“The kids really were involved with this kit. While they all enjoy puzzles and mysteries, it also gave them an understanding of adventurers, leading to great questions about why people would choose to do something so dangerous and the rewards that they might get - both tangible and intangible. Lead to some of the kids doing their own research about what could have possibly happened to her.”
“My class loved this kit about Jean Batten. The activities were on point and they were the most engaged learners I had had all term. I like how there was different activities that suited different learners. My class was asking for more of these type of activities for next term.”
“Was an amazing unit. Class loved the challenges, especially the codes. Used the codes in many other aspects of our learning! Having straight year 4 class I found I had to scaffold some of the activities and give more support than suggested. Did take my head a while to work through how the unit was structured, but was so worthwhile. Thanks schoolkit!”
“My class (and I) absolutely loved this school kit. We did it over multiple days to fit in with our timetable. The highlights were the pig pen code and discovering it on the invite (which we had investigated before we started), the buzz planes (some groups had issues with the wires but some had great success) and finally the popping the balloons!!! Thank you school kit for providing such engaging and creative resources for our students.”
“The kit contained some great links and information and some great hands on activities.
The paper planes and associated tasks were popular and engaging. The groups working on the naval flags loved their task. There was too much difference in the code breaking activities though. The phonetic alphabet one was, as indicated, the easiest but it was so easy and quick compared to the semaphore task, it made management difficult. The semaphore task, while a useful thing to introduce and to offer as an independent task some other time, was too difficult & time consuming for the time available.
The morse code was a great idea but not accurate. This made it quite challenging for the students.
The buzz planes were a great learning opportunity & fitted all the STEAM concepts, but they are far too small a project to fully engage a group of 8 - 10 students, even with two of them per group.
I realise they would have been a sizeable chunk of the cost for these kits but I think they are really the sort of thing best as a 'one between two' project so not such a great idea in a kit if budget is limited.
The interactive maps worked just fine when I first looked at them as part of planning but would not work when I went to present them to the students via apple TV on the class screen.
My kids certainly had a fair amount of fun with the activities and enjoyed a fun way to learn a bit more about Jean Batten. I like much about school kits but I do find a good number of the activities are not so practical in a full sized class.
I'm not sure how to put this because I don't want to sound too negative and detailed instructions are a good thing! But I often find they seem to take quite a lot of time and head space getting to work out just exactly what to do & in what order.
Thank you for continuing to provide these kits and for working on improving them.”
“My extended reading group has loved the kit as it complimented their T2 reader about Jean Batten. They had to show dispositions of communicator and collaborator to complete the tasks and they are all now sharing their learnings with whanau over the term break. Huge connected learning...”
“What a wonderful box of learning! We simply loved it. Thank you for all the evident effort put into all the activities, details and design. Some of the code cracking in the early stages was challenging, but we got there! Loved all the variety and STEAM theme, plus the history element was really appreciated by all.”
