Why do we need to learn this? When am I ever going to use that? These are common questions that teachers hear almost every day. Many children need to know the answers to these questions to be intrinsically motivated to learn. But, as educators, we often loathe such questions because they are hallmarks of the disengaged student.
However, with a project-based learning approach to teaching it, you will find yourself engaging students with ease, deepening students’ understandings, instilling values, effectively and easily integrating subjects, and eliminating questions about why one might bother to pay attention in class.
Project-based learning is an approach to teaching in which subjects are integrated and students work cooperatively to explore real world situations and problems . When planning a project- based learning experience that will engage your students, it is important to think about your own interests and your students’. Researchers from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education refer to this topic of interest as a generative topic. It is a topic that is central to a discipline or subject area and is accessible to students’ various ways of thinking. One generative topic your students will never forget learning about is the topic of communities.
Why community?
There are a variety of ways to teach children about communities. The way I have found most engaging is to actually become a community or imaginary town. At Palm Beach Day Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida, third grade students do just that. Once we declare ourselves a town or community, the students instantly have a reason for learning and a special place to connect everything they learn. When the students create their own community of which every classmate is a part, the children become emotionally invested in learning.
The excitement of having an imaginary community spreads rapidly. When the children first begin playing with the idea of being a community at school, the teachers do not involve themselves in the children’s interactions. We merely observe their creative play from a distance. Occasionally, we ask questions of the children to get a better understanding of their direction. We make notes of their interactions so we can make connections to them when possible. Often, when the children have a spare moment, they can be found gathered together discussing a new idea for their community. Most of their ideas come from seeds that were planted during our class lessons. When the students demonstrate an interest in a particular idea, we look at ways we can elaborate on their ideas and interests to create performances of understandings and on-going assessments. I have found that this route encourages ownership of learning among the students, which leads to a higher level of performance and deepens students’ understanding.
How do I turn my classroom into a community?
At Palm Beach Day Academy, each of the third grade classes begins the creation of an imaginary functioning town by reading the story Roxaboxen by Barbara Cooney. This is a story about a group of children who create an imaginary town in the desert. The imaginary town known as Roxaboxen has a mayor, businesses, police officers, and more. It is the story of the way many creative children play.
Year after year, this story plants a seed for our students. Inevitably, there is always at least one student that declares they too would like to create an imaginary community like Roxaboxen. The moment the student suggests creating an imaginary community, I stop whatever it is I am doing and bring much attention to the student’s creative idea. Now, from the students’ perspective, the creation of the class’ community is their idea. The children create a name for their town, and they instantly become emotionally attached to it. This year, our students named their town “Wonderville.” Now, whatever we teach the students, weconnect to Wonderville. I have found, no matter what I am teaching, the students engage more deeply when their purpose for learning is connected to their community.
Since having a named town or community in school is something the students have never done before, I find I have to be quick to support and encourage any ideas the children create in connection with their community. However, it does not take the students long to realise that their teachers are just as enthusiastic about our class’ community as they are. Once this understanding is reached, the students begin sharing their innovative ideas as they look for ways to makeconnections between what we are learning in class and our town. Whenever I showcase a student’s innovative ideas, it inevitably encourages others to think about ways they too can be innovative. Before long, there are many dialogues around the idea of our classroom community.
Connections
The most important step to keeping the spirit of the community alive is to make connections between everything you are teaching, and the class’ community. It can be as simple as changing the name of activities that are already a part of your curriculum to incorporate your class’ community name. For example, I changed our book review assignment to “The Wonderville Book Review.”
Another simple example of how we incorporate our community into a part of our third grade curriculum is through the painting of selfportraits at the beginning of the school year. Each year, the students begin by painting a selfportrait and writing an autobiography. Now, instead of just giving this assignment, I tell the students they have the honour of painting selfportraits that will be hung in the Wonderville Museum of Art. Then, I frame their work and hang it on the wall. When we investigate questions in science, the students become the town’s scientists and are responsible for using the scientific method to create and investigate a question related to the content they are studying. I then add that the “scientists” will appear on the community’s news channel to
report their findings. We created a television screen around a large wooden frame with the community’s name painted on it. The students stand behind the frame to announce their scientific findings or other news. We also use this frame when the students read aloud a piece they wrote or perform a skit for language arts. Simple connections such as these have our students emotionally engaged and excited about learning.
A more elaborate connection between the curricular objectives we already had established and our class’ community was the way in which we invited our students to write their first 5-paragraph essay. Rather than tell the students they were going to learn to write an essay and dictate what they would be writing about, we created a situation that resulted in the students begging to write. Around the time the students started creating jobs for themselves in Wonderville, we engaged in a social studies discussion about the types of jobs in a community. The students then used the list of jobs they generated to create a list of jobs that would help our community of Wonderville function peacefully and efficiently. We enthusiastically announced to the students that they would have the opportunity to run for and be elected into one of these Wonderville roles. The students were so excited about this opportunity and quickly began questioning how they would receive votes in a fair way. That was when one student suggested that, just the way real communities vote for candidates based on what they promise to do for the citizens, the students could do the same. From that, another student suggested they each write a speech, and together the students cheered because they thought interdependently and in doing so, solved their first community problem.
As I modeled how to create a writing plan, each student tried out planning for the first time with the job the student was running for as his or her thesis, and the reasons the student would make an ideal candidate became his or her main ideas. As I modeled for the students how to write the beginning, middle, and ending paragraphs of an essay, the students applied what I taught them directly to writing their speeches.
Other ideas that can help your students meet your curricular objectives with greater interest and a deeper level of understanding include creating a blog site where your students blog about your town, taking part in a debate before their election, holding a trial about science or social studies issues, and creating a wildlife refuge that includes animals the children create and write about as part of a life science unit. The many ways you can connect to your class’ imaginary yet functioning classroom are endless.