A Beautiful Day in Our Neighborhood!

Yesterday was the kick-off to the Project-based learning initiative for the 2nd grade classes. It was such a pleasure to meet each of the teachers and their classes. I felt we got off to a great start!

Our project is based on the "Focus on My Neighborhood" project. Teachers were given a copy of the project plan, but I emphasized that this is a template only. Teachers are encouraged to select the activities that best work with their students and match their curriculum. [You can download this project if you want an electronic version. I will email everyone the password required.]

To get started on the project, I went into each class and introduced the project to students. Boy were they excited about using computers. We created a graphic organizer about the various places in our own community. We came up with lots of ideas and began to think about the jobs connected to each of those places.
There are four important phases or parts to this project.

Planning: The first part, which we have begun and will complete by next week is planning phase. Teachers will decide which parts of the project they want to focus on with their class and how they want to divide the work. You can have students work in groups of 2-3 and each group creates a single presentation, or you can have each student create a piece or part of a whole class presentation. Think about what types of activities, field trips, and content connections you will want to include in this project. (Once these decisions have been made, I will post the standard alignment to this blog for you.)

Gathering: We will start the gathering process on Tuesday and this will last until 11/10. Students will gather information and ideas, pictures, and resources that they will use to create their presentation. You may want to take a walking tour of the neighborhood or have students create their own drawings or even maps.

Building: The next phase is when students take their ideas and begin to put them into a PowerPoint presentation. Each slide can include a combination of text, graphic images, and sound recordings. Since second grade students have limited typing skills, we want to keep the amount of text on each slide to a minimum. We can help students write out scripts and record them as narration.

Presenting: On Dec. 15 we will have a presentation of student work. At some point over the next few sessions we should discuss logistics for this presentation day. Where will it be held? At what time? Who will be invited?

If all of this sounds a little overwhelming, don't worry. My role as the consultant/professional developer is to help you through all the steps and make sure the project is successful. I will help break down the tasks so that they are manageable and show you how to integrate it to your curriculum seamlessly.

Your only task for this week is to read through the project and think about the type of product you want your students to work on. Each class can pick something different, or you can all do the same thing. It is up to you. Post a comment to this blog with your ideas, if you can. If you need help with this task, I will guide you in our next session.

I look forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday. Have a great week!