The Family Tree Project

Anisa Mahmood, Sami Khan and Jamie Mcloughlin with their Family Tree Projects

At the start of this year Matthew Moss High School learners were set a new project about family trees.

We thought this was going to be a challenge since we didn’t know a lot about our past. We wanted to dig out everything.

We struggled with gathering information so we did some research. This helped us and our knowledge on our families started to grow.

We had learnt the more we fail the more progress we made and we were making a lot of progress. Learners were asked to critique each other’s work. We had to be kind, specific and helpful when giving feedback.

The Family Tree project was enjoyable for us and other learners because we researched about people who have made an impact in our lives. My World teaches us and helps us use a lot of skills that we can embrace in the future.

My World is a subject where we learn to work independently on different projects. We have to manage our own time and sometimes present our best pieces of learning to others. This improves our confidence and will help us later on in life. We have to have a growth mindset which means no matter how hard the project is we keep trying. Teachers are expected to have adult-to-adult conversations with the learners which helps learners to take their responsibility and be mature about what they’re doing.

My World is good because it teaches us to be more independent and not to have to rely on others for help. My World is also good because it teaches students skills such as time management. For example we plan ahead so we knew what to do in each lesson so that we can set deadlines to help us complete our learning.

At the start of a project we were told to reflect on our Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI) dimensions so we knew where to improve on during the project. We reflected on our ELLI dimensions at the end of our project to see if we’ve improved. The ELLI dimensions are creativity, resilience, learning relationships, changing and learning, critical curiosity, making meaning and strategic awareness.

• Creativity is where we try something new with our work and make it different to everyone else’s. This will make our work unique and most likely give us a better grade
• Resilience is when we don’t give up on our work no matter how hard it is and have a growth mindset. This will help us push ourselves and help our learning
• Learning relationships is where you pick the right people to work with and get along with others around you. This means not working with people just because they are your friends.

Written by

Sami Khan (Year 8)
Jamie Mcloughlin (Year 8)
Anisa Mahmood (Year 8)