While getting students out of the classroom and engaging with the field sounds exciting, it can also feel overwhelming. As a classroom teacher I knew that my students enjoyed interacting with experts and visiting places in the community and I also knew that it provided critical context for their learning. BUT there were a ton of logistics tied to facilitating these learning experiences and sometimes it did feel like ONE MORE THING TO DO as I felt the stress of a nagging clock running out of time. Despite these emotions I want to make a case for real world exploration because if done well, it can be WHAT YOU DO rather than “in addition to…”. The reason for this is because it provides so many opportunities to hit the standards-a topic near and dear to many in the field of education. Read on to see for yourself how one 5th grade project exceeded grade-level standards across multiple content areas.
Food Truck Frenzy was a 8 week project completed by two 5th grade classes at High Tech Elementary North County in the fall of 2015. During this project the students set out to leverage real world exploration to help them address the following Driving Questions for their final products: 1) What defines “healthy” food? 2)Why don’t all people have access to fresh and healthy food 3)How can we help other people have access to healthy food? To read more about this project you can view the project overview here.
During this Project Based Learning (PBL) experience students interacted with experts and the community a total of 8 times. Here is a cross walk to show how each interaction directly tied to a learning target or standard:
When my former partner (@5thgraderocks) and I set out to facilitate this project we figured we would naturally hit 5th grade Common Core Standards for math and ELA, and touch upon some Next Generation Science Standards. However, once we got deeper into the project we quickly realized that in order for our students to answer the project DQs we were going to need to further scaffold much higher level content. The knowledge our students took away from this project exceeded our expectations (and theirs!). Standards felt like they naturally fell into place rather than serving as a driver for student learning. This project provided an incredible sense of accomplishment for our students and made learning feel meaningful. What I realized was that the magic happened when I started thinking about the real world exploration as the main vehicle for our leaning. When I was able to quiet the noise of all the other demands (including covering standards) they one-by-one fell into place and deeper learning was able to happen. Don’t get me wrong, just because it was meaningful and worth it doesn’t mean it wasn’t an extremely challenging project to manage and plan… And that’s why I created CraftED Curriculum-check out the resources on real world exploration at www.craftedcurricu.staging.wpengine.com to help you plan projects like the above with ease and fulfillment.
Written by Jenny Pieratt (@jennypieratt)
Jenny Pieratt, PhD is Founder and President of CraftED Curriculum. Previously she was a School Development Coach for New Tech Network and a teacher at High Tech High North County. To hear more about her experiences and how it inspired CraftED Curriculum check out this video: