Great Works

by Wendy Shenk-Evans, CFMS Director

When we talk about the amazing experience of the Upper Elementary years, we often speak about “great work.” It’s a time when the child begins to integrate all that has come before and use the foundation they have to embark on large, self-directed projects. To get to this point, they’ve had to  amass confidence and academic skills, the understanding of how to find the information and resources they need. They have to have the executive functioning skills to organize a big project, the ability to work collaboratively, and have the extended focus and concentration needed to see a large project through across multiple days or weeks. They recognize that the world is theirs to explore and they tackle “great work.” 

Currently, several Upper Elementary students are identifying bones and reconstructing the skeleton of an animal one student found earlier in the year. Their days in primary sorting different types of beads has translated to sorting animal bones into appropriate categories. Their practice in primary of carefully gathering and laying out all the supplies for metal polishing has evolved into gathering reference materials, tools for putting the skeleton together and preparing a surface to work on. They are applying research skills to distinguish a vertebra from a pelvic bone, learning biology, exercising the patience that is demanded by large projects. They are breaking down one large task into several smaller tasks, and determining in which order they need to perform those tasks to reach the end goal.

I’ve seen students tackle division problems so large they required a 3’ x 4’ piece of paper, draw a 6’x6’ map of the world and symbolize the amount and kind of every country’s exports, re-construct and illustrate a 3’ x 6’ Periodic table, and apply sentence diagramming to the entire Declaration of Independence.

 It is always amazing to watch this beautiful blossoming of a child who, as a three year old, teetered across the classroom carrying a tray with shoe polishing materials, and who now chooses to cut dozens of squares out of felt to quadruple the size of the checkerboard material so they can do an enormous multiplication problem.