Super exciting developments at school today as we (the senior syndicate staff) planned for Project Based Learning in Term3 with our junior classes. I don't often rave about after school meetings, but it was great to spitball ideas with my colleagues on PBL plans. We built on these background articles from the wonderful people at Edutopia and pretty soon the ideas started flowing. We have planned to start off with Year 10 and PBL on a Friday, incorporating science, maths, English, languages, social studies, and accounting. Exciting! Next stage:to scaffold an accounting Level 1 standard and what we want to present to the students in terms of a PBL framework.
What's goin' round? All Blacks! All Blacks! All Blacks! ...and now - back to the blog... 1 Portrait data We start this edition with a long read on portraits and the data we give off/away with our portraits. It kinda broadly fit into my education world blog but who cares if it doesn't - it's interesting and therefore...erm...educational! That bloke on the right looks well dodgy innit! Is he smiling? Is he thinking, "Is this my neutral expression?" or is this just the way Kiwis celebrate being CHAMPIONS? Read that article! 2 UDL This bookmark alerts me to the continued importance of UDL in personalised learning, and we all need these continual reminders right? 3 Craig Kemp I've probably blogged enough about Craig and his wonderful site but in case you were snoozing, or join us late - here is all you need to know about starting a Twitter account and using it for good! 4 A companion piece to Craig This by Teacher Toolkit is the next thing you need to read after you've followed Craig's advice! 5 Project based learning And we finish with this timely reminder about PBL as we head into our end of year activities with the juniors.
Recently, I asked the staff at school about finding a slot for some project based learning (PBL). I didn't call it that - we have had community based projects at Year 11 and school based projects at Year 12 for a few years but because of our move to vertical Home Rooms we no longer have the horizontal structure to do these things this year. The staff were split on my proposal to do a foreshortened version of these project based activities in Home Rooms in Term 3. So I flagged the idea for now. A shame. A wasted opportunity. But...a seed has been sown. For now. As you know I'm a big fan of the Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) that promotes entrepreneurship in the students: I think the whole 'learn by doing' paradigm is very worthy and I plan to have another stab at fitting PBL into next year's programme. Given our vertical Home Room organisational culture, I think it will be hugely exciting and beneficial for the girls. Here's a little video if you need PBL explained as we have used it in the past and plan to use in the future.
