Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Geodes!
For my Earth Science final project I had my students make their own geodes. They had to research and come up with a method of making geodes. They worked in groups of three and they had to have 3 geodes to display at the end. One was supposed to have the smallest crystals, one with the biggest crystals, and one was supposed to be the most natural looking. Here are some of their results. Turned into a very cool project. It took some of the students a lot of experimenting to get what they wanted. How often do students really get to "play"? Usually we just give them a set experiment and they have to follow it exactly. This was an awesome way for them to explore and figure out what worked and what didn't work.
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Idea!!
I am supposed to be grading....but I just had what I think is an awesome idea. If I don't write it down now I will forget it. So I'll put it in here, hopefully this summer I can the details ironed out and then one of my first posts in the fall can be showing some cool results! We'll see!
I found a PBL from Buck Institute (BIE) for a life science project on ecosystems. The project is set for 7th grade. But after looking at it I think I could turn it into a starting earth science project and make it higher level/more rigorous and add content. I also had a few changes to make it my own.
The original project from Buck Institute uses the driving question "How can we design a completely self-sustaining ecosystem?" The project is for students to act as "set designers" for a TV reality show who need to propose a working ecosystem for an artificial biosphere. You can find the official project in the book, "PBL starter Kit" from the Buck Institute for Education. You can also go to BIE,org and create an account to have access to PBL information and other projects.
My idea is to keep the same concept but have the final project be a movie poster or show advertisement in the form of murals. Each group would do a different ecosystem and paint the murals around my classroom.
So that is my idea in a nutshell. Its just a brain storm now. But I'll let you know as I come up with more ideas and figure out more of where I'm going with it.
I found a PBL from Buck Institute (BIE) for a life science project on ecosystems. The project is set for 7th grade. But after looking at it I think I could turn it into a starting earth science project and make it higher level/more rigorous and add content. I also had a few changes to make it my own.
The original project from Buck Institute uses the driving question "How can we design a completely self-sustaining ecosystem?" The project is for students to act as "set designers" for a TV reality show who need to propose a working ecosystem for an artificial biosphere. You can find the official project in the book, "PBL starter Kit" from the Buck Institute for Education. You can also go to BIE,org and create an account to have access to PBL information and other projects.
My idea is to keep the same concept but have the final project be a movie poster or show advertisement in the form of murals. Each group would do a different ecosystem and paint the murals around my classroom.
So that is my idea in a nutshell. Its just a brain storm now. But I'll let you know as I come up with more ideas and figure out more of where I'm going with it.
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