For the Love of Teaching
Big Creek Professional Learning Blog
Teacher Spotlight: Who is going OVERBOARD?
Mrs. Wild - 4th Grade
Andrea is leading the way with her student choice projects! Students in Andrea’s classes are working on various assignments and projects that require them to be researchers, identify problems, become engineers and inventors, create marketing campaigns, and develop strong presentation skills. Andrea does an amazing job incorporating various experiences for her students that allow them to facilitate their own learning and choose the method in which they share their knowledge. Her students have so much fun doing these choice projects and absolutely love being in charge of their learning!
Here is what Mrs. Wild has to say about her choice projects:
By allowing student choice, I am giving my students the opportunity to fully invest themselves in their learning and how they learn best. When students are “all in” during a choice project, they will have better quality work that truly matters to them. Giving them a choice is putting the responsibility on them to become an expert in their learning and a chance to teach others and to grow in their own learning. Students are more engaged and motivated in their choice projects and this allows them to build on their strengths in order to meet their own individual learning needs.
The biggest takeaway I have seen from allowing more choice projects in the classroom is the excitement the students get when they realize they get to design everything! Students are working together to design and implement their ideas, then when they see it is not working, having to go back and make changes. This builds their critical thinking skills because they have to analyze where something went wrong and how to fix it. It is fun watching the kids work together, but more importantly LEARN from each other and then implement some of those things in future projects.
Check out these pictures to see this fun activity in Mrs. Wild's class!
Voyage Ideas- Books about Compassion
Big Creek Elementary School
Website: https://www.forsyth.k12.ga.us/bigcreek
Location: 1994 Peachtree Parkway, Cumming, GA, USA
Phone: (770) 887-4584
Facebook: facebook.com/BigCreekES
Twitter: @BigCreekES