PBL Project
Our students will be separated into small groups and answer the driving question “What should our school year look like?” They will do research into different schedules, calendars, and varying different factors that go into making the school calendar. Once they have complied all of their information and decided what they think the school year should look like, they will create a Google Calendar with all of the calendar information, including the first and last day of school, various breaks, and the start and end time of the standard school day. This calendar will be a big part of their final presentation they give to their classmates, teacher, and a school administrator. The presentation will include their calendar and the reasons they decided to make it the way they did. The students will have to defend their decisions and be able to answer questions posed to them.
Driving Question - What should our school year look like?
Our Driving Question is, “What should the school year look like?”. It is an authentic and relevant issue to students because the schedule of their lives revolves around school for a large part of the year. Adults regularly meet in committees to discuss future school calendars, the length of the school day, and school start and stop times. Since it warrants in-depth study for adults, there will be plenty of room for in-depth study from the kids. They will be able to come up with many different plausible solutions. The project around the Driving Question will involve evaluating, analyzing, presenting, and defending their own solutions. It will also involve evaluating and analyzing the solutions of their classmates. This project also covers the following Indiana State Standards: 5.RN.3.1, 5.RN.4.2, 5.W.1, 5.W.3.1, 5.W.4, 5.SL.4.1, 5.SL.4.2, 5.SL.2.1.
Grabber - https://newsela.com/articles/france-school/id/1765/
Our Grabber is an article from Newsela titled “Ah non! It’s back to school on Wednesdays for French schoolchildren.” The article talks about the French government changing an old law that schools do not have to attend school on Wednesdays to have a middle of the week break. This provided students and parents the opportunity to spend more time together, have sports or music practices and have a break in the middle of the week. The article gives multiple different perspectives for the students to think about. It gives the reason why the government decided to change the law, saying it was an accident based on religious reasons that the schools did not attend on Wednesdays. It also gives reasons why parents, faculty and administrators are for or against the new law. The article allows students to see multiple views on this issue and make them think about what a good solution to our driving question could be. Students will likely have an emotional reaction to the idea that students in France didn’t have to go to school on Wednesday. The issues surrounding the French school calendar often parallel the issues surrounding the American school calendar. This will help with the transition from the grabber to the project. After discussing the issues around the French school calendar, we will discuss any similar issues around our own. From here, the students will be asked how they think the school year could be better and what they think it should look like. This will take students from talking about school calendars abstractly (the French calendar) to talking about school calendars in a personal and relevant way.
Culminating Activity - The Culminating Activity will involve the students creating a school calendar, presenting it to the class and a guest panel (administrators or teachers on the corporation calendar committee), and defending their solution from critiques posed by the panel or the class. It an authentic activity because this is the same work that adults do that affects the lives of community members. The students will be presenting their solutions to people with real influence on school calendar decisions. Students will have to collaborate with members in their group to design their calendars, create their presentations, and defend their choices.
