PBL!

September 24, 2008
I have been apprehensive about teaching 1st and 2nd grade students. Doing PBL kits from CERTL with them is working so well and it makes me feel better about the situation. I did a case about designing a new playground with 1st graders today. It went very well. We brainstormed as a class and then they wrote down ideas for their playground in their planning notebooks. They came up with some creative ideas and seemed engaged. I told them that tomorrow they can start drawing and designing their playgrounds. They seemed to look forward to that.I went to a CERTL meeting the other night and got really excited about doing PBL again. I left with 2 kits (multiplication one and a 2nd grade location one). I looked in the catalog and placed a very large request the next days for kits all the way until January! I can’t wait to start the one with 2nd grade next week. I used an ActivBoard lesson today to talk about map skills and compass rose to front load them with knowledge for the project next week. I am going to do one involving some simple machines with 1st graders next week. I went to the library to find a book to read to help with background knowledge and then remembered that I can use DE Streaming to have them watch a video clip.