Project Based Learning in the Elementary School Classroom: Climate Change

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Elementary School


     #1          Project Goal: Understand how climate change affects China
                                  Subject: Foreign Language Studies
                                       Project Delivery: Interview
                                             21st Century Skills: Communication, Technology Skills, and critical thinking.


                    Specific Project Work: Students demonstrate mastery of foreign language by interviewing local Chinese people and understanding how climate change affects China.


                     How will your students work on this project to achieve the task goals?

• Students divided into groups of 3~4 people
• Each group explore and decide a specific topic under climate change
• Come up with questions in foreign language which they are going to use for interviewing  and decide how many interviewees they would interview.
• Start out for interview tasks. In each interviewing section, three roles are needed, one is the interviewer who would ask questions. One is the video recording person who would use phone to record the whole interview process. Another one is the coordinator who would help whatever way the team might need. Students would take turns to do these roles so they get to experience the skills each role needs.
• Present group work in a wechat app group to share your interview.
• Discussion what findings did they have in this interview. Language aspect: Think critically about how the language itself and the way you ask questions would help the communication. Climate change aspect: Analyze how climate change affects China.
• Language aspect:Share some difficulties that you faced in interview, and brainstorm solution or any method which can help with these challenges. 

Climate change aspect: Brainstorm ways we can do to help protecting our climate.

• Present a summary of your reflection about the project.

                How will they get a deeper understanding of the subject area that you are teaching?

• Students will recognize how language is a bridge for communication; the way we use language can really make a change in effective communication  and collecting data.
• Students realize foreign language enable them to connect to local people to better understand a specific situation in a specific country. 
• Students demonstrating their ability to put foreign language into use in real life setting will increase their confidence and interest in future learning.

                         
                     Evaluation:  
                     

• Collaborative skill:through the group work in creating a questionnaire and cooperation in the interview process (Teacher and peer assessment)

-Did they work with their group to create a simple foreign language questionnaire ?
-Did the group work together to make sure they can say these questions out with proper pronunciation and intonations?
-Did they group assign different roles in task to achieve a good project result?

• Technology use skill -though the video they took and whether they posted their group work in wehcat app properly(Teacher and peer assessment)

- Did they post the recorded video in wechat group?
- Did they manage to let others in the wechat group understand what they are posting by adding short explanation etc?

• Critical thinking skill- through the presentation, report and reflection(Teacher and peer assessment)

-Did they think critically concerning how language is implied in real life communication and in what way they acquired new knowledge or skills concerning the foreign language learning in climate change topic?




     #2          Project Goal: Understand how climate change affects the USA.
                                 Subject: General Education
                                      Project Delivery: Field Trip
                                           21st Century Skills: Social Responsibility, Ethics.


                    Specific Project Work:  The teacher takes the students on a field trip to a beach clean up project. The students actively work towards cleaning up the beach and gain a feeling of pride for their hard work and an understanding responsibility for their surroundings. 


                     Evaluation:  The teacher will give a pass/fail grade based on participation in the cleanup. 
                   




     #3          Project Goal: Understand how climate change affects the world.
                                 Subject:  Geography/Science
                                      Project Delivery:  Teacher driven lesson
                                             21st Century Skills: Information skills, Interdisciplinary.


                     Specific Project Work:  In Geography class the teacher reviews the facts about climate change with the class in a lesson. Students will gain a better understanding about geographical changes in the world. In the Science class the teacher shows students graphs and teaches atmospheric process and water cycle. Students will gain a better understanding of these scientific concepts. 


                     Evaluation:  The teacher will evaluate how attentive each student is by taking note of which students ask questions and participate in discussion. The teacher can also walk around the class to see if the students are paying attention to the lesson or not. 
                      




     #4          Project Goal: Understand how climate change affects YOU.
                                Subject:  General Education
                                      Project Delivery: Group Brainstorm 
                                             21st Century Skills: Collaboration.


                    Specific Project Work: The students evaluate how the issue affects themselves by brainstorming with a group and then sharing their findings with the class.  By completing this activity, students will learn general concepts such as how to brainstorm, how to collaborate, and how to lead and manage discussion. 


                    Evaluation:  The teacher will evaluate how well students in the group are working together by walking around to each group and listening in on the conversations. Then, when the group gives their presentation the teacher can evaluate how well the students have collaborated to come up with an answer to the question. 
                          




      #5         Project Goal: Think critically about why climate change occurs.
                                Subject:   Geography
                                    Project Delivery: Discussion
                                             21st Century Skills: Critical Thinking, Collaboration.


                    Specific Project Work: The teacher leads a discussion of potential reasons why climate change occurs with the class. By discussing with the class, students will share and reinforce their knowledge about geographical information. 


                    Evaluation:    The teacher will evaluate the discussion based on participation. Students who participate and share their thoughts on the subject will be noted by the teacher.          
                  
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     #6          Project Goal: Think creatively about how you can help change the motion of worsening climate change. 
                               Subject:    Language Arts
                                   Project Delivery: Written Paragraph
                                          21st Century Skills: Creativity, Problem Solving. 


                    Specific Project Work: The teacher asks students to write a persuasive paragraph to answer the question, "How can you help change the motion of worsening climate change?". The students will gain a better understanding of their writing skills by completing this activity. 


                    Evaluation:   The teacher will evaluate the written paragraphs. Criteria for an excellent paragraph includes:
                         ~ Students express creative thoughts on how they can help change the motion of worsening climate change. 
                         ~ The paragraph is well written