Peers Educating Peers Handbook

Part 2: Peer Education Curriculum Guide

This section provides sample curriculum materials for a student teaching project. As you read, please keep in mind that these are examples of how PEP projects were integrated into a local history class at the Boston Arts Academy. The class met five days a week in 85-minute blocks. Most work was done in school, with little homework or after-school time. Timing and implementation will vary considerably depending upon the school, subject, grade level and available resources. Please feel free to revise anything in this curriculum guide, and cut or add assignments as necessary to fit the needs of your students.

Section 1: Preparing Students to Teach

As any educator knows, teaching is one of the most difficult arts, and we cannot ask students to teach each other without careful preparation, scaffolding, and modeling. This chapter contains two sections: a brief outline of the step-by-step process that students in the Boston Arts Academy PEP program went through before they began teaching (this is discussed in more detail in the lesson plans section of the PEP Teacher Handbook), and an overview of the student-centered teaching methods that PEP students should use to teach their peers.

Below are the six steps that students should follow in order to prepare their PEP lesson.

1. Topic: Students must first choose a topic. The topic should be:

• Fascinating to the student-teacher
• Researchable
• Provocative, interesting, and/or relevant to students’ lives and present day society
• It is also ideal that the topic be teachable both in and outside the classroom so that students can use their home city—its streets, historic sites, museum, galleries, shops, subways, etc.—to teach visiting students.

2. Essential Question: The next task is to craft an essential question to guide the lesson. In order to have an interesting lesson that forces students to really think critically, the essential question should be:

• Clear and direct
• Open-ended, not leading
• Debatable, with no one right answers
• Provocative
• Timeless, relevant to multiple places and times, including the present

Please keep in mind that this list describes the perfect essential question: even master teachers do not hit this target every time! Please see _________________ for a series of lessons helping students plan good essential questions.

3. Research: Once students have nailed down their topic and crafted a good essential question, they should begin their research so that they have the depth of knowledge necessary to plan an interesting lesson.  

4. Student Centered Teaching Methods Demonstration: Before students choose a lesson or discussion format for the class they will teach, the teacher needs to make sure that each of these methods has been demonstrated for the students. Ideally, they should be integrated into the regular curriculum so that all students have first hand experience. Especially in the weeks leading up to a student teaching unit, make sure to leave a few minutes at the end of each of these demonstrations for students to reflect on the teaching method and think about whether or not they could use it in their own teaching.

5. Lesson Planning: In the final phase students plan their actual lesson. Please see the lesson planning template and sample lessons included in the Handbook. Students should complete two drafts of their lesson plan and receive feedback from their peers and teachers before finally teaching their lesson. 

6. Teaching!  It is essential that students get the chance to teach each other in a low-pressure situation before they are asked to teach visitors from other schools and nations. After each student-lesson, make sure there is ample time for the audience to fill out rubrics and give constructive feedback to the student-teacher so that all can reflect on the experience and improve.

Student-Centered Teaching Methods

When PEP students teach each other, it is critical that students use “student-centered” teaching methods that will keep their class engaged, and not revert to the same old “teacher centered” methods—lectures, Powerpoints, teacher-dominated discussions, and disconnected worksheets—that have turned so many students off from school. While there are of course a hundred different ways to do this, the three discussion methods and seven lesson formats that follow have been especially effective in the PEP program and should engage students at all levels. This section includes overviews and examples of the following:

Discussion Methods:

1. Socratic Seminar
2. Take a Stand
3. Gallery Walk and Thought Museum

Lesson Formats:

1. Learning Stations
2. Jigsaw
3. Role Play
4. Dramatization
5. Expeditionary Learning: Learning Through Play
6. Expeditionary Learning: Object Observation
7. Expeditionary Learning: Scavenger Hunt

Section 1A: Discussion Methods

Socratic Seminar

Overview: In a Socratic Seminar, students gather information and ideas from a shared source (or set of sources) and then engage in an open ended discussion of the questions and issues raised by those sources.

Sources: Students can gather information and ideas from a wide variety of sources—videos, images, readings, monuments and historic sites, performances, etc. The one requirement is that the sources are shared by all so that everyone has the same information and can therefore join in the discussion and understand what participants are talking about.

Format: After students gather ideas and information, and come up with their own observations, reactions, and questions, the class gathers together to discuss. Students should ideally sit in a circle or rectangle. No matter the shape it is critical that all participants can see each other’s faces and hear what’s being said. 

Roles: There are several possible roles. Some are required and are optional:

Moderator (Required): The moderator leads the discussion. He/she gets things started and keeps the discussion going. While the ultimate goal is for the students to generate their own questions, the moderator should have a number of provocative questions ready in case the discussion flags. The moderator can also intervene if the discussion is going off on a tangent or if one student is dominating or being disrespectful to others. The moderator can also coax students into the conversation, or push students to go further in their thinking by explaining an argument or providing evidence to back up a claim. The moderator also needs to decide whether or not students will raise their hand (with the moderator calling on participants) or just speak freely. While raising hands may [LM9]be necessary at times, the conversation will generally flow much more naturally and go into greater depth if participants are allowed to jump in without raising their hand and waiting to be called upon.

Observers: Observers sit outside the circle and listen without engaging in the discussion. Once the discussion is over the observer(s) can share their views on how the discussion went, the major themes they heard, or ask larger questions that the discussion raised or left out. 

EXAMPLE: A Socratic Seminar on Boston’s Demographic History

Essential Questions: 

• Who are we as a people, how did we get this way, and where are we going?
• What is a census? How do we count our people, and how has the way we count changed over time?
• How and why have the demographics of Boston changed over time?
• What are the demographic trends for the future?

In a Boston history class students were studying Boston’s demographics—the history of its people, where and when they came from, and how Boston’s racial and ethnic make up has changed over the centuries. To start, all students examined a table of statistics that provided Boston census information from 1790 to 2010. They annotated the statistics, identifying trends, anomalies, and changes in the data, writing down questions the statistics provoked, and looking for evidence to help them answer the essential questions.

While students took notes, the teacher circulated, fielding questions, asking students to share what they noticed, and helping them take efficient notes. Afterwards the class formed a circle, and with the teacher leading the discussion, began to share their observations, questions and conclusions. While the teacher picked on the first student to speak, the class carried on most of the discussion that followed without hand raising and only minimal teacher intervention to keep the discussion going. 

Take a Stand

Take a Stand is a more casual and physically active discussion method. 

In Take a Stand students respond to statements, not questions. First the teacher posts the following signs around the room, “Agree,” “Disagree,” and “Neutral.” Depending upon the topic the teacher might want to eliminate the “Neutral” sign to force students to make a choice, or you might add “Strongly Agree” and “Strongly Disagree” to provide more choice.  Once the room is set up students all stand in the middle and the teacher reads out a series of statements. After each statement, students then have to move to the side of the room that best represents their reaction to the statement. When everyone has chosen their place, the teacher then asks people from each side to explain why they chose that position. Take a Stand works especially well when the issues being discussed are controversial and debatable. It gets people off their feet, and forces them to make a choice. It also can cause a lot of drama as students watch to see how everyone else will react. Take a Stand is also a nice way to get students involved who don’t usually speak in more formal sessions because they have to express an opinion and have no place to hide. Take a Stand can be used any time. It can be a great way to break the ice on a new unit and hook students into a topic. It can also be used as a way to discuss a source such as an article, video, or performance. 

EXAMPLE: Al Jazeera and the Arab Spring

Essential Questions: 

• What role should the media play in a war or revolution?
• How objective are media outlets such as Al Jazeera in their coverage of world events?

This Take a Stand was done as part of a Peers Educating Peers exchange between American and Qatari students. To start the class students read and annotated two articles presenting different points of view on Al Jazeera and its coverage of the Arab Spring. Students then briefly talked over the readings in pairs as preparation for a whole class discussion. Instead of doing a Socratic Seminar, the student-teacher chose to discuss the articles using the Take a Stand format. Signs were hung in different spots around the room stating “Strongly Agree” “Agree” “Disagree” and “Strongly Disagree.” The students assembled in the middle of the room, and then the student-teacher read out provocative statements such as:

• Al Jazeera is an objective news channel
• In extreme circumstances, it is appropriate for a media outlet to take sides
• The media should be careful about what it reports. In order to preserve social order, there are certain events or statements that should not be reported in the media.* 

Each statement was related to the point of view of one or more of the authors, and the wording was purposely made as controversial as possible in order to provoke passionate debate. After each statement the students stood in front of the sign that represented their views. They shared the reasons for their stand and backed up their arguments with evidence from the readings and their life experiences. Some heated but respectful arguments followed, and almost every student participated in a meaningful way.

Gallery Walk

A gallery walk is another great way to get students out of their seats and exploring. First the teacher has to turn their classroom into a gallery. A variety of sources can be posted around the room—images, quotes, very short readings, videos clips, etc. The students then walk around the room with clipboards, stopping to take notes, write questions or reactions, or respond to specific prompts. The sources should not be too long, as students will be standing in front of each source to write their responses. Once students have recorded their reactions (it’s up to the teacher to decide how many sources each student should respond to) the class sits back down to discuss what they saw. The discussion could take place in small groups or in a whole class Socratic Seminar. 

Another variation on this theme is the Thought Museum. In a Thought Museum, instead of writing on a clipboard, students share their ideas on Post It notes and stick them next to each source. Once students have posted comments, the class then breaks up into groups, with each group meeting in front of one of the sources. The group then reads over the Post It notes, and uses these responses as a jumping off point for a deeper evidence-based discussion of the source and the day’s topic.

One of the great thing about a Gallery Walks and Thought Museums is their enormous flexibility. Almost any media can be used, and almost any topic can be explored in depth. It is an especially useful teaching method for academically heterogeneous classes. Sources can be included targeting every level of student, and they can work through them at their own pace. 

EXAMPLE: The Earth’s Biomes

Essential Questions 

• What makes each biome unique?
• How does human activity affect the earth’s biomes?

This Gallery Walk too place in an environmental science class. The teacher turned his classroom into a gallery of some of earth’s biomes, with photographs and painting of desert, savannah, tropical rain forest, boreal forest, tundra, etc. Each student took a clipboard and a worksheet. The worksheet asked students to first write down objective observations describing in detail what they saw in each biome. The worksheet then guided students to make suppositions and provide specific evidence to explain their reasoning. For each biome they had to guess the temperature range, precipitation levels, and types of organisms. Students were also asked to think about how human activity might affect each biome. While the students worked, the teacher circulated and conferenced with individual students, pushing them to write more detailed observations, go deeper in their analysis, and provide clearer evidence. The class then broke up into groups for discussion, with one group per biome. The students presented their suppositions and evidence.  

Section 1B: Student-centered Activity Models

Learning Stations

In a traditional class all students are doing the same thing at the same time, whether it’s listening to a lecture, watching a video, reading, or engaging in a discussion.  While this may be simpler to plan, the experience can often be monotonous for students. They spend a lot of time sitting, and all students are expected to move at more or less the same pace. The Learning Stations set up changes this paradigm. Instead of everyone doing the same thing at the same time, the room is divided up into a number of learning stations, and students rotate around the room completing the work at each station. For instance, while one group of students watches a video at one station, other groups could be listening to music, drawing, examining photographs, or reading primary source materials. 

There are two ways to organize a learning station. In the group method, students are divided up into groups and spend the same amount of time at each station. The teacher sets a timer, and when the time is up each group rotates to the next station. Students could spend anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour at each station depending upon the work, and it could take one or two class periods for all students to rotate through each station. Another method is for students to rotate individually. In this model students are divided up into groups and assigned to start at different stations. Instead of using a timer, however, students now rotate individually whenever they’re done with a particular station. The timed method works best if the teacher wants the students to stay in their groups and complete the work together. The individual rotation method, however, gives every student the flexibility to work at his/her own pace. The work that students do at the learning stations can then be used as the research basis for other assessments like discussions or essay writing.

EXAMPLE: Boston Educational Civil Rights Movement Learning Stations

Essential Questions 

• How do we commemorate our history?
• Has the time come for Boston build a monument to honor the struggle to desegregate its schools? If yes, what should the monument look like? Who/what specifically should be honored? Where should it be?
• Has the time come for Boston to stop busing students and send elementary school students to neighborhood schools?      

In this lesson students were studying the movement to desegregate Boston’s public schools that took place between the 1950s and 1970s. The lesson had three goals. The first was for students to learn about this important historical event that changed Boston. The second goal was to give students the historical background necessary to assess the current mayor’s controversial plan to reform the city’s school assignment plan which decides which schools children will be sent to. While some view it as a necessary reform, others are afraid that the plan will lead Boston back towards the segregated and unequal schools that existed before the Educational Civil Rights Movement. The final goal was to ask students to think deeply about who and what our city honors with statues and memorials, and to form their own opinion on whether or not this important but controversial event should be commemorated, and if so, where and how. 

The lesson was divided up over two days. On the first day the teacher gave an introductory lecture and students watched a documentary on the movement. The Learning Station activity took place on the second day. The room was divided up into three different stations. 

At the first station students examined photographs of the movement, including leaders, protestors, children being escorted to school by police, and violent protests that took place against desegregation. After drawing and taking notes on a photograph that touched them, students at this station were asked to work together to design their own memorial to the event. 

At the second station students listened to a radio news story about the Mayor’s proposal to change the school assignment plan, and then discussed their views of the plan. 

At the third station students used an online tool created by the city of Boston to help parents see which schools their child would be eligible to attend under the new plan. Students in this group compared the results for a variety of Boston neighborhoods representing Boston’s various ethnic groups and economic classes, and then discussed whether or not the mayor’s plan would give all students—regardless of their geographic location, race, or class—equal access to quality schools. 

Each group spent about 15 minutes at each station. Once each group had visited each station, the whole class came back together in a circle to discuss what they learned and share their opinions and raise questions about the mayor’s plan.

Jigsaw

In a Jigsaw all students in a class take on a teaching role. Jigsaw’s get everybody talking and listening, and force students to collaborate to build deeper understanding. A Jigsaw is divided into three phases. 

Phase 1: Research

Figure 1: Research Phase

After the teacher introduces the lesson’s topic and essential question, students are broken up into groups to learn about a different aspect of the lesson’s topic. Each group examines a different set of sources, takes notes, and prepares to present what they learned to the rest of the class.

Phase 2: The Jigsaw

In traditional group work, each group would now get up and give a short lecture presenting their findings to the rest of the class. This process is often tedious, and many students zone out. A Jigsaw, however, keeps everyone active. Instead of taking turns presenting to the whole class, new groups are now formed with a mix of students, at least one from each of the original groups.

Figure 2: Jigsaw Phase

The students now take turns presenting their findings to the small group instead of the whole class. The presentations are shorter and more informal, and thus easier for students to listen to, ask questions, and take notes. During this time the teacher walks around the class, listens in to the conversations, and only intervenes when absolutely necessary to get students back on track. 

Phase 3: Synthesis

This phase can either be done in the Jigsaw groups or back together as a whole class. The goal now is for students to synthesize all the different sources and views they have heard, identify themes, make generalizations and ask larger questions.

EXAMPLE: Arranged Marriage

Essential Questions: 

• How do arranged marriages affect society?
• Should arranged marriages be legal?
• Are arranged marriages here to stay, or on the way out?
  

This Jigsaw was done as part of a Peers Educating Peers exchange between American and Qatari students. The class was broken up into five groups of five, each reading a different article. Topics included the connection between Qatar’s divorce rate and arranged marriages, arranged marriage among Orthodox Jews, and the current state of arranged marriages in the United Kingdom, the United States, and India. After reading and annotating their assigned article, each group discussed their reading, and wrote their own questions to generate discussion. Then the Jigsaw began. New mixed groups were formed, each containing at least one student from the original five groups. Each student presented their findings and their questions, and then the group compared and contrasted the status of arranged marriage in different cultures and communities. The jigsaw ended with students answering the essential questions. The whole class participated actively in every aspect of the jigsaw, and there was lively and in-depth discussion going on in each group. 

Role Play

In a Role Play, students take on an authentic role found in society and engage in the same kinds of thinking and actions that that person would do in real life. A Role Play often has three phases:

Phase 1: Research

First students learn what their role is and begin to research a problem. They find out the relevant history, examine multiple perspectives, and gather the information they need to develop a solution.

Phase 2: Production

Now that students have the information they need, students work in groups to develop proposals and solutions to the problem. At this point the teacher circulates, helping students work through the problem, giving guidance and advice when necessary

Phase 3: Presentation & Reflection

Groups of students now take turns presenting their prototypes and/or proposals to the class. Depending upon the number of students, each group could take turns presenting orally to the whole class, or if there are a lot of groups, the proposals could be posted on the wall for the class to walk around and view them (this could work well with the Thought Museum discussion model explained above). The whole class can then discuss the pros and cons of each proposal, and ponder the larger questions and outstanding issues that have arisen from this work.

EXAMPLE: Role Play: Urban Planning

Essential Questions 

• What makes a good transportation system? 
• How does our transportation system compare to other cities? 
• How can we improve our transportation system? 

In this lesson students took on the role of urban planners deciding how Boston should expand and improve its subway system. 

The lesson started out with a lecture reviewing the history of Boston’s mass-transit system from the early 19th century to the present. Students also got the chance to compare Boston’s subway system to the much larger ones in New York, Paris, London, and Tokyo. 

After the presentation, the class was broken up into groups of three. Each group was given a set of markers and a large full color map of the Boston subway, bus, and commuter rail system. Each team was asked to create their own plans for expanding and improving the system. Students added stations, extended and added lines to connect neighborhoods that were far from the subway or to make it easier to get around town. 

After about 20 minutes of planning, each group took turns presenting their ideas to the rest of the class. After each presentation the audience asked clarifying questions and discussed the pros and cons of each proposal. When the proposals were done, the teacher presented some real life plans that are in the works or currently being discussed to improve Boston’s subway system. 

Dramatization

In a dramatization, students use theater to bring to life an issue that they are studying in class. Thus, rather than writing or drawing, they demonstrate their understanding and communicate their views by acting. A Dramatization can also be divided up into three phases. 

Phase 1: Research

As in the role play, students must first gather ideas and information from readings, photographs, video, lectures, etc.

Phase 2: Script Writing & Rehearsal

In phase students write their script, plan out the staging of their short play (depending upon how time is allotted, this could be very simple or quite complex), and rehearse. 

Phase 3: Presentation

Groups of students take turns presenting their short plays. After each performance, the audience stops to discuss the performance and how it connects to the content of the class, and the other plays. 

EXAMPLE: Women’s Rights

Essential Questions: 

• How were women oppressed in the past? 
• Have we achieved gender equality?

In the class before the dramatization, students read the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments from Seneca Falls. This document—a sort of Declaration of Independence for the American women’s rights movement—laid out all the ways that men oppressed women and denied them equal rights. The Declaration lists over 20 different grievances. As students read, they took notes on whether or not each act of oppression still goes on today, and if so, how. The following day students broke up into groups and each group chose one form of oppression to dramatize. Students were given the freedom to dramatize the oppression that took place in the 1800s and/or portray what goes on today. The students rehearsed for about 20 minutes, and then each group took turns presenting their short play (two to five minutes) to the class. After each play the class discussed which grievances were being shown and whether or not this kind of oppression still occurred today. 

Section 1C: Expeditionary Learning Lessons

The goal of expeditionary learning is to make the entire world your classroom. Lessons could take place at a museum or historic site, in a park, in front of a monument, on the beach, in a subway train, or at any street corner. Depending upon the topic, nearly all of the above teaching methods could be used in expeditionary learning. In most cases, the lesson will be very similar to a classroom-based lesson. The one key difference is that students must have significant interaction with something in their environment. 

Learning Through Play

This model uses simulation games to engage students and teach ideas and content. It is ideal that the game should simulate reality as closely as possible so that students really get a sense of what a historical or real-life experience was like, and that real emotional responses are engendered that closely resemble people’s real-life reactions. In addition, it is essential that the game be fun. While competition is often useful, it is not always essential that these games have clear winners and losers. A Learning Through Play class usually has four phases as follows:

Phase 1: Introduction

The Teachers introduces the topic with a short presentation giving an overview of the topic, it’s context, and the essential question for the class.

Phase 2: Directions

The teacher explains and/or hands out the directions for the game. 

Phase 3: Play

Students engage in the simulation game. The teacher helps students play their roles, makes sure the rules are followed, and time permitting, discusses students reactions as the game goes on.

Phase 4: Reflection

After the game is complete, students discuss the game and what it taught them about the topic and essential question.

EXAMPLE: Battle of Bunker Hill Simulation

Essential Questions: 

• What does it take to win a battle? 
• Why is the high ground important in a battle?
• How/why did the British “win” the Battle of Bunker Hill?

For this lesson students traveled to the site of the Battle of Bunker Hill in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston. The site has a huge monument and a park right on the grounds where much of the battle took place. To start of the lesson students sat on the grass and the teacher presented an overview of the battle and set the scene for the simulation. He then explained the rules of the game. The class was divided into two teams, one representing the British and the others the Americans. The Americans stood in a line at the top of the hill, and true to real life, the British formed up at the bottom. Each student was then given a number of plastic balls to simulate musket balls that they could “fire” at their enemies. The rule was that students had to play dead when they were hit with a ball. At the teacher’s signal, the British then advanced up the hill and the firing battle began. 

The class did two simulations. In the first simulation both sides had equal amounts of ammunition and the Americans easily defeated the British. In the second simulation, true to real life events, the British had twice as many bullets as the Americans, and even though they lost many men, they managed to take the hill.

After the two simulations the teacher led the students through a discussion where they reflected on their experiences and answered the essential questions. The students talked about who had the advantage in each simulation, their theories on why the British won, and the importance of holding the high ground in a battle. The “battle” was a lot of fun for all involved, and amidst all the shouting and laughter, the students grasped the main points the teacher was trying to make.

Expeditionary Learning: Object Observation Protocol

A simple way to try out expeditionary learning is to use the Objective Observation Protocol, a method of observational note taking and discussion first developed by Sonnet Takahisa at the Brooklyn Museum and deepened at the New York City Museum School. This is a simple but in depth form of observational note taking that serves as a basis for Socratic Seminar and other discussion formats. The Object Observation is designed to:

• Promote extended, in depth observational note taking and drawing;
• Encourage the use of descriptive language;
• Help students understand the difference between factual observation and subjective analysis
• Promote the development of evidence-based analytical skills

Object Observation Exercise

Below is presented one way of using Object Observations. It is not necessary to go through all of these steps every time you use Object Observation; let time and situation dictate. 

Phase 1: Selecting an Object

The first time you try out Object Observation with a class, everyone should observe the same object together. After that students should be encouraged to select their own objects from a collection or museum that is relevant to your curriculum. 

Phase 2: Observational Note Taking

Without introducing the object or reading the object’s label, allow students 10 minutes to record objective and subjective observations, as well as questions on the attached worksheet. Remind them (over and over again until they get it!) that objective observations are purely descriptive, without any interpretation or opinion, and subjective observations include feelings, reactions, and interpretations. The first time you do this with students it is important to model the process and try it out together before they attempt it on their own.

Phase 3: Observational Drawing

After about ten minutes, students should stop writing and begin a drawing. The act of drawing forces the students to observe more closely.

Phase 4: More Observational Note Taking

It is especially effective to ask students to take notes, stop and draw, and then continue taking notes. They will almost always see more details and draw more inferences that they didn’t see the first time. If in a museum, students can now also take the time to read the label and add more notes in questions in response. 

Phase 5: Sharing Observations

Individuals present their objective and subjective observations and their questions to others in the group, and students discuss and debate their interpretations. Once students have been allowed to discuss the object for a while, the teacher should choose an appropriate time to introduce relevant outside information to deepen the conversation and make connections to the curriculum.

EXAMPLE: Portraits of Wealth and Power

Essential Questions: 

• How are power and wealth shown in society? 
• What are the similarities and differences in how power and wealth are shown in different countries and cultures?
• Sub-question 2: How are wealth and power shown today? How are these displays different from the past?

The class met at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. Students started out by examining 17th and 18th century portraits of Iranian royalty and nobility in the museum’s collection. They looked at five paintings, then chose two to take notes on using the Object Observation worksheet (see download below). 

The class then observed color copies of portraits of the wealthy and powerful from 18th century China, England, India and the United States. After taking detailed notes two of these paintings, the students came together to share the similarities and differences they observed between cultures. The class ended with a discussion of how people show off wealth and power in today’s society. 

Expeditionary Learning & The Scavenger Hunts

In most schools, a scavenger hunt is used on school field trips as a way to kill time and provide a fun distraction to keep kids minimally focused, and prevent them from getting into trouble. It does not have to be this way. When carefully prepared and integrated into a rigorous curriculum, a scavenger hunt can be both challenging and fun, and set the stage for in depth analysis and discussion. In a classic scavenger hunt, students are broken up into groups and handed a list of things that they must find and/or tasks to complete. Students need to document their work through drawing, photography, and/or note-taking, and an extra element of fun is often added by rewarding the group that finds the most of something, or get’s the most right. After the scavenger hunt it is critical to schedule time for students to discuss what they found, and integrate their new-found evidence and inferences into the curriculum.

EXAMPLE: Architecture Scavenger Hunt 

Essential Questions 

• What’s your favorite style of architecture?
• How has our city’s architecture changed?
• Does our city have a dominant style? Does the dominant style reflect our culture?

Before going out on an architectural styles scavenger hunt, students at the Boston Arts Academy were presented with a short PowerPoint lecture showing examples of several different periods of Boston architecture from the 1600’s to the present. Students did further research online to find more examples of each style, and then went on the scavenger hunt on the next day’s class. The goal of the scavenger hunt was to test students abilities to identify architectural styles in Boston, and also to begin developing their own criteria for judging architecture. Before the hunt, each group of students was given a packet with photographs and drawings of each style. Students then traveled around Boston—with some geographic hints from their teacher—looking for examples of each style. Their goal was to photograph and identify as many different examples of each style as possible. After the hunt, students gathered back together to share what they had found—and to tally up who found what to see who would win the prize—and discussed their impressions of Boston’s architecture, what they liked and didn’t like, and which styles seemed most dominant. 

Section 2: Peer Education Project Curriculum Outline

The teaching project outlined below was preceded by a few weeks of classes where student-centered teaching methods described in the previous section were demonstrated by the teacher. As a result, students had a number of experiences to reflect on when designing their own student-centered lessons. 

Ten 85-minute classes were used for project development. These are described in Phases One through Three below. Phase Four involves several additional classes in which students teach their lessons. Student-teaching time will vary depending upon class size, and the locations of students’ lessons. 

There are four phases to this teaching project:

Phase 1: Introduction

Students are introduced to the project, examine past work and learn how to craft good essential questions.

Phase 2: Research

In lessons 1-3, students choose topics, write essential questions and begin their research. 

Phase 3: Student-Centered Teaching Methods Demonstrations (Optional)

If the teacher has not done so already in the course of their curriculum, this is the time demonstrate student-centered teaching methods. 

Phase 4: Lesson Planning

In lessons 7-10, students plan and revise their lessons and assemble the materials they will need to teach.

Phase 5: Peer Education

Students teach their lessons.