Starting to measure up

This week was a great week for PBL. We started the week by double blocking our classes to support the ELA group doing a reading assessment. This provided us with a great opportunity to go and get some measuring done to start our projects. 6th grade measured the "dining room" because they need to provide a scale drawing as part of the project. Here are some pics of that experience:

We were lucky enough to have our curriculum coaches in the room as well to see the process! (Twitter: @cvulearns).

In 5th grade we also needed to due some measuring to get the base area of our geodesic dome. We happen to have an octagonal sandbox! So we went out (and braved the heat) to measure it. Students did a great job making labeled sketches as well after taking their measurements. Here are a few photos of that:

We ended the week with a reflection. Student "design teams" updated their google sites with two items: 1- a good photo piece of evidence of the work they did this week and 2- the group checklist. 6th graders got check lists filled out and 5th graders got a blank one to set goals as a group for next week.

6th graders then went on to reflect individually on their "Kidblog" accounts. I'm so grateful that Bonnie Birdsall (Twitter: @bonniebird), our Digital Learning Leader, and her support in getting these accounts setup. My long term hope is a quick and easy way for kids to embed those posts on their design team sites.

Professionally I also was involved with presenting a proposal to ISTE about my work with Protean and how that supports our Personalized Learning. I'm nervous and hopeful that it will be accepted. I will find out in December.