The first half-term booklet of REAL School includes the projects students aged 8-12 brought to life during the first 8 weeks of the 2020/21 school year. It also includes the learning goals we set, the skills and knowledge nurtured, and an introduction to authentic project-based learning methodology we are developing. The intention for this booklet is to celebrate the learning, and perhaps to serve as a source of inspiration for other schools and educators to incorporate more relevant, entrepreneurial and art-filled learning into their programme.*
Our mission is “to inspire and empower the next generation to dream and build a beautiful world.”
Big words, yet we take them quite literally. The children spend about half of their school time in a "class" called "Dream to Reality", or as we call it - D2R. It is what the name suggests: young learners experience what it takes to come up with creative goals and bring them to life. It sounds simple, yet it requires quite a fresh approach to learning.
Through real-life projects that are meaningful to them, the students learn skills, mindsets, attitudes and knowledge, like working in teams, creativity, navigating when you don’t know your way, design thinking, etc. It's Project-Based Learning at its best, because it is authentic: relevant to the learner, in the context of their world, has real-life impact. And to top it all up, it's presented to an important audience, so it better be really good.
At REAL School, the process starts with an experience that creates context for learning and motivates the learners to engage. Dreaming of what is possible is the next step. This needs time and space.
These dreams are turned into reality through an iterative process towards making something beautiful. The "product" of course does not have to be physical. A camp - as in our case this time - can just as much be a beautiful product. The outcome is developed through meaningful feedback, reflection and multiple drafts. The process concludes with a presentation of the product, the process and the learnings to a real audience.
This book is an artefact, a piece of evidence of learning by REAL School students in the first 8 weeks of the 2020/21 school year. Enjoy it. Credits for content go to the learners. A special thanks to Panni, our Arts & Projects Educator, for all the effort she has put into turning the concept of the booklet into reality. *The booklet is shared under a Creative Commons CC BY NC SA 4.0 license.
