5+What+the+Teachers+Learned

=What the Teachers Learned=

Gender
I was truly surprised at the resistance we met when we divided them into boy and girl groups. I thought that fourth graders would still be in that "yuck" stage about the other gender, but they were very vocal about having to be separated into boy and girl groups. The comments from their journals helped illuminate this a bit. Many of the girls said they needed a boy because they knew how to build and had more experience with LEGOs than the girls did. The boys liked working with their friends, but wanted a girl in the group because they felt girls were smarter. I was amazed at how at ages 9 and 10 these kids had already fallen into society's and school's stereotypes for gender.

Group Work
After the initial complaints about the groups, most of the girls really liked working only with girls because they listened, they cooperated, and they worked together. The boys tended to all grab stuff at once and everyone tried to do his own thing instead of working together in a group. I think the girls learned to have a person in charge for one part of the task and let the other group members follow; then when another part of the task came up, they switched leaders. In the boy groups, they all wanted to be in charge and had a hard time letting others do ANYTHING to help. I think we need to do more with kids of all ages to instruct them how to work in a group and how to contribute to a group without always being the leader.

Problem Solving
In the middle of the LEGO building, one group asked me how to do the pulley and then another asked about the cams. Being a former Latin and English teacher, I was at a loss how to help them, but I referred them to the kid directions and then let them look at the teacher help section and they figured it out all by themselves! The next week, I was presenting to the whole group of 50 kids how to program. I was a bit nervous as I had only practiced a little the night before; however, I should not have worried. The kids got the teacher's manuals and the laptops and were off to the races. It was a wonderful day when the monkey started dancing, the ship started rocking, the lion started roaring, the alligator started chomping, and the birds started chirping and spinning. WOW! These 9 and 10 year olds have so much curiosity and problem solving ability and we only ever ask them to take a paper and pencil test to see what they know.