Dani's Reflective Journal 2022

 Which elements are evident in my planning ? I began the unit with a video posing the challenging problem : the Far North being cut off from trade and asking the students to add their ideas about how we would survive and what would be impacted to a padlet task. This seemed to be an effective way to engage students  as all seemed to be motivated to share their ideas. I also provided them with two Big Questions which I intended to delve deep into with them however the students ended up following a different path meaning it was directed more from the students than myself which is something I was not anticipating. I guess this proves that student voice was a major factor that influenced the success of the PBL unit.  I then realised that I needed to focus more on teaching students inquiry type skills and stages to make sure their group inquiries would be sustainable . I provided a few tuning in activities to challenge their thinking such as the seed vault image to spark thei...

 Over the past few weeks, my students have been working on constructing research questions related to their chosen topics related to our overarching theme of living sustainably. To start them off, they went away in groups to have a go and writing questions they thought were important to their topic and what they were interested in finding out. I noticed a lot of students' questions were closed and/or did not include elements of sustainability. So I decided to construct a few activities to scaffold them into being aware that there are open and closed question types.  Introducing new terms: closed/open ended questions I began by introducing the terms 'open ended questions' and 'closed questions' and let them discuss in their groups what they though these terms meant. Students could not come up with reasonable definitions for either. I then explained that a closed questions has one answer e.g. yes/no true/false or a short fact. I then told students that open questions ...

 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.  M...