Project Based Learning – AaronChute.com

During the 2020/2021 school year, the new strategy and goal for teachers has become how to create the most normalized learning environment regardless of COVID protocols. After a year of impacted learning experiences, everyone seems to be at a breaking point and even my most veteran teachers are having times of struggle to help our students learn.

Traditionally, the grade 1 students in our school do a big penguin research unit that brings together their reading, writing, and learning strategies that they have learned throughout the school year. But this year has been different – student literacy ability is significantly down compared to other years, and the spread of learning ability is far more diverse within the classroom.

I was able to work with my Grade 1 teachers, and team-teach our modified Penguin project this year! I worked with my teachers to develop some wonderful activities that allowed for differentiation based on students ability, and provided opportunities for students to work on their literacy abilities regardless of their level going into the project. We also incorporated some digital work for all students!

I worked with the teachers during the first week of March, and they had some follow-up activities they were going to do with their students over the following days. Earlier this week, I visited the class, and a small handful of students showed me their final projects, which included some typed activities, labelled drawings, and some written personal reflections, which they read to me. To see how far the students grew in the course of 2 weeks was spectacular and I’m so proud of them. The teachers were able to create a learning opportunity that was fun, engaging, and effective, regardless of the safety protocols in place for COVID. I found it very enjoyable to be a part of the development and learning process working with the grade 1 classes. Now that the project has concluded, I have discussed the project with the Grade 1 teachers and they are already discussing how they can tweak and improve it for next year, which for me, is exciting that they see the value in project based learning. Great success!

Through my work this year engaging with teachers to encourage a Project-Based Learning strategy in their classrooms, I have had the opportunity to work with one of my grade 3 classes this week!

The grade 3 class is currently learning about sound in science class and the teacher wanted to bring in some hands-on coding and technology use to help the students visualize the pitch and the sounds that they are hearing. I was able to work with the teacher to develop a plan to have students first learn about different types of pitch, and then figure out how to visualize high and low pitch using micro:bit units connected to their Chromebooks. The teacher and I did some preliminary work to help students and then had them develop ‘code’ that when a specific button was pressed on the micro:bit, a visual representation of the high or low pitch appeared on the screen, and the tone was played through their headphones (which they had to figure out how to connect to the micro:bit).

The biggest joy that came out of this activity was the “ah-ha” moments that many students were able to experience as they accomplished a number of tasks.

Students being able to successfully connect all the specific hardware together correctly
Students successfully building the code and transferring it to their micro:bit
Students experiencing all of the pieces of the project coming together, and seeing the visualizations match the sound and them understanding the relationship between everything

Overall, it was a wonderful project to be a part of and to see the genuine understanding come together for so many of the students. Since they were the ones who had to the majority of the work and the content was not “spoon-fed” to them, the learning became much more memorable and authentic.

There are already some follow-up activities planned, including using tuning forks and engaging in more coding options to visualize the pitch and sounds that they are exploring and learning about.

PBL Penguins!

Coding and Sound in Grade 3