learner’s internal and interactive reasoning and reflection are essential. The scenario was implemented during International Women’s Day, which brought a closer daily life phenomenon to the schoolwork. The learning scenario approach’s backbone is based on the Finnish Core Curriculum and the phenomenon-based learning approach, where students investigate and build their knowledge together in cross-curricular environments.
This learning scenario was created and implemented in a special school environment. The main goals are to enhance students’ communication skills, empower individuals’ positive self-esteem as community members, and broaden their knowledge about the importance of equality.
Self-reflection and Learning Activities
Students are guided to reflect, collaborate and assess their learning processes during their six lessons journey while exploring the importance of gender equality. From the start of this project, all the tools used in the learning scenario aim to promote and show the value of the social learning aspect concurrently, providing students with the opportunity to see their learning process, which is a vital requirement for developing sufficient self-regulation skills. Students are engaged to combine different skills from reflection to hands-on activities that promote imagination and creativity during the process.
Firstly students are introduced to the collaborative assignment called the “Chat clock,” which aims to promote student social skills to arrange and manage short meetings with their personal calendars. Next, students shared ideas and thoughts and expanded their knowledge about gender equality by exploring Europeana resources. The main focus is on reflection and emotions related to the rise of the movement for gender equality.
Secondly, the students were guided to get familiar with nowadays situation of gender inequality around the world by reading stories from the Unicef handbook. After this, group explored even deeper the Europeana exhibition “Pioneers” and chose one remarkable woman pioneer to explore more about her achievements.
During the hands-on activity phase, students created a picture collage based on the theme of equality where they were using all the previously explored materials. Before the final class exhibition, students wrote a letter in their Google Sites portfolio about how the world would look in 2030 when it comes to equality.
Conclusion
Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. However, even though there has been progress in the last decades, too many problems remain. This LS demonstrated how small actions and critical thinking can lead to future positive outcomes. Knowledge alone is not power, it’s potential power, and it needs an environment to activate it and fulfill its full potential. Students were put into a situation where they critically looked behind the surface together expanding their understanding of this wonderful day during this learning process. Understanding and valuing diversity is also essential for all students, especially those with considerable learning difficulties, which forecast bigger chances of being excluded from society. Raising the topic of equality is an excellent chance to boost individuals’ self-esteem, leading to a better connection to the community.
Would you like to know more about this learning scenario? You can download it below:
Did you find this learning scenario interesting? You might also like:
- The Mad Mina and the invisible gender (LS-IT-621)
- Everyone’s a freak (EN-CUR-614)
- March – the month of (Romanian) women (LS-RO-579)
CC BY 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Victoria and Albert Museum.