Project Based Learning

I have been to two out of three sessions at our BOCES for Project Based Learning.

I LOVE it! (of course I get to spend all this time with one of my favorite people)

I will talk about Day 1 today.

Day 1

We looked at the standards I wanted to teach and cover in this project. 

We looked at the things that we teach throughout the year. This needs to be a broad subject. What could we take from Social Studies or Science and merge with everything else? It doesn't have to be a specific subject. I looked at Social Studies and Science because they contain the closest thing to units that I teach. It can be any subject area and any grade level.

It was hard to settle on one thing. I went back and talked to my colleagues about what they would want. We decided on community. I searched all the Social Studies standards that would be taught in a community unit. After I settled on these, I looked at "Driving Questions". I went through many. "How can we as mayors of Cazenovia make our town better?", "What makes Cazenovia a great place to live?", etc.. I finally found a pretty good one. "How can we, as members of the Cazenovia community, make our town better?".
I am pretty sure this is the one I am going to use, but it's not set in stone.

We researched other projects. This was amazing. There are so many great things out there!
This was as far as we got on Day 1.

We had homework to really get into the heart of our project...the standards.

If you want to check out the process, we have been following the Buck Institute for Education.

Click on the picture above to check it out!

Have a wonderful day!!!