The Rookery

Sorry about the title, it was bound to happen eventually.

Our second attempt at medieval labyrinths went much better than the first.  The students felt very comfortable and many rocketed ahead of my instructions, excited by their own ability.  This was familiar territory and it felt good.   Repetition of a skill is often a very exciting and necessary process for students.  In fact, I found many labyrinths in their bins and several have been teaching students in other classes how to make them.  Maria Montessori often noted how satisfying children find the repetition of a new skill and she felt it was essential to the student truly understanding a concept.  Too often, perhaps, we push on to something new when, really, students really want to revel in what they've just learned.

After students finished their labyrinths (which, were so carefully done that they look like they were reproduced on a copier and colored in — they weren't but see what I mean below) they continued with other maze projects.  Several students designed a maze for the plaza and transferred the plan to the real thing (no easy feat), others created 6" graph paper and designed a maze for our BeeBot (also not so easy.)  Many chose to return to work they had started on other mazes and several continued to write our first ever Choose Your Own Adventure which is a decision tree network which is, fundamentally, what a maze is.