Sunday, November 22, 2015

Working Through The Winter PBL Projects and Having Students Publish "Celebrating Winter In Iowa"


This is the story of my little friends at Van Meter and the PBL project we are doing together for the Winter Around the World Project with Cantata Learning. 
They have been working on this project with their classroom teachers Tracy and Staci for the last two weeks.  During this time, they read the book, learned the winter song and had wonderful conversations about winter in their community of Van Meter, Iowa.  
Tracy and Staci worked with the students to brainstorm different topics of interest.  They would all work with a group to research and create part of a collaborative digital winter story within their schools, which would then become part of a global digital winter story.

After they had a list of Winter Project-Based Learning Student Options, the students were able to select the groups they would work in for the winter project.  With all of these different focus areas all of the teachers that work with the 2nd graders came together including...
 Marsha Fries, the music teacher....
Cathy Robey, the art teacher, and Kim James, the teacher librarian.
The students composed, sang and produced three amazing winter songs with Marsha.  You can read all about this part of the PBL here
Everyone of the 2nd graders created their very own art work to be part of their digital story.
They focused on the topics that they picked for the project including Iowa Winter Traditions, 
Iowa Winter Sports,
 and so many more.
Another part of their PBL was working on researching and writing about their topics.
They used Winter...The Coldest Season Of All from Cantata Learning as the springboard for their conversation and research about winter.

As they sang along to the book, the students thought of all of the things they could share about winter in Van Meter too.  The music made it extra fun to learn, brainstorm and create new ideas for their book too.
They also used Capstone's PebbleGo Science and looked up Seasons.
They were also able to find eBooks within Capstone Interactive that focused on their winter topics such as...
hockey,
skiing, and so much more.
I loved watching them work on the winter topics within their groups.  This group was focusing on places in Iowa that you can ski.
They marked all of the places on the map and were telling me personal connections to each.
 They then researched the ski resorts to find information that could be included in their book.
I also loved the writing that I saw from the 2nd graders.  Through the resources and personal connections, they had amazing stories to tell.
On Friday, Tracy and Staci published the story that their students created in eduBuncee.  It contains illustrations by each one, songs being sung, and stories that shows what they know and learned about winter in Iowa.

You can view it at the top of the post where it is embedded or here at this link.

Just look at a few of the topic slides....
and just see what each group put into their Buncee as part of the global winter story.
And look at how the Van Meter winter story has become part of the global winter story too.  You can view and add to it at this link.

It is very special looking through our story and seeing children from schools around the world contributing their winter stories, songs, illustrations, personal narratives, and more.

We cannot wait to see what you and your children add to the winter story too.

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