Driving Questions, Projects, Showcasing...Oh My!

This week in our Teacher Leader Online Cohort we discussed Project Based Learning or PBL.  This is something that our county is currently looking to move towards. Some of the elementary schools in our county have been piloting PBL for the last couple years. I haven't been able to find any feedback on the study, but have been able to access the county PPT via our school principal and a fellow cohort member.  Looking at the county PPT slideshow, Barb Bailey, a fellow cohort member and colleague decided we needed a presentation geared towards teachers that would allow them to understand the meaning behind PBL and why we should use it. The Presentation can be seen here.

We have shared this presentation with our Principal and Assistant Principal and they both really appreciate that we took a concept so large and placed it into terms/visuals a teacher of any age can understand.

Now, these presentation of course can not be complete unless you are able to demonstrate what Project Based Learning can look like in your classroom. Thinking of my 23 little people running around my classroom, always getting their hands into something, asking me EVERY day before recess, DO I NEED A JACKET?!  It hit me like a Mac truck! Weather! I can develop a project for the students to complete to help each know what they should wear during the four seasons.

I began my work of developing something a little easier for the students to work with on the internet. I could have them research multiple topics of Winter, Spring,Summer, Fall on kadoole.co or googlejunior.com, but I wanted to ease them into internet research.  I came up with a plan to make a WebQuest type activity.  My students need to feel comfortable with their navigation skills first before I allow them to go onto the internet.  Many of the Internet Safety lessons from CommonMedia would need to be presented to these students.  This would be a project of group nature that would last at least a few weeks.  What better way to get your students back to asking provocative questions?

The entire lesson and WebQuest can be seen here.