Last class ... assembling pens!

Some of my students "assembling" pens

As told before, I am volunteering as an entrepreneurship teacher here in Colombia each tuesday, teaching 5 grade kids. Today I had one of the coolest classes since I started and it was about the different production types a company can have. So basically what we did is that we started to assemble pens, simulating that the whole class was a pen manufacturing company.

We simulated the three main types of production methods a company can have: unitary production (each pen or group of pens had to be completed by students individually and non stop), mass production (each stage was done by each student who passed the finished part to the next one) and production by batches (pens were donde by parts, but the next group of students could not start assembling until the previous batch was not fully done). It was fun, we measured time and productivity in each method and based on that, we defined pros and cons of each method. Ah! we also had quality controllers, students that at the end of each production tested if all pens looked fine and worked properly.



They look so disciplined right? well, they are not! don't believe all what you see in the pictures, pictures do not capture motion! and those kids particularly for this activity were so hyperactive that ate some moments I wanted to run out of the class-room! More news on my teaching adventures soon ...