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Project: CLOHE_ Moving toys in the classroom

www.clohe-movingtoys.eu

Reporting on the mini-piloting held on March-May 2012, Perugia (Italy)

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Index:

§ General Information pag 4

§1 Objectives pag 5

§2 Preparation.................................................................................... pag 6

§2 Structure........................................................................................ pag 7

§3 Description..................................................................................... pag 8

§4 Evaluation.................................................................................... pag 24

§5 Considerations............................................................................. pag 27

§6 Next step: towards the big piloting ............................................. pag 28

§7 A selection of Automata made by the children........................... pag 29

§8 Templates.................................................................................... pag 39

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Introduction

This document is a report on the methodologies used and the results observed during a first

piloting experimentation of the European project Clohe_Clockwork objects, enhanced learning:

Automata Toys Construction in 1mary education for Learning to Learn promotion, creativity

fostering & Key Competences acquisition, co-financed by the Comenius sub-programme of the

Lifelong Learning Programme.

The project Clohe is targeted at teachers and pupils of primary school and pursues the objective of

promoting key and transversal competences through experimental use of Automata toys as didactic

tools

The mini piloting reported here has been realised in collaboration with the school Carlo Collodi in

Perugia. The piloting was guided by Francesca Manfredi and Letizia Bargelli, skiled educators

within the organisation Borgorete, which is also the coordinator of the project.

General Information

Profile of teachers

Resources involved with this piloting?

Number of teachers 3

If they are specialists, what are their subject areas?

Fabrizia School teacher Italian

language and History

Maria Rita School teacher

Mathematics

Marianna Support teacher

Francesca Artist and trainer

from cooperative

BorgoRete

Letizia Educator from

cooperative

BorgoRete

Profile of students

What age are the pupils ( please give the ages not the year group. For example 8 – 9yrs)?

Name of the school Carlo Collodi

Name of the teacher Marianna, Maria Rita, Fabrizia

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7-10

Have they done a similar activity before

Yes Not

X

How many students are in the piloting group and how many girls/boys?

Girls Boys Total

32 28 60

§1 OBJECTIVES

This mini-piloting’s goals were:

1. To test and produce some of the tools that will be useful for and will used during the

"proper" piloting sessions starting from October 2012.

Therefore:

The assessment questionnaires (feedback from children and from teachers)

The Road Map

A "common organisational pathway" for the piloting

The focus group-based needs analysis

2. To familiarize ourselves and the children with the tools and materials that can be used in

the Automata workshops

3. To define the timing of the big piloting and to identify the school in which to hold it

§2 PREPARATION

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1. Visit to the Automata Museum.

2. The choice of the school

Visit to the Automata Museum

When planning the mini piloting it was very useful to visit the Guido Accascina - Automata

Museum in Rieti, where a lot of automata examples made of various materials like: wood, paper,

recycled materials etc. created by many international artists are exhibited.

During the visit we also got a lot of information and advice about the best kind of mechanisms

and materials to use during the mini piloting.

Identification and agreement with the school

We contacted “Carlo Collodi“ primary school (Perugia).

The main reason for choosing was that it has practical experience in the lab.

Furthermore many pupils of this school are foreign and we thought that they can benefit from a

“non traditional learning experience“.

The school accepted the project althougth there were difficulties in including it in the educational

planning (activities must be planned at the beginning of the school year).

Despite this, the school included us in a space within a school project that had been planned for

March-April and May 2012.

This project is called “The classroom of the classrooms“

The aims of this project are to increase social skills and to promote integration. The teachers want

to offer the children various social experiences and group work experiences.

The action of this project is the creation of some afternoon workshops: dance, theatre and hands

on workshop.

The target is 60 children aged from7 to 10. The workshops are organised as an “open class„: in

each group there are children of different ages (from 7 to 10).

The groups are called :“Cucciolotti”, “Tutti Insieme”, “Delfini”, “Arcobaleno”.

Each group has to participate in all the workshops.

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The duration of every workshop is 5 hours per group.

The laboratory “Moving Toys in the Classroom“ was included in this school project and became

the fourth workshop.

We had to adapt our lab to the “The classroom of the classrooms“ project:

Group work and not indivual work (because one of the aims of the project school was to

improve social skills, and because in the group some children were too young)

Involvement of younger children (because they were in the school project target group)

§3 Structure of the Classroom of the Classrooms‘ Mini-Piloting

Duration: 20 hours (5 hours per group)

Target: 60 children ranging between 7 and 10

We worked with a group at a time.

Each subgroup was composed of children of different age, in each subgroup there was one ten

years old children.

The 5 hour workshop was divided as following:

First session (1 hour)

The creation of the story

Key point identification

Drawings of the key points

Second session (2 hours)

The assessment of the children‘s expectations

“Automata“ presentation

Mechanism inductive learning

The costruction of the Automata

Third session (2 hours)

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The costruction of the Automata

Showing the automata to the group

The assessment of the children‘s feedback

The filnal stage

The realization of a Road Map

The assessment of the teackers‘ feedback

§4 Description of the Mini Piloting

FIRST SESSION

ACTION: Story creation, identification of the key points of the story, key points drawings.

DURATION: 1 hour

SETTING: In the room we arranged four big tables (one per subgroup)

The teachers helped us to form well-balanced subgroups.

We introduced ourselves to the children.

We told the children that in this laboratory we would work together and make some very original

things and that other European children would also make these toys.

At the end of presentation the children were very curious. In this meeting we didn’t say anything

about the automata.

We asked them to imagine what the workshop was about.

“Are we going to act?” “Are we going to draw?”... They asked us

For the moment we dont’ said anithing.

Story creation

We gave the first indications:

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“To start the activity we need a story. As you can see you are divided into groups, and each group

has to create a story, you have to write the story together, everyone in the group can suggest an

idea for the story and at the end you’ll put your ideas toghether to create a group story. You can

create any type of story, you can invent it or use stories you know, stories yours parents or your

friends have told you, or that you have read or seen on tv.”

The children started to mentioning their favouirite characters: “I’ll do one about fairies”, “I’ll do

one about dragons”...

We gave to the children half an hour to discuss together the kind of story they wanted to create.

Then Francesca and I went round the groups to listen to the completed stories and then wrote

them up.

The children did not have many difficulties in this step.

Key points identification and key points drawings

The key points individuation step was not group work but individual work.

The second set of idications:

“Now each of you has to write and then draw the most important moment of the story for you.

Each of you on your own, is going to choose and draw the most important moment of the story.

This is an individual work.”

In this way we can obtained three or four key point for each story.

Output: 19 stories and 60 drawings/ key points were created.

SECOND SESSION

ACTIONS:

1. Assessment of the children‘s expectations

2. Automata presentation

3. Mechanism inductive learning

4. Automata construction

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Duration: 2 Hours

Setting: we put the sheet with the group story in each table, together with an box with inside

three sticks, four wheels, two corks and plastic bottle tops. The contents of the box were hidden.

There were two separate tables, one whit all the different materials (colored sheets rubber,

cardboard, pieces of rubber mats, wood sticks, straws, colored ribbons, fabrics, crepe paper,

colored paper, newspaper etc.) and other with hot glue and the tools nedded to work (awls,

scissors, pliers, knife, etc..)

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Assessment of the children‘s expectations

We assessed the children’s expectations orally.

I asked them: “What do you think we’ll do in this workshop?”

The answers were: “We will read the story and then we‘ll act it out!”, “We will make a stage!”,

“We will make the characters and puppets!“, “We will animate the characters!“, “We animate the

characters!”, “We‘ll make the characters”, “We‘ll write the sequel of the story”, “We will read the

story to our classmates”, “We will invent new stories by mixing all stories”, “We are going to

animate them?”

Automata presentation

As a feedback to their expression of expectations we just made them know that some of the words they had told us were key words : animation, stage, puppets etc. Then we decided to present the AUTOMATA.

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To present the Automata to the children we had already invented a story, already made some

automata related to that story and finally we showed them to the children.

THESE WERE THE STORIES AND THE AUTOMATA THAT WE HAD MADE AND SHOWED TO THE CHILDREN

“THE BOAT THAT FINDS THE MOON“

Once upon a time there was a little sailing boat that loved travelling: the orange sail boat. This

nice boat sailed in all the seas of the world many times. The boat wanted to know where the

moon went to sleep.

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During its sailing the little boat had a lot of interesting encounters: she met some dancing fish,

one tropical bird, giant butterflies and a fire bird. All of them became very curious about the place

where the moon goes to sleep, so they decided to go with the boat.

They traveled a lot but they didn’t find the place where the moon goes to sleep. Then one day

they had a special encounter: in an island in the midle of the sea they met a beautiful dancing

ballerina. The boat asked her “Why are you dancing? „ “I‘m dancing because I want the moon to

look at me!„

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Also the ballerina went with them and togedher they travelled a lot but they never found the

place where the moon goes to sleep.

The children liked the story and the Automata very much but the thing they were very surprised

and enthusiastics about the objects themsleves, their movement, their functionning. Some

verbatim statements: I have never seen these objects, I couldn’t make them, We do not have the

material to make them, here at school.

Mechanism inductive learning

We asked the children to carefully observe one specific automata (which was a ballerina spinning

round) and asked them: “What makes the ballerina move?” “How is it possible?”

The children came up with many suggestions. We listened to the children’s hypothesis and gave

them our feedback. The way we decided to formulate the questions and the observations that

we used as feedback was to use the same words used by the children.

Example:

Initial stimulation: ”How can this ballerina move?”

Hypothesis: “She turns because of you turning the bottle’s top!”

Feedback: “Yes, it’s true. But how can this top move the ballerina? It’s so far from it!”

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Hypotesis: “There is somethings in the box!”

Hypotesis: “There is a link in the box!” said another child.

Feedback: I observed that the word link it’s a very important word in this workshop

Hypotesis: “She turns because there is a wheel inside the box!”

Feedback: “Good! But how is it possible that only one wheel can move everything?”

Hypotesis: “ The wheel is tired to a wire!”

Hypotesis: “ The wheel is tired to that stik!”

Feedback: “ How many wheels and how many sticks are there in the box?” I tried to ask

Hypotesis: “Two wheels and two sticks” answered a child.

Feedback: “Good, it’s correct. How are they arranged?”

Hypotesis: “One wheel turns round and moves the other wheel that it’s linked to that stik”.

Feedback: “I told them that they had discovered the secret of this mechanism, I turned the box

and invited them to observe.

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We used the same method to help the children discover also one other mechanism (cam up and

down).

After that we invited the children to observe and draw the mechanism (some of the drawings

made by the children are reported below)

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The costruction of the Automata

We asked the pupils to choose one of the drawings to biuld the Automata; then we asked them to

choose which of the two mechanisms (cam and cam up and down) would be the best to

rapresent the key point chosen. In most cases the pupils chose to do both the mechanisms.

The Automata construction started from the mechanism, that is the lower part of the automata.

The pupils did not have any difficulty to assemble the materials inside the box (three sticks, four

wheels, two corks and plastic bottle tops). After that, whit our help they glued all the parts with

the hot glue.

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Third session

The costruction of the Automata. In this session the pupils started working on the automata

figures and on the scenes. The shapes of the figures were made with colored sheets of rubber or

with the cardboard decorated on each part. But they can actually be made by any other material

like wood, plastic etc.

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Showing of the automata to the classroom

When the Automata costruction was completed, we invited each group to present the work to

the other classmates. We asked them to tell the story, to explain which key point they have

chosen and why, which mechanism they have used and finally the children showed their

automata and its mechanism and movement.

19 Automata were realized in total by 4 groups of children.

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Anothe output of the children: The Road map

The road map is a drawing explaining the phases of the Automata Lab, as seen by the children.

The road map was made at the end of the workshop. In the road map realization were involved

pupils from the fourth class, they did a group work.

We asked them to write all the steps of the workschop from the first step to the last. Then we

asked them to draw each step and give a title to each drawing. Finally they put their drawings on

a big sheet of paper to form a path, like a big map.The children did not have any problem to

individuate each point to draw.

The points were: to invent a story; to draw the key points of the story; to choose only one key

point-drawing; the discovery the mechanism; the choice of the materials to build the mechanism

and the characters; the mechanism realization; the figures realization; showing the story and the

automata to the classroom.

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§5 THE EVALUATION OF THE MINI PILOTING

What were the expectations of the children (taken from above)

During the second session we explored the expectations of the children asking them “What do

you think we are going to do?“ (children alredy created the stories)

Some of their answers were: “Are we going to do theatre”, “Are we going to draw?”, “Are we

going to do the characters with the recycled material”, “Are we going to tell our story to the

other?”, “We are going to do puppets?”, “We are going to make the characters?” “We are going

to animate them?” We highlight the key words that the children found (animate them, theatre,

characters..). Then we showed to the children our automata and told them the story.

The impression of children was a real marvel and some of their comment were: “wonderfull!”,

“how do you do it?”, “I never have seen it!”

§ 5 What were the expectations of the teachers

The teachers said that they hope this workshop could involve all the children and give them the

opportunity to express themselves through a practical activity.

§6 What were the tools used to evaluate the process‘ impact

To asses the feedback of the children we used 3 different versions, all adapted from an ex post

evaluation questionnaire called I.M.I. that the partner University of Cukurova had provided and

which contained several subscales related to different aspects such as having fun, motivation,

relatedness etc.

The first version: To build the first version we took a few questions from different scales. The

first version was used only with a group of 17 children and it revealed to be unconfortable for

them and too long for the time they can concentrate on such a thing. Therefore since the high

number of incoherent answers and some incompleted ones, we decided to annull the process

and change the questionnaire into the second one.

The second version: In the second version we used 1 subscale from the questionnaire I.M.V.:

Interest / Enjoyment and we reduced to 3 the 7 multiple choices. We tested the 2nd version on

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16 children. In addition to the questionnaire we use two open question: “ I like / don’t like this

activity because..... „ and “ I think that doing this activity is useful for.... „.

The third version: In this third version we added some multiple choiche questions from the

subscale “relatedness“ . We decided this part because of the appreciations that the children of

the 1st and the 2ndf assessement group made about the pleasure to work with other children.

Unfortunately many questionnaires relative to this scale were annulled, the why was the high

number of incoherent answers. Maybe the words used are too difficult and unclear for the

children.

It is evident that all our tools were an arbitrary adaptation of an already existing instrument and

therefore the scoring is not comparable to the original questionnaire provided by Cukurova

University.

In addition to the questionnaires we tested, we recorded the observations we made during the

piloting sessions through a Logbook.

We finally investigated the the feedback of the teachers through an ex post evaluatio

questionnaire reported in the Appendix. Furthermore, an additional interview with the teachers

also helped us to identiy the learning needs of the children in order to target the longer piloting

during next academic year 2012-2013.

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What has been the feedback of the children

From the open question about why they liked the whorkshop it emerges that the main reasons

are: the possibility to work with other children, to make something with their hands, to realize

something in the first person ( verbatim: “It’s me who does this and not my mum or my dad!”) ,

to do a practical activity “without books” (sic.) and have fun.

For the open question about how this activity could help them it emerges that they think that this

activity can help them to learn new games, to show their work to the others, to do something

when they are bored, to do something useful when growing up: “become inventors” “become an

engineer” (sic.).

What has been the feedback of the teachers

The three teachers involved in the mini piloting said that the positive aspects of this workshop are:

- involment of all the children - gratification for the creation of beautiful and complicated products - the possibility of working in group - the possibility to do a manual and expressive activity-

The teacher said that it would be better to dedicate more hours to this process.

Interest/Enjoyment False Not much True total

I enjoyed doing this activity very much 2,94% 17,65% 79,41% 100,00%

This activity was fun to do. 2,94% 2,94% 94,12% 100,00%

I thought this was a boring activity. R 91,18% 2,94% 5,88% 100,00%

This activity did not hold my attention at all. R 76,47% 17,65% 5,88% 100,00%

I would describe this activity as very interesting. 2,94% 11,76% 85,29% 100,00%

I thought this activity was quite enjoyable. 17,65% 20,59% 61,76% 100,00%

While I was doing this activity, I was thinking about how much I enjoyed it. 8,82% 29,41% 61,76% 100,00%

annulled 20,93%

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§6 Considerations:

What went well in the mini-piloting

The Children showed great interest, were active all the time, they felt joy and marvel discovering

new materials and new toys. They were very enthusiastic when they tried to move the

mechanisms that they had made. Children really appreciated the opportunity to make a new, nice

and above all moving game with their hands. This is true for all the children, expecially, for two

children who have a serious learning disorder (these two children will probably be observed by us

during the proper piloting and will become object of a case study). The “inductive learning“ and

the “creation story“ phases went very well and we think that in the proper piloting we’ll do them

in the same way. Asking the children to create a story allow to the children to write interesting

stories and to express their creativity and their emotions. Children appreciate the opportunity to

work in groups with children of different age. During the working group we clearly observed that

in each group there were children who became the group-leader and children who had some

difficulty to join in in the group work. To remedy this we give to these children a specific

task:“You are responible for the scene”, “You have to bring me the automata when you need the

glue”. This proved to be a good solution to include all the children in the work. The children did

not have any problem to make the mechanism, the figures and the scenes. They were very

creative and enjoyed very much in using recycled materials.

They were able in manual work, using the tools and finding the right materials and right solutions

to do things.

What can be improved

Time

-Obviously in the proper piloting we’ll need more hours especially for the construction of the

automata.

- In the propper piloting we’ll make videos

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§7 Next steps: towards the Big Piloting

We think that we will probably do one session per week and each session will last at least two

hours. The piloting duration might be of 16-18 hours per class. During the big piloting the

children will be working individually. We’ll wrote a case study about the class and probably 2-3

case studies about specific children. Apart from the training the teachers workshop that each

partner is entitled to do in its country, iIn December probably we will do an additional event: an

Automata workshop for parents and children. We propose the same structure we used in the

mini-pilotining: small subgroups, two children with their parents, will make an automata.

Since this workshop will take place after the piloting, the children will be able to teach and help

their parents.

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§8 A selection of the Automata produced by the

Children of the Classroom of the Classrooms Automata

Piloting

The girl without the smile

Once upon a time there were a king and a queen, they had a girl. The evil aunt bewitched the girl in the

day of her baptism. The spell settled that: if the queen was happy also the girl would be happy and she’d

smile, but if the queen was sad the girl would be sad and she’d cry. When the girl grew up, she met a

prince and they kissed. Thanks to this kiss the spell stopped, and they lived happily ever after.

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The Three Friends

Once upon a time there were three children who were exactly the same: they ate the same things, they wore

the same clothes, but something was different: their skin wasn’t the same color!! One of them had light

brown skin, another one had pink skin and the third had dark brown skin, but it didn't matter to them.

People would ask them:”Why isn’t your skin the same color?”

After a while everybody realised that the color of their skin was different simply because they came from

different countries!

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The Envious Wolf

Once upon a time there was a wolf called Pasticcino (fairy cake), who was so greedy that his mother kept

telling him to eat less.

One day, another wolf called Sgarbatello (mischievous) arrived.

As pasticcino was very small he got a lot of attention and Sgarbatello was jealous and got angry.

One evening he took Pasticcino to a wood, he left him there and Pasticcino got lost. So, Pasticcino

asked the wise Owl :”How can I get home?”

The wise Owl reply :”Go straight on and then turn right”.

But it was the wrong way. Pasticcino saw a cave and he thought it was his house but when he went

inside he saw a Grizzly Bear who wanted to eat him. Luckly.

At that very moment his mother arrived and saved him.

However Sgarbatello didn’t give up!

Once again the tried to kill him but Pasticcino’s father saw him and said :”If you don’t stop, I’ll tell

your mother!”.

From that day on, Sgarbatello became a better wolf and said sorry

to Pasticcino.

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Blue Riding Hood

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Blue Riding Hood.

Her mother told her to take a thirty tier birthday cake to her grandmother.

The girl left the city and went to to the wood. There she met a lamb and she asked him which was the

shortest path to get to her grandmother’s home.

The lamb replied:” Get a boat and cross the river”.

The lamb who was sly but not so sly, got to the grandmother’s house before Blue Riding Hood. He

knocked on the door and the grandmother replied:”Come in, my dear girl, the party is nearly over!”.

The lamb went in and gobbled up the grandmother. In the meantime, Blue Riding Hood arrived at the

house, she opened the door and went in. Her gandmother said:” hallo, BAA, BAA….!”

The girl said :”Grandmother, what a strange voice you have, do you mind if I take a knife and cut your

tummy?”

Grandmother reply:”Of course, I mind!”.

But the girl cut the tummy of the lamb who was pretending to be her grandmother. Out jumped the

grandmother, she took the lamb and roasted it in the oven. She also invited Blue Riding Hodd’s mum

for lunch.

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§9 Templates

Logbook

Date:

Duration of the sessions:

Participants:

Setting:

Actions:

Observation:

What went well

What can be improved

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Questionnaire to asess the feedback of the teachers (short version)

Piloting Number

Piloting Location Period

STATISTICAL DATA

S1 What is the year of your birth?

year

S2 What is your sex?

male

female

S3 Which institution do you work for?

S4 Since when have you been working as an educator in the school?

year

S5 What is your professional education background?

S4 What have been your expectations of the Giochi Meccanici in Classe training?

S5 Have your expectations been met?

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yes Please continue with S6a

no Please continue with S6b

S6a To what extent has the training met your expectations?

S6a In which points did the training failed in your eyes?

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I ENJOYED DOING THIS ACTIVITY VERY

MUCH

I THINK I AM PRETTY GOOD AT THIS

ACTIVITY.

I THOUGHT THIS WAS A BORING

ACTIVITY.

THIS WAS AN ACTIVITY THAT I

COULDN’T DO VERY WELL

I TRIED VERY HARD ON THIS ACTIVITY.

THIS WAS AN ACTIVITY THAT I

COULDN’T DO VERY WELL.

I WAS VERY RELAXED IN DOING THESE

I DID NOT FEEL NERVOUS AT ALL WHILE

DOING THIS.

I BELIEVE DOING THIS ACTIVITY COULD

BE BENEFICIAL TO ME.

I THINK THAT DOING THIS ACTIVITY IS

USEFUL FOR

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Questionaire to asses the feedback of the children (first version)

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Questionaire to asses the feedback of the children (second version)

I ENJOYED DOING THIS

ACTIVITY VERY MUCH

THIS ACTIVITY WAS FUN TO DO

I THOUGHT THIS WAS A

BORING ACTIVITY

THIS ACTIVITY DID NOT HOLD

MY ATTENTION AT ALL

I WOULD DESCRIBE THIS

ACTIVITY AS VERY

INTERESTING

I THOUGHT THIS ACTIVITY

WAS QUITE ENJOYABLE

WHILE I WAS DOING THIS

ACTIVITY, I WAS THINKING

ABOUT HOW MUCH I ENJOYED

IT.

I LIKE /DON’T LIKE THIS

ACTIVITY BECAUSE

………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………

I THINK THAT DOING THIS

ACTIVITY IS USEFUL FOR

……………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………….

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Questionaire to asses the feedback of the children (added in the third version)

I FELT REALLY DISTANT TO

THIS PERSON.

I REALLY DOUBT THAT THIS

PERSON AND I WOULD EVER BE

FRIENDS

I FELT LIKE I COULD REALLY

TRUST THIS PERSON.

I’D LIKE A CHANCE TO

INTERACT WITH THIS PERSON

MORE OFTEN.

I’D REALLY PREFER NOT TO

INTERACT WITH THIS PERSON

IN THE FUTURE.

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