Project Based Learning T2 Wk1

 What happened

The video

This week was full of new experiences for the students in Room 9. We started our project based learning with a video created by the teacher in our school posing the problem: The World Trade Organisation is cutting off all global trade. Countries need to fend for themselves and work our how to survive with the resources the have. To take it further, the local council has decided to stop the people of the Far North trading beyond its boundaries. From what I observed of students, they seemed to enjoy seeing the teachers play other character. I feel the problem went over their heads though. We've now watched the video a few more times to unpack the scenario to gain understanding. 

Padlet

Next the students shared their ideas on what they think we'd need to survive. They seemed to enjoy adding their ideas to the Padlet and thought of a good range. From there we have used this to choose one key aspect to focus on and form project based inquiry groups. 

Mystery Picture (The Vault)

To assist students with building on their project based learning skills such as communication, research and collaboration, I have decided to run a whole class project alongside their group projects where we focus on growing sustainable food. As part of this I put a picture of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and asked students to research to see if they could find out what was inside 'the vault'. I was amazed at their enthusiasm. Some students went home and told their teachers about this interesting vault and they googled it together. Some others went home and did their own research. By the time I got to class the next morning, everyone in the class was talking about it and what was in the vault. It's amazing the impact showing students a simple picture of a mystery vault could have on their engagement levels. 

Picture retrieved from: https://time.com/doomsday-vault/

Minecraft

I usually let students get creative using Minecraft every Friday for one block if they are up to date with all of their tasks for the week. This term I've decided to focus their creative Minecrafting to align with our PBL topic. This week, asked students what they would like to make related to our whole class PBL topic. They responded with creating a sustainable little food farm and their own seed vault. I have never seen so many engaged and excited students. They are going to continue to work on their vaults Monday and give our fellow middle syndicate classes tours of their vaults on Tuesday during assembly. I'm thinking that as students get more into their own group projects, they can use Minecraft to demonstrate what they have learnt (if they choose). 

So what 

I was very surprised that students were so enthusiastic about the week one activities. Some of these were planned (video/Padlet) but the last two were an impromptu in the moment event which appeared to have students way more engaged.

It will be interesting to see how students respond to showing the rest of the syndicate their virtual creations on Tuesday. If this goes well, we will make it a regular occurrence to help others learn and give their projects more purpose.  

Now what

To assist students with both their whole class and group projects, I have decided to use Murdoch's Inquiry Cycle. I feel it has a clear and easy process to follow and allows students to take action with what they have learnt. At the moment we are in the Tuning In phase of the cycle. I plan to continue with this for another week and then allow students to dive into the finding out phase.  I have found this useful resource with ideas for how to introduce students to key research skills.

Image retrieved from: https://blog.siliconvalleyinternational.org/the-inquiry-learning-cycle


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

RPI 8: Create in Reading

Image
Today was a fun and interesting day focussing on Create Tasks. I feel like my students' digital skills are really coming along now and I’m excited to allow them more choice in their create tasks and tools.  AI tools are something I’ve been thinking and researching about lately and the importance of our students being able to use these not only for learning tasks at school but also to allow them the opportunity to understand how others are using them. I think it’s essential for our learners to understand these tools more because they need to be able to look at things with a critical lens more now than ever before (e.g. AI to generate photos of themselves doing something that isn’t or hasn’t actually happened). And what better way to do that than to get them using them!  Creating the One Shot Film was tricky and I cheated using three separate clips. I felt really nervous and had so many takes so this is something I need to keep working on to develop confidence. I really enjoyed...
Read more

RPI 3: Homework

 This term the reading programme has started well. I am continuing to read The Twits to the students and this is integrated into our writing programme. We have been focussing on descriptive language and students have produced a character description of Mrs Twit which they have been very excited about.  The texts that have been selected for the students to read have been topic based - space. Our inquiry question is 'Where else other than Earth can humans survive?' I have had positive feedback from the students about the texts this week. They are excited about the topic and are enjoying learning new facts about planets such as Mars. One text in particular titled 'My 'What if..' Planet (a poem) has inspired students to design their own planet. This has paved the way for a whole class create task in response to the topic and reading materials.  I have just introduced students to recording themselves reading as an independent tasks. I have found this is handy for sending...
Read more

RPI: Day 4

Today I learnt it was ok to have both a comprehension and decoding/fluency focus for reading. Previously I have only had one as I though having two would be a bit much. By having one of each, it is allowing for a more balanced approach. Giving 'friendly definitions' for words rather than straight from the dictionary is something I do already so it was nice to know that this was ok as sometimes I've heard people say not to 'dumb things down' for learners which I don't think this approach does but made me feel a bit uneasy about doing it.  I am excited to introduce the fluency scale to the learners as this will give a good purpose for them recording their independent reading and then listening back to them. I think this will be powerful and motivate students to want to improve how they sound as a reader.  I will also use the KWL with my learners. I have never used it to connect with video or text before so this will be fun. I will be sharing the LtR protocol tool ...
Read more