Getting to the Root of the Problem
Teaching our students to be better inquirers, in my mind, is one of the most important tasks we have on our educator’s plate. Through better inquiry students should build agency and learn to endure in the face of difficult tasks. There are many ways we can build this ability in our classrooms and the overarching […]
Need A PBL Driving Question Helper?
Find out how to use AnswerThePublic to create driving questions.
Laying Out Your PBL Year (Alg 1 version)
Math and PBL can seem hard when you put them together. Look at your calendar and pick a time in the year where you can devote 3 or 4 weeks to a project and start there.
PBL Teachers are Like Magicians
[Originally Written for BIE.org in 2016. Updated here.] If you have ever listened to me talking at edcamps, sxswedu, or in a facilitated pbl training, then you have heard me say “we need to be more like magicians.” One of the key elements of PBL is the idea of Sustained Inquiry. Sustaining inquiry, as a […]
How I am Learning About PBL For Young Students (Part 1 – Research, Research, Research)
When I started down this PBL path, I was a veteran teacher with over 10 years of traditional teaching experience. Now I am at the end of my teaching career and I am on a quest to better understand how to use pbl with young students. As a new pbl teacher, I learned from the […]
Welcome to My New Website
Today I moved up in the world from Google’s Blogger platform to WordPress. I plan on keeping posts rolling along now that I’ve gotten all fancy. I migrated all of my posts over from Blogger to this platform, so all of that history is still available. In the existing posts, from Edutechmusings.com, you will find […]
Anatomy of an Interdisciplinary Project
From http://messiahnetwork.org/2015/04/01/puppet-show-on-sunday-april-19/ December 16, 2016. That’s the date on this draft post I was thinking about writing. It is another of my 10 “draft” posts I have on my blog. I’m about to shift this blog over to WordPress and away from Blogger. I have 276 blog posts altogether. Most were written over a 4 year […]
Creating a Culture of Wonder
Photo by Samet Kurtkus on Unsplash “SCHOOLS SHOULD BE BUILT AROUND STREAMS OF WONDER. THESE STREAMS OF WONDER SHOULD CONSTANTLY BE IN MOTION ALLOWING YOU TO DIP INTO THEM AGAIN AND AGAIN. ” – Chris Fancher, Educator and Author January 26, 2014. That’s the date on the draft post I was thinking about writing. It is one of […]
The Learning Process Must Include Inquiry
http://bit.ly/2pPDPQh Today I worked with a teacher planning a unit and I realized that the idea that we need to kick start the inquiry process on Day 1 of a unit isn’t obvious to every teacher. The following post wrote itself as I walked her through the process of making inquiry the foundation of all […]
Understanding Life in 1800 When You are 12
https://www.pinterest.com/Lugsail/merchant-ship-1750-1800/ This week I am wrapping up a project with my 7th graders that is about traveling to Texas in the year 1800. All of my design students take either French or Spanish and I have them in corresponding “delegations” with a student governor. Within the delegations are groups of students (3 to 6 in […]