Social Studies Project (Part 2)

This is a continuation on the Social Studies Project.

2nd Part:  Interview and write-up on a family member
After the 2D family project, Little Boy had to quickly get down to the 2nd part of the project.  The 2nd part required him to interview a family member of his choice and write an essay comparing his life with the life of the interviewee.  Without much deliberation, Little Boy had decided to interview his paternal grandfather.  For this part of the project, there was plenty of guidance from the teacher, hence, I left Little Boy alone to formulate the interview questions and do the write-up.  The only problem I faced was to get Little Boy to be on task, check his deadlines and hand in the drafts on time.

Little Boy enjoyed the interview process, as the role of the interviewer gave him a sense of importance.  We discovered many things about his grandfather that we were previously unaware of.  Little Boy was very intrigued by the childhood games his grandfather used to play.  He also felt very sympathetic towards his grandfather who had to go through poverty during his younger days.  For me, I was mesmerised by my father-in-law very good looks when he was in his early twenties.  Upon closer observation, I do see some resemblance between Little Boy and his grandfather. haha...

Little Boy's grandfather in his twenties

This project actually created an opportunity for Little Boy to bond with his grandfather and to get to know him deeper.  I could tell that my father-in-law also enjoyed being interviewed by Little Boy and he had gone through all the trouble to dig out his old photos just to share with Little Boy what his past was like.  The whole process was really fun and interesting.

3rd Part:  Personal Reflection
The last part of the project (which I thought should be the easiest of all the tasks) required Little Boy to reflect on the whole journey he took from the start to the end of the project and document it down on a template provided by the teacher.  However, this part proved to be quite tough for Little Boy who had never written a reflection before.  He was also seldom asked to reflect on any processes.  His initial reflection was irrelevant, superficial and lacked insights.  It was only with much prompting and guidance from me that he was able to complete this last part of the project.

I could not comprehend Little Boy's struggles and his contorted expressions (whenever I told him he's not doing his reflection right).  It's personal reflection!  You just need to write what you think, feel and describe what you had gone through.  How difficult can that be?  It took me a while to realise that mainstream students are seldom asked to reflect and think.  It is very common to have the teachers spoon-feeding the students and telling them what to think.  Mainstream students are not given the opportunities to reflect and think on the processes either.  Most of the time, teachers are only interested in the final product of a project and often neglect the process.  Personally, I feel that writing personal reflection is a very important skill to have and that all students should be taught and be given ample opportunities to do that.  Students who just spend all their time mugging exam topics and practise more challenge sums would end up like robots; devoid of feelings and personal thoughts.

1st Social Studies Project: Family Tree (Part 1)

Little Boy is currently enjoying his lull period, having submitted the last of his Social Studies project on Monday.  This Social Studies project which took him two solid months to complete was his 1st major project.  

There are three parts to the project.  First, he had to create a 2D family tree (up to three generations), detailing every family member's name, date of birth and his/her rank (in Mandarin) within the family.  Thanks to WhatsApp, getting the various dates of birth was a piece of cake.  But, we struggled with the ranks. As Little Boy addresses all my husband's brothers, my brothers and their wives simply as Uncle and Auntie so and so, we were clueless how to address them properly, according to their ranks, in Mandarin.  In the end, I had to enlist the help of a Mandarin-speaking friend to differentiate between 舅舅 and 叔叔 and also to learn the various addresses for their respective wives.  I was secretly thankful that both my husband and I don't have any sisters as that would further confuse Little Boy's already puzzled mind (till date, he still prefers to address his relatives as Uncle and Auntie so and so) :)  

Once we had had all the information, we went on to discuss how best to present the family tree.  I challenged Little Boy's original idea of using apples to represent the family members as I thought that was too common and lacked creativity.  After much brainstorming, he agreed to use owls.  Superimposing the pictures and typing the information onto the owls' bodies proved to be tedious but I got Little Boy to do a few each time, whenever he had the time.  He was not conscientious on this task and I would have to nag at him numerous times before he actually did some work.  It was pure torture!  It took him weeks to complete all the owls.

Thankfully, I didn't have much trouble getting Little Boy to do up the tree and stick the owls on the corrugated board.  Having experienced the repercussions of his procrastination on other projects (see my previous post), he obliged readily when I asked him to start on the tree during one of the Chinese New Year holidays.  Though he did groaned and complained a little when he grew tired of sticking the many leaves to make a tree collage, he persevered and managed to complete the whole tree in about two hours.  I was so happy to see this change of attitude and the virtue of hard work he displayed (even if it's just for this short while).

Patiently making a tree collage

When the whole tree was completed, Little Boy couldn't stop marvelling at his own work.  'Mom, I couldn't believe I made this.  It is fantastic!' he exclaimed, feeling extremely pleased with himself.  

It was fantastic because he put his heart and mind into doing it.  It was fantastic because he took up the challenge and tried something he had not done before.  It was fantastic because he persevered despite the hard work.  It was fantastic because he made it fantastic! And I am so very proud of him.

The completed family tree.