In the second semester, at Colegio Zorrilla (Mdeo. Uruguay), we carried out the second edition of the year of the Exploration Laboratories in 3rd and 4th year of primary school.
This is an innovative experience that favours an active role of the student and interlevel learning. Some of the key elements that underpin the proposal are problem solving and enquiry in the construction of learning; cooperative work that promotes peer learning; self-knowledge and self-regulation that strengthen autonomy; metacognition processes; interest and motivation.
The children are offered five proposals that are designed around a dimension or area of knowledge, in dialogue with the curricular design; and they are given the opportunity to decide and choose, based on their interests, which one they will work on during five full days.
During these days, each teacher transforms the classroom, designing different simultaneous spaces with a pedagogical intention, using different materials and proposing challenges that invite them to explore, to dialogue and to do.
Each laboratory day has an initial meeting in which previous ideas, expectations and hypotheses are gathered and the available spaces are presented. Then comes the time for exploration, manipulation and peer-to-peer exchange. At the end, there is another meeting to bring the experience to a metacognitive close, to institutionalise ideas, to visualise conceptual progression, progress and pending aspects.
To close the cycle, on the one hand, a collective instance is generated in which boys and girls from each laboratory communicate and share with the rest of their classmates what the significant aspects of the process were: progression of ideas, trigger questions, ideas achieved, discoveries, products produced, etc. On the other hand, an evaluation proposal is presented within each laboratory, where evidence of the learning experience of each member is collected.
From this experience, the school transforms its times and spaces, offering new scenarios that place students at the centre, giving them a leading role and connecting us with the motivation, interest and motivation to learn.
Inés May – education referent – Cruz del Sur province, Ximena Alvariño – Director of Initial and Primary Education at Zorrilla School and Ana Elena Gutiérrez – Deputy Director of Initial and Primary Education at Zorrilla School
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