Hey everyone! The weekend is here again and here at TKSS SWiSS we bring yet another fun week of drama and EL in class to a close.
Its been an eventful week, with lots of projects ongoing at the moment so that students would be both meaningfully occupied, participate in fun learning journeys and activities and develop their social emotional learning competencies under the guidance and mentorship of their SWiSS teachers.
One that has had its roots earlier this week was piloted by the gregarious 2T1 students, who were enthusiastic and engaged participants in what we here at SWiSS call The SWiSS SecretNotes Project.
The idea is based around the concept founded from this website - and we aim to give our students the opportunity to share confessions in art form, to help to create a gallery of postcard-sized images posted anonymously by TKSS SWiSS students to unveil a secret about themselves.
(click on pictures to view larger)
The goals of this activity are for students to:
- Gain a better understanding of self-disclosure theories.
- Think about self-disclosure in a different manner other than face-to-face.
- Write a critical reaction of their SecretNote experience in relation to self-disclosure.
- Have a platform to showcase the many different secrets of today’s youths as they face daily challenges and pressures of school, growing up, family and love.
- Be a part of a unique exhibition of pop art and modern literary translation of innermost thoughts and emotions.
Students are invited to sit in 2 circles (even register numbers outside circle, odd numbers inside circle) facing outwards and one hand span away from each other, to create a private yet communal space where the class gets to explore their personal experiences and emotions in relation to the secret that they would like to share as a part of the SWiSS SecretNotes project.
A scaffolding exercise was held by doing a wordsplash on the board eliciting student responses about the concept of a 'secret', and it also acts as a trigger for their memories and personal experiences that they can then tap on to use as their contribution for the project.
Students are assured that their secrets are anonymous and confidential, and they are encouraged to keep their secrets as simple or as detailed as they like, with the option to decorate and draw on their 'notes' with their color pencils and markers as another form of self-expression to accompany their written secret.
After they are done they are to place their secrets face-down into the SecretNotes box in the middle of the circle, where it is later collected and collated by the teachers for an art display and exhibition at year end.
The students were told of the rules of the SecretNotes Project:
- Must be true
- Must be something that has never been shared with another person
- Can range from fears, regrets, desires, obsessions, etc
e.g. “The love I give others is a reflection of the love I seek for myself.”
“I never told my parents I already forgave them for never loving me enough as a child.”
“I always look away before the traffic light turns from amber to red – it scares me.”
The SWiSS SecretNotes exhibition will feature more than 100 notes that bring together the most powerful, poignant, and beautifully intimate secrets that the SWiSS school has in its grasp across the 4 levels.
~
Why is SecretNotes so appealing?
The SWiSS School intends to tap into the universal stuff of being human, the collective, often unconscious level of existence that defies age, culture, gender, and economics.
Addictively compelling, the SecretNotes project will reveal our deepest fears, desires, regrets, and obsessions - and show the strength and universality of the human spirit and fortitude in our triumphs and celebrations of adversity and challenges: an extremely crucial concept, especially so for our SWiSS students, who need the outlet and platform for both self-expression and to make meaning of their personal experiences using both language and art.
Simply put - the SecretNotes is simply a pop art culture project to bring to the page and to show to the world what we SWiSS teachers can see, feel and experience firsthand with the kids everyday when we see them.
A student's smiles, laughter, attitude and words say a lot, but a picture and self-expression from the soul says a thousand words more. Learning to listen is something we all do - hearing what they have to say is something else altogether.
SecretNotes. A window into the SWiSS soul.
Look closer, and you might just be surprised at what you find.
Till we meet again, have a beautiful weekend!
No comments:
Post a Comment