Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, but how do you get started with Project Based Learning?

Overwhelmed by advice? Not sure you want to build a papier mache whale in your multipurpose room like you saw in someone else’s school that your principal pointed out to you? Here’s a slightly more distilled version of advice to get started from the school of hard knocks.

EnFORCING Actual Thinking: 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 minutes

The Energy Opportunities Project is up and running as students link energy to their lives and today, to world issues. Or do they? Making the best of a Valentine’s Day lull in engagement. Who’d have predicted that?

Socrates Cafe “How do you feel about the future?”

How DO kids feel about the future and what do they think energy and oil has to do with it? Krissy Hopper, student teacher ran it and comments in a guest blog today.

Truth at The Socrates Cafe

What IS truth? Why do we care? And what does science have to do with it? Discussing philosophical questions with 8th graders the day before Thanksgiving break was amazing. Some ideas that emerged and some tips on what made it work in today’s blog.

Kids Choice “Job Interviews”

What to do with end-of-school 8th graders? Give them more freedom than they expect, and a job interview…

Classification of Stuff and Species

I finally stumbled upon a better way of introducing the dusty topic of classification with a re-vamped and simplified toy sort. Sheets and pics provided.

Beads -> Balanced Chemical Equations

C + O2 -> CO2, right? No problem.

Collecting gas from a burning coal:

Using bromothymol blue to see if the collected gas is carbon dioxide.

And we are always safety-conscious:

But some students didn’t realize that the atoms themselves re-arrange and are the SAME atoms that just change their bonds from one side to the other side of the equation and IN REAL LIFE too, that chemical reactions conserve matter. They can slide by with memorizing and learning the ‘turn-the-crank way to balance equations well enough to do okay on the state tests (in OMG 2 weeks…). But they really needed time to think about what was going on at the atomic and molecular level. So glad I cancelled the lab and took this slowly.

It’s kind of fun too, using white boards and markers, working together and ooh, bright, clinky counters. I had no idea that $7 of vase stones from the craft shop would be my best learning tool all year.

The conservation of matter, of atoms, in a chemical reaction is a profound law of the universe – it’s why they are stardust, how we are all connected with the earth and sky, and why we all contain bits of carbon that were once part of Einstein, or Marilyn Monroe. The carbon emphasis on the lab sheet: 3. Investigate chemical reactions stochiometry makes the connection to the Problems with Oil and the Great Carbon Race that has woven through this year’s curriculum and through 7th grade life science too. It’s a really nice realization, an ah ha moment with a little fizz of awe and wonder at the universe.

After letting them have some time to think through the methane + O2 reaction, I had students share their thinking.

And finally, shock, horror…

They did the chapter in the text to consolidate what they were learning.

POP: The Great Carbon Race!

We are off! The last-minute project is launched.

POP 4: Sorting out Problems (with Oil etc.)

Sorting out problems with class management and oil using graphs, scraps of paper and The One Ronnie’s Blackberry clip.

Time is key to choice, voice and creativity…

In this culture of busy = better, time may be the resource in shortest supply in school.