My resident teacher does a lot of group projects and individual long term projects, but I really didn't notice all of the benefits until I was solely in charge of the class. Kind of like how you never know how the directions to somewhere as a passenger, but learn them really quickly as a driver.
During my two-week solo, there were two long term projects going on that are just now slowly coming to an end. In Reading, students read a new chapter of "Ms. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" every day, write down three to four vocabulary words, and answer four questions. Every 5 chapters, there is a test with multiple choice, vocabulary and 2-3 sentence short answer prompts.
In Social Studies, students are working in groups of two to three on researching an assigned colony in-depthly (we kept Roanoke for a total of 14 different groups). The main theme of the project is an advertisement campaign. Students are in charge of recruiting potential colonists from England to choose their colony. Students first answered questions about the colony focusing on history, climate, economy, religion, natural resources, and local Native Americans by researching both through reading provided library books as well as some web browsing. Then students created a slogan for their colony and sorted their information into the most important bullet points. Finally, students created a poster and prepared their presentation to the class in which they seek to convince their classmates to choose their colony. We are currently in the process of presenting these to the class.
Here are some pictures of the poster and presentation creation process:
I LOVE project-based learning! Seriously, love it! I think my students learn so much more than if I only lectured on colonies or if they just read the textbook. Because there is a purpose (convince your peers to come to your colony), my class is SUPER motivated. They have learned so much about colonial life and about their colony through this project, but the awesome thing is that they are also learning lots about the other colonies as well. At the very end of the unit, the class will be voting on which colony they would have wanted to move to, and my students are taking this very seriously. I have observed many students check out other students' posters or even get into arguments about why their colony is so much better. Love it!
I like the long-term reading project because students know exactly what is expected of them and are making some great reading comprehension progress as well as learning study skills. The tests are pretty hard and really expect a lot out of the kids, and each new test they rise to the challenge a little bit more. It is awesome to see kids' scores rise with each successive test. The long term project gives students the opportunity to continue working on the same skills, and you really get to see a lot of progress.
Of course, I also have grown to love these long-term projects for the benefit it gives the teacher. So much less prep!!! During my solo, I really only had to create daily lesson plans for math and writing. Because we had these long-term projects in place, I didn't really have to worry about social studies or reading, because I knew exactly which step was next, and all I had to do from day to day was make copies on time. That is a huge stress relief, especially because I was taking 10 hours of college classes after teaching all day, and had other responsibilities as well to worry about! Less daily lesson planning was such a life saver!
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