Tuesday, January 27, 2009

CERTL Email

I sent the following email to the CERTL office about PBL in my classroom:

My AIG girls are reading Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life by Wendy Mass. In the story, the two main characters have a box to open that has 5 locks. They need to find the keys for those locks to open the box by Jeremy's 13th birthday. The characters were listing what they knew, what they needed to do, and were developing a plan to achieve the goal. My girls looked at me and commented that was like what we do for a PBL project! :) I am developing PBL thinkers!!!

Thanks,
Melissa Edwards

Below is the reply from the CERTL Office:

Melissa,
How exciting. Don't you just love seeing those lightbulbs click. It sounds like you really are developing PBL thinkers! Keep up the great work. And, I do love your webpage...it is so rich and looks like lots of work goes into it. Thanks for sharing the news and your link.

Ann
Ann Lambros, Ph.D.
Assistant Dean for Medical Education
Director, Center of Excellence for Research, Teaching, & Learning
Wake Forest University School of Medicine
(336) 713-7723
(336) 716-4460

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

New Project

I am going to start a new PBL project in the next week or so with both my AIG girls and my 3rd grade enrichment group. I am doing the same project with the same project for both groups, but I am sure the results will be quite different. I guess this could be an experiment or active research project. :)
Since we are almost into February, which is Black History Month, I decided to have my students do some research on self-selected African-Americans in history. I had some ideas for that project, but when I came across this CERTL PBL case, I just knew we had to give it a try.
Case:
The govenor has made an announcement that an African-American section will be added to the History Museum. The governor is requesting 20 people be represented. 4 of them must be athletes, 5 must be women, 5 entertainers, 1 educator, 2 doctors, and 1 must be a politician. You are in charge of deciding who will be in the museum and writing an autobiographical sketch for the museum to display.

I know how I would do this if I were "teaching" but since I am trying to serve as just a facilitator, we will see what happens!

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Assessment Observation

My AIG are kinda working on a PBL project in math. Before the holidays they started working on projects dealing with area and perimeter. One group began writing narractives to explain those math ideas. The other group started making crafts to achieve the same purpose. Some students worked on them over the holidays and are still working on them now. Both projects have gone far beyond anything I could have imagined from my pitiful assignment description. The story-writing group has included lots of other math skills that we have talked about this year. The story is up to 8 chapters now I think. I made a powerpoint and uploaded it to voicethread for them to record the story they have written. The other group is using my new flip video camera to record them using their creations to teach about the subjects.

I was recording some of the videos yesterday, and found myself thinking how much more I was able to see what they did and did not understand by doing these projects rather than a multiple choice paper test. I can see what I need to reteach and what they get so I can move on. It is amazing to me what the students can do when the teacher doesn't make them do things but just facilitates.

I do think it is kinda funny that I am so into being a facilitator rather than a teacher in direct charge of everything this year, especially with PBL and all the technology we are learning about. I remember telling someone a few years ago that although I liked the idea of literature circles, I wanted to be in control too much to let them happen the way they are supposed to. I wonder if I could approach literature circles from a PBL standpoint? I saw a neat way one teacher is integrating technology with her literature circles, so maybe I can try to combine both of those ideas?

General Observations

My AIG girls are reading Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life. In the story, the two main characters have a box to open that has 5 locks. They need to find the keys for those locks to open the box by Jeremy's 13th birthday. The characters were listing what they knew, what they needed to do, and were developing a plan to achieve the goal. My girls looked at me and commented that was like what we do for a PBL project! :) I am developing PBL thinkers!!!

Several of the other teachers at school signed up to try to get CERTL PBL training this summer. It may be a bit conceited but I think that has a lot to do with my experiences and activities that I have shared.

I have been doing assessments of various type the last week or so and have not been pulling groups of students to work with. I had some time today to plan. I looked through the PBL kit book from CERTL to see what was available. I got excited about the possibilities. I submitted requests for 3 units today (3rd grade, 2nd grade, and math). I wrote plans for those projects in my lesson plans for the future (last week of January).

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Yay!


My request on Donors Choose for a Flip Video Camera was fulfilled over the holiday break! We will soon be getting a little camera we can use to video things in class and put them on our blog and/or my website!