New Discovery

Throughout the past few days I have been looking for ways to make my PBL more open ended. I have been researching other PBLs, especially those geared towards K-2 students. During my research I stumbled across CIESE.org  (The Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education) site. One of their projects VERY closely relates to the PBL I am trying to create for the Cedarburg kindergartners. The project is called Square of Life. In this project (geared toward K-2) the students will...

Identify living and non-living things in their school yards.

Share their findings with other participating classes.

Look for similarities and differences in the reported data.

Prepare a final report or presentation based on their findings.

I think it would be exciting to use part of the "Square of Life" in my PBL. We could either sign up to share with other schools via the Square of Life website, design a district-wide site for the Cedarburg kindergartens to compare the 3 elementary schools, or network and find other schools within the state, country and/or world to share with.

In addition, if anyone else K-12 is looking for ideas I would highly suggest checking out CIESE!

Where to begin???

Future Teach seems to mirror part of my masters program. This is not the first time that I have been asked to create a PBL. When first asked in my masters class I really struggled with how to do this with my kindergarten students. Now the second time around I feel more knowledgeable in what a PBL. I feel more confident as I begin to create one for my age group . Then came the question of what subject area to tackle. My first thought was to do something with Mexico, but then again the Social Studies curriculum is changing. Since there was recently a new science curriculum and adoption I feel that creating a lesson tied to this would be most useful. Also, now would be a good time to create such a lesson because the Next Generation Science Standards have just been released. Each of us kindergarten teachers (Erin, Angie & I) will take ideas from our new curriculum and create PBLs. I have chosen living and non-living things. At this point I think that my driving question will be "How are living things and non-living things alike and different? It is very important that the curriculum and lessons be hands-on and interactive using the 21 century skills and technology. The goal is to create units that can easily be used district-wide. Since I am well-versed in iPad use in the kindergarten classroom I will be having the students use them somehow to convey their learning. At our recent tech academy day I learned about a very user-friendly app called 30Hands. I think that this app could be used to go on a scavenger hunt. The students could be grouped and assigned to different areas of the building to find living and non-living things.  

First Day Fun!

Today we created a future teach blog. We had a blast!