How students designed their own cross-curricular service and research projects!
If you read my article back in December, my students had just begun a project-based learning endeavor that they organically designed based on interest.
I am happy to report that it was a great success and I am so proud of them for all their efforts! The project ended up taking about 3 weeks to complete.
As a quick recap: During their weekly current events assignment, the students read an article that made them want to support a charity. What a great idea for project based service learning!
I suggested that they work in groups to create a pitch deck to persuade the other students in the class to vote for their charity. I provided students with a checklist of items to include in their projects and they did the rest!
What I loved about this project was that each day turned into a new cross-curricular lesson!
Stage 1: Research
In the beginning, we had to learn how to effectively search online:
“Sorry guys, Google may not answer your question exactly as you typed it into the search bar!”
This also led to some valuable vocabulary building as we learned what terminology to search.
We also learned how to decipher charts and tables by reading the charity’s financial reports to make sure they were trustworthy organizations.
Stage 2: Synthesis and design
Upon finishing the research phase of the project, we moved on to learning about synthesizing ideas and designing powerful presentations.
“Nope, sorry. You cannot type full paragraphs onto a presentation slide and cover it with distracting pictures and fonts!”
Surprisingly, this took the longest for students to complete. They just didn’t want to part with their cool graphics or lengthy paragraphs.
However, for those groups that took the feedback, they were able to take their project to the next level by crafting a persuasive message. With those high-achieving groups, we talked about the effective uses of logos, pathos, and ethos. This helped one group to create a really passionate and empathetic plea, eventually earning them the winning vote! We voted by paper ballot and the kids stipulated that they could not vote for themselves!
Stage 3: Action
The third and final phase of our project was executing a fundraiser to support the chosen charity. In this phase, we incorporated math and consumer education.
First, we watched some videos about types of fundraising to get ideas. Then we created pro/con lists with materials and costs for those ideas before voting on a final idea; to sell donuts and hot chocolate. Students researched how much it would cost to buy items for a fundraiser, which store was cheapest, and how much they would need to sell to make a profit.
Once we had compiled all this information, students wrote letters to our principals asking “permission” to do their fundraiser (I had already gotten it for them, but this allowed me to squeeze in a lesson on formal letter writing!) The letter writing was the ONLY thing we did in English, just because our principal doesn’t speak Spanish. Everything else was 100% in the target language.
This past Friday, my students arrived early to school, eager to carry out their fundraiser. When they didn’t sell out with the AM crowd, they begged to finish selling at lunch. Here’s a picture of the lunch sales. I completely forgot to take pictures during the morning shift!
So, okay, we didn’t set any records for fundraising with one donut sale, but I think we teachers can all agree that wasn’t really the point. The kids and I all learned so much more than we expected, and we did it together, flying by the seat of our pants, which is totally out of my comfort zone as Srta. Planny McPlannerson. However, I can definitely say that the exploration and discovery we shared was well worth it!
Project Based Learning Rubric
You’ll notice that my rubric is super basic because we kept adapting as we went. In the end it was much more about the process than the product.
