Goodbye North Holland
By:  Marnie O'Connell

Project at a Glance:

Students worked on ways to honor and remember their school North Holland Elementary which is closing.  Their projects will be displayed in the newly built Riley Farms School, where most of the students will be attending. 

Driving Question:

How to say goodbye to North Holland Elementary School?

Standards:

• SL.4.1 Engage in collaborative discussions
• SL.4.4 Report on a topic...speak clearly at an understandable pace
• SL.4.5 Add visual displays to presentations
  

Team / Culture Building:

• Hopes & Fears protocol

​
Entry Event:

• The students watched a video of how to say goodbye in 46 different languages.​

• Blob Tree activity - followed by identifying our own feelings about saying goodbye to our school using the Blob Tree.

Stakeholders:

• Parent Teacher Organization
• West Ottawa Superintendent, Tim Bearden
• Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Curriculum, Brian Field 

Inquiry / Need to Knows:

• Memory Walk
• To begin their investigation, students took a memory walk through the school and grounds. They recorded different memories of their time spent at North Holland in their notebooks.

• Interviews - Students wanted to know what others thought was special about North Holland Elementary. So they developed interview questions to ask students and staff about their favorite North Holland memories.

• Chalk Talk - Students then compiled all of their information and added more ideas using the Chalk Talk Protocol.

Incubation:

• Crazy Eights - After discussing our findings from Chalk Talk, students started brainstorming ideas using the Crazy Eights Protocol.

• Word Association - The class also used word association to help narrow our focus for our solutions. We chose the word “celebrate” because we want to say goodbye to New Holland and celebrate our time there.​
  

Checking in:

• Clarifying Questions - After our Gallery Walk students were able to ask clarifying questions about each solution that was presented.
• Action Plan - The class created an action plan for the final pitch. Our due dates were the Monday before our final presentation.
  

---

Solution Building:

• Poster Session- Students used their three best ideas from Crazy Eights and the word association activity to create a poster of their solution.​

• Gallery Walk - Students participated in a gallery walk to share their solutions. 
• Dot Voting - Students continued to narrow down their solutions with dot voting.
• NUF Test - Finally students put the top solutions through the NUF Test to narrow down their ideas to the final two that were presented to the PTO.

Critique & Revision:

• Critical Friends protocol

Authentic Audience:

• New Holland PTO

Final Presentation:

• The Pitch - Students prepared a slideshow presentation for PTO, who was our community sponsor.
• The class also had to get approval from our Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Instruction and the District Superintendent. Both audiences provided good feedback for how students implement their solutions.

• PTO Response - PTO decided to support three solutions for our driving question. One from each grade level.

Reflection and Feedback:
​
     “It made me feel so special to be part of this PBL project.” ~ Lucy, 3rd Grade Student

     “We think all of your ideas are amazing…” ~
North Holland PTO

     “We’re excited to see the work they have been doing!” ~ Brian & Tim 

     "I think taking the time out of teaching curriculum and devoting two weeks to our project really worked well. We kept the momentum going and were able to complete the project with six solid solutions.  While the timeline was good, it also made the project completion a bit stressful. Not receiving immediate feedback and having to pitch our ideas twice, has lengthened the project and now we are down to the wire to actually complete it.  In the future, hopefully we can streamline the ending process for a smoother project completion.  Despite this, the students have loved every minute of it!" ~ Marnie O'Connell, Core Support/SAIL Teacher

Click here for the teacher's Journey through PBL on Padlet . . .

Meet the Educator:

​Marnie O'Connell is a Core Support/SAIL teacher for West Ottawa Public Schools.

     "Having students participate in PBL increases student engagement, excitement for learning and empowers them.  It's the best!"