A taste of Dog Squad – a mantle of the expert-inspired adventure for home (and school) learning

It’s a great pleasure to share this slide show (see link below). It’s an overview of a Mantle of the Expert – inspired adventure called Dog Squad. These slides represent the culmination of an incredible team effort over the last few months. Inspired by the work of Tim Taylor and exploremore, the planning for Dog Squad was originally written by Renee Downey (Otaika Valley School) and Viv Aitken, trialled by Renee in her class, and then further developed by teachers from Hillcrest Normal School.

Dog Squad was originally developed for use during lockdown – to support home learning in levels 4 & 3. We wanted to see if we could provide ‘distance learning’ with the qualities of Mantle of the Expert – and encourage children to learn through imagination, embodiment and creativity away from their devices. As you can see from the samples of work on the slides, it was a great success with buy-in from a large number of children and their families. Children responded in all sorts of highly creative ways – the level of commitment and self-directed work was amazing! I think everyone involved would agree that the experiment brought home the potential for Mantle of the Expert in the digital age.

Hillcrest Normal School has continued to work with Dog Squad through the transition back to face-to-face learning – so this version is hot off the press! Slides and examples of children’s work are shared with permission – these are only a small sample of the many creative responses that have been produced.

The collaborative process of working on this resource has been unforgettable and wonderful. The story deserves telling in much more detail – and will be in future. And there are other adventures still in development that I hope we can share in time (I’m looking at you Fossil Hunters team!)

The generous teachers who created Dog Squad are happy to share the slides they created for each episode on a case by case basis – so please email on mantleoftheexpertnz@gmail.com if you would like to request access to those.

For now, here’s a small taste of what has taken many hours of hard work from passionate and committed teachers – and their students.

Enjoy…

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r1f6o5FgtPQXrZp-4B1JRtB-hvaoCZcPVeKisGgFpAs/edit?usp=sharing