Project-Based Learning at its Finest
Last fall our school had the pleasure of hosting the gym-sized War of 1812 floor map from Canadian Geographic. My grade 7 students were fascinated by that map which launched us into a fabulous project-based learning experience.
We are nearing the end of the project and today I was interviewing one of my students about his "take-aways" from the experience. One of the questions I posed was, "What are you most proud about?" He paused to think and then said, "I"m proud of my project. I think it's good but what I'm really proud of is what the class has accomplished."
Those are the moments that teachers live for!
What exactly did the class accomplish?
We've created something to add to the kit that travels with the map. One thing that students felt could make the map experience better was to be able to access digital media while standing on the map, so they decided to create it. They spent time constructing knowledge of the war and then as a class decided what should be included in this project.
Some of the topics they included are:
James and Dolley Madison
Sir Isaac Brock
Tecumseh
Laura Secord and Catherine Lundy
Forts
Naval Battles
The Hamilton and the Scourge
and a few other topics that they thought would be interesting to other students their age.
Students then made effective use of the Advanced Search skills that had just been learned to construct this project. It has been said many times in the twittersphere, but I will reiterate - there is nothing like having to prepare something for a real audience to motivate students. Meticulous is a word that comes to mind in describing how the class approached this project.
Each student or student group is submitting something that looks like this.
We intend to laminate these as a set of cards for the map. Visitors to the map will have to solve the longitude and latitude problem to find the place on the map that the project is linked to. They can then use a device to open the QR Code and see who or what the project is about and what happened at that spot. Students were free to choose their tools. The above project is on linoit, but there are Prezis, Google Presentations, and others.
For those without a QR Code reader. Here is the link to this project. Make sure that you find the project within that project!
Oh my gosh, Heidi:
ReplyDeleteI'm in awe. This was such an amazing idea. I'm hoping this will inspire other classes to do similar things with their maps. It's so cool to see the way your kids are embracing the idea of creating something for a real audience. It also makes me think that my Core French students could do a similar thing at a simpler level, to identify French communities in places where people might not expect to find them.
Looking forward to exploring these.
Hi Lisa,
DeleteThank you for you kind words. I really didn't know where this project would go or whether they would be able to pull it together. They amazed me!