Why I Love Project Based Learning

We spent our first two weeks of the school year working on a Sundae Project. The project was a huge success on so many levels. I want to share why I found the project, and consistently find Project Based Learning so rich.

From the launch to the debrief students were engaged in this project. We introduced it in a overly serious manor, describing why its important for us to start the year establishing a sense of priorities, structures and processes for projects, habits for successful teamwork, and common language around assessment and assessment practices. We then showed this video and handed out the project summary (and lightened it up)!

In my mind this project exemplified deep learning, and here's why. True, students were only assessed on two Cross Curricular Competencies, Thinking Competency as well as Social and Personal Responsibility, but the learning was so much greater than that. Here were some of the learning highlights for me:

• Students became better team players, as everyone took a role in their project, and as teams worked on making decisions together
• Students introduced one another to new collaborative technology as Grade 9's showed Grade 8's how to use Google Drive and Documents
• Students learned empathy as they planned a sundae menu together. I overheard one fantastic conversation in a group that was divided over whether to serve toppings with nuts or not. Half the group thought they could work around allergies while the other half did not. After some back and forth one student worked up the courage to share a personal story illustrating her point of view. She was persuasive and the group came to an agreement. Excellent decision making!
• Students were shown a new application of Google Spreadsheets. After a quick workshop on formulas using cell references teams jumped in. Even though tax calculations were presented as an optional challenge many teams went for it.
• Students demonstrated financial literacy and number sense as they carefully shopped three stores and over 100 options to stretch their budget the farthest in making up their Sundaes. Many teams asked for more options. Teams also had to determine serving sizes and the number of servings per container, and unit conversions were frequently required. 
• Students came together as a learning community through sharing their ideas and opinions in a non-threatening, fun project
• One team demonstrated fantastic scientific literacy as they discussed serving sizes, when it was appropriate to use mass, and when it was appropriate to use volume. 

Landscape Architecture Project Comes to a Close - Here is the Project Outline

Our final science project in our Project Based Learning Choice program was a school garden. We started with the plan to have every student planting and experimenting with veggies, but the project naturally became differentiated. Some students had to explore an automatic irrigation system, while others explored composting.

Their work is displayed on our KRSS Garden Blog.

A School Garden is Born: The Story of a Facilitated Project Launch

We were stoked to have Greg Jonuk, a trained facilitator, help us launch or #krssgarden project this week. Greg and I had been planning the morning for weeks in order to best give voice to our community and to mine their ideas, questions, and comments as best we could.

Here's the run down of the morning (for more detail see the agenda):

• "Teacher Talk Show" - Greg interviewed Beth and myself to give some context to the project
• "Press Conference" time for participants to share aspects of the project that excited them, aspects that scared them, ideas for what success would look like and questions about the project
• "Open Space" time for participants to:
• Respond to the prompt: "In order to have a successful garden at KRSS we need to think about..." and stick their ideas to a wall
• Shop for topics on the wall and decide which they individually wanted to discuss
• Discuss topics in small groups (this proceeded in three rounds after students had chosen which topic they'd discuss in each round)

We've now taken all the input from staff, students, and parents and combined it into a Google form. Now we can begin prioritizing our work as we plan on school garden!

PS. Sorry about the formatting of the linked documents, it was lost in the conversion to Google Docs

KRSS garden planning session from scchase

21st Century Fluency Project

An excellent site well connected into the world of 21st Century Learning. The project is build on a guiding set of "fluencies" and "elements" - a worth while read.

http://www.21stcenturyfluency.com/

Also included on one of the posts on the blog is this "bill of rights" for 21st Century students. I love the respect it shows for students and their learned methods of communicating and accessing information. I also appreciate the need is shows for the teacher in statements like "I need to be taught how to balance my life between the online and offline worlds". I believe this is very much where our students are at. 

http://www.21stcenturyfluency.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=2454

Logistics in a 21st Century Classroom

• I've read about a number of schools that have created learning spaces that are very conducive to collaboration and communication. I'd love to see areas dedicated to experimentation - equipped with webcams; areas dedicated to recording audio and video - with some sound buffers; grouped tables for lessons and break out spaces galore!
• Would/ could parents attend monthly meetings? Meetings every term? What would be reasonable yet sufficient to create relationships that foster enhanced student achievement in a radically new environment.
• What will be the balance between 21st century skills and 20th century curriculum? Is it okay to lean toward the here and now?
• How will KRSS ensure the program supports the necessary technology to make such a technological classroom possible? Bandwidth? Print access?