Black Plague History and ELA PBL

Each year, when January rolls around and kiddos are coming back from break, our 7th graders dive into the world of Medieval Europe. In ELA, I've tried to figure out ways to connect to their History curriculum, with mixed results. This year, I needed a revamp.

My first step was to look at my students and school. Our 7th grade group is incredibly creative and loves artistic activities. This is a huge motivating factor on projects. I also knew I wanted the academic focus to be supported research and synthesis, with an emphasis on literacy activities and primary source analysis. Our academy also has a 5 Pillar focus for students and there needed to be tie-ins to these overarching themes (Critical Thinking, Building Leaderships/Partnerships, Demonstrating Technical Savviness, Appreciating Cultural Diversity, and Global Thinking).

My next step was trying to figure out the topics that would work for the time period and engage my students in a Language Arts setting. Over the summer, I participated in a primary source teacher institute through the Library of Congress and was introduced to the Stanford History Education Group's "Reading Like a Historian" curriculum. The World History lessons provided a jumping off point for my unit planning. I loved the two Black Death lessons and thought to myself, how could people in the middle ages avoid the risk factors in the spread of this disease? This became the jumping off point for my essential question: How could city officials protect citizens in Medieval towns from the Black Death? 

With this driving question in mind, the materials for the unit came together quickly. I created a data set for students to read, annotate and categorize to get a deeper understanding of how the societal make up of Medieval Europe contributed to risk of plague. Students analyzed the primary sources with the engaging Stanford activities as well, synthesizing their learnings into a chart with Risks and Countermeasures. 

The big challenge for me in this process was determining the requirements for this project. I wanted to give my students parameters, while also allowing flexibility in the process. I decided that the end result should be a presentation to their peers, utilizing both a visual layout of a medieval town or castle as well as a poster to help organize their ideas for the presentation. Knowing that they will be writing problem/solution essays as the next genre we hit, I wanted to introduce some of the academic vocabulary, so students needed to show cause, effect and solutions on their posters. 

The visual component of the project needed to illustrate the risk factors for plague. This is where students really surprised me. The project ideas ran the gambit from models built of cardboard and other craft supplies to Minecraft worlds and even student produced videos. These projects will be displayed at our Renaissance Faire for parents and families to explore. 

A World Without Civil Liberties...A Dystopian Future Project

When you're 13, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights can seem at best an abstract concept, and at worst, boring. Rather than approach it from a memorization approach, last year I decided to collaborate with our Language Arts teacher to create a unit that helps students make the concept of civil liberties which are protected under the law much more lasting and concrete as they one day become participating members of the voting public. It continues to be a work in progress.

In order to build some base knowledge, students first analyzed the actual text of the civil liberties protected by the Constitution (Bill of Rights), then examined contemporary examples of the debate surrounding many of these rights by way of political cartoons.

Next, we examined the genre of dystopian future stories (Hunger Games, Maze Runner, The Giver, etc.), looking for the common elements that all share. While students began to develop the story structure in their Language Arts class, developing their overall story, characters, setting, etc. In my class they focused on imagining what their futuristic society would look and feel like, as well as how it would operate if many (or all) of the basic civil liberties we currently enjoy were no longer protected (or acknowledged).

For the culminating project, students created a video trailer for their stories, focusing on which amendments were absent from the society that they wrote about.

Here was one of the more impressive videos that were submitted this year:

One of the biggest stumbling blocks in doing this type of project is to tapping into students' passion and prior knowledge for young adult dystopia stories, without simply retelling the same story for their final project. This project continues to improve with each group, but it helps students to make the concept of the Bill of Rights more tangible for them in this stage of their lives, which is exactly what any teacher could hope for.

Haitian Pen Pals Project

LE 6th graders and their Haitian pen pals

LE Sixth graders have been participating in a cultural pen pal exchange with the Sunlight Academy in Haiti.  In this project, students engage in a collaborative learning experience. Through letter exchanges, students learn about the daily lives, cultures, climates and geography of children who live in another region of the world. 

Our essential questions for this project are :

1. How am I similar and different from my Pen Pal?
2. How do the physical and climate differences in my  Pen Pal's region affect my Pen Pal's life?
3. What affect does the culture in my Pen Pal?s region have on my ePal?s life?

Sarah Allen has been collaborating with us to create an Inside Out poster project that will be on display in the MPR for the first two weeks of February.  Inside Out was created by French photographer, J R.- and is a global photography art project transforming messages of personal identity into works of art. In our project we are pairing  LE students with their Haitian counterparts. The portraits are unique and fun - celebrating the kids commonalities as well as their differences.

Math Counts Video Competition

8th grade students are going to investigate a math problem, respond by creating a real-world application and present their version of the problem in video that will be entered into the MathCounts Video Competition in February. This project is being spearheaded by A collaborative effort of a Math, Expressions and Technology. We will post pictures of progress and final videos as the projects comes to a close. Fingers crossed for our kids chance at winning  college scholarships and more!

Sustainability: From Science Camp to Campus

Garbology-- What do we throw away?Project based learning is sometimes messy! #PBL pic.twitter.com/adVgiUShAB
— Mrs. Bibayoff (@LEroomI3) January 22, 2015

One of the best things about going to camp at Marin Headlands is how much students learn about about sustainability there. With camp leaders, they carefully weigh how much recycling, compost, and trash is left behind at each meal and chart it at group meetings in a time called "Garbology." They learn about the ocean and coastal life that is impacted by how much we throw away (especially if it ends up in our waterways). They learn about taking only what you need and not wasting so much. They vow to share a napkin with "napkin buddies." They go "hard core" by eating the whole apple.

However, we sixth grade teachers have noticed a disconnect. What happens at camp, unfortunately, stays at camp--not seeming to come back to campus. We've often wondered: How can we help our students to bring these practices back "home" to our school?

This summer I had the amazing opportunity to spend a week at the Monterey Bay Aquarium along with two other middle school teachers, Mrs. Feeney and Mrs. Coleman, learning about best practices toward implementing a Project with a capital P into our classes. Teachers from all along the west coast from up north in Alaska and Washington down to Southern California were also involved in this project-based learning endeavor. We've had follow-up sessions every couple of months as well to discuss how we are bringing these ideals to our students, having students gather real data, and working on real-life problem solving projects. These ideas also work perfectly with the spirit of the new NGSS standards (Note: MS-ESS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment--how perfect is that!) I have decided that my project would center around bringing back those sustainable practices learned at camp to our campus.

So, the few students who've stayed back with me this week while the majority are away at Marin Headlands camp have been learning about types of trash. We've studied the choices we make each time we throw something away (Is it recyclable? Could it be composted?). We also conducted our
own trash audit so that we can compare the numbers that the students who went to camp bring back on Monday from garbology time.

My hope is that next week, we can use this data collected as a jumping off place for discussions and action plans for what we can do to positively impact the planet not just while off at science camp but also in the "real world" back at home and school. Wish us luck!