How can making global connections help me learn and grow in different ways?
After some positive comments during our last Year 2 Elluminate session we decided that it was really time to start thinking about what this whole project thing is really going to be all about. Sheryl has done a fabulous video about project/passion based learning, and that video helped us create some guiding questions for the team to answer in terms of what WE think about PBL and what it might look like when focused on our specific essential question. They include:
- In which subjects do you see this project fitting into your curriculum?
- What do our connections look like? (Ex: class to class, individual to individual, kids to kids, class to adult)
- What does it look like to add the students’ voices to this?
- What types of tools will we be using to make connections?
- What will the schedule / timeline look like for completing this project? (Is it just one connection or are there many?)
- Will we each create / contribute to the same product or will we each create something separately that meets the goal of the project?
- How will the kids demonstrate the process (how they connected with others and what working together was like) and the product (something that shows what they have learned through the connections)?
- How will we assess the process and the product? Which is more important? How can our assessment for this fit into the requirements for each of our progress reports / report cards?
Our team members are currently working on answering these questions from their own personal perspectives. We hope to meet again in Elluminate soon to discuss our responses. As people who are working on PBL units / working through this process, are you using guiding questions to help you develop your unit? We would love to see how other teams our working through this process and if / how your students are already involved in the work.
