Igniting Passions
1/26/2018
Pacific Northern Academy is committed to providing a remarkable educational experience where students are encouraged to explore their passions and creativity. How does that look like in the third grade classroom?
1. A new science unit was introduced with an activity that fires up student curiosity and passion. The goal is to grab the hearts and minds of the students to create a thirst for knowledge and the hunger for more learning. 2. Students are encouraged to exercise critical thinking where they are constantly asked for what they think. When students are engaged in ways that shift their role from recipients of knowledge into active participants and constructors of their learning, learning is deeper. 3. Student voice and choice are celebrated in the classroom. The have the best ideas on how to keep them interested and engaged. As students were learning about building blocks of habitats, they requested that they create dioramas as part of the learning process. They were so engaged they wanted to work on their dioramas than to go out to recess!
The learning activities above aim to address the following NGSS Science Standards:
3-LS4-1 Students can analyze and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of the organisms and the environments in which they lived long ago. 3-LS4-3 Students can construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all. Be Kind
1/20/2018
In PNA, our curriculum is geared towards developing emotional intelligence, effective communication skills, and influential leadership. In third grade, students have been reading narrative nonfiction, specifically biographies, texts about real people who have done remarkable things. Many of these people have changed the world but just like everyone, they also faced adversity. Students, then, start to consider how they themselves deal with adversity. Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed, says that kids need grit; in biographies, students see models of people with grit. They can see how others handle setbacks and still push themselves to stay determined. And, biographies can teach about more than the one subject of the text. We read to learn not only about the one person the book is about but also the group of people that person represents and the groups of people on whom that person made an impact. That is, we read biography not only to learn about specific famous figures, but also to learn about the world in which we live and the world in which we want to live. Students Learning EvidenceMission Accomplished
1/12/2018
According to John Larmer, BIE'S PBL Editor in Chief, "Of all the Essential Project Design Elements, you could argue it’s “Public Product” that most makes PBL stand out as different from traditional instruction. In some non-PBL classrooms you might find, say, a challenging problem, some degree of authenticity, student voice and choice and even, occasionally, sustained inquiry. But when students make their work public – that is, when it’s seen by people beyond their teacher, classmates, and maybe parents – it probably means a project is happening."
Buck Institute of Education has released three major reasons for creating a public product in Gold Standard PBL. 1. A public product adds greatly to PBL's motivating power and encourages high-quality work. Think about it, when students have to present or display their work to an audience beyond the classroom, the performance bar raises, since no one wants to look bad in public. 2. Students make what they have learned tangible, when shared publicly, and discussible beyond the classroom instead of just a private exchange between a student and a teacher. 3. Making student work public is an effective way to communicate with parents, community members, and the wider world about what PBL is and what it does for students. At PNA, third grade has recently completed their PBL unit on weather where they had to create emergency kits for PNA classrooms. Students had lots of opportunities to learn science content and 21st century skills that mostly focus on communication and collaboration. Through the project, students had to learn how to communicate with people beyond the classroom, such as other 3rd graders in other places outside Alaska, students and teachers in the school community, and adults in a real world setting such as Sam's Club, Church Electric, and National Weather Services. The students concluded the project by presenting the emergency kits to every classroom, including specials! 3rd Grade's project is displayed at PNA's PBL Space from January 15th - 19th. Please check it out!
Source: Lamar, J. 2015, Gold Standard PBL: Public Product. BIE. Retrieved from https://www.bie.org/blog/gold_standard_pbl_public_product
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Jessica GrahamMs. Graham graduated from the University of Alabama with a BS in Early Childhood/Elementary Education, and is currently working on her master's in reading. She enjoys hiking, traveling, arts & crafts, and playing the ukulele. Archives
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