Bilingual Blueprints:  Designing Our Dual Immersion School
By:  Kelsey Ambrose 

Project at a Glance :

This project is for the students and teachers in the dual immersion program at Lakeshore Elementary. The program will be moving to a new building next year (2025-2026 school year), and the whole building will be a two way dual immersion building.  This project is being designed to help give students voice and choice in what their new school building looks and feels like. The goal is to have our building be distinct as a dual language school, welcoming to all, and a place in which all students’ cultures are celebrated.

Driving Question:

How can we create a school environment that is welcoming to all and celebrates all students’ cultures in our new school building?  How can we create a school environment that is welcoming to all and celebrates all students’ cultures in our new library/cafeteria/hallways/outdoor spaces/entrance?

Standards:

• Identity 2 ID.3-5.2 I know about my family history and culture and about current and past contributions of people in my main identity groups.
• Diversity 6 DI.3-5.6 I like knowing people who are like me and different from me, and I treat each person with respect. 
• Diversity 8 DI.3-5.8 I want to know more about other people’s lives and experiences, and I know how to ask questions respectfully and listencarefully and non-judgmentally
• RI.3.6. Distinguish their own point of view from that of the author of a text.
• SL.3.4. Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.

Team / Culture Building:

• ME Cubes
• Inner Heroes - Students identified their "inner hero." We then used this information to form groups that were used for other parts of the observation stage, such as empathy maps. ​

Entry Event:

• The class was able to visit the new school, North Holland Elementary, and check out the outdoor classroom in person! They were able to take notes on what they liked and ideas they had for improvement. 

Stakeholders:

• Families who are dominant in English
• Families who are dominant in Spanish
• New students and families to West Ottawa Public Schools
• Families & students who have gone to Lakeshore Elementary and are making a transition to a new building.
• Teachers & Administrators moving to new building
• Custodians
• People providing money for the projects.

Empathy Building:

• Empathy Maps
• Stakeholder Map​​

Inquiry / Need to Knows:​​

• Article Reading + Jigsaw - Students read articles on either the benefits of outdoor classrooms or Latin American design. They took notes on things they learned and ideas they generated while reading. Later, they connected with a partner who had read the opposite article and shared their information. 

Incubation:​​

• Idea Tornado - This was a spin on the Idea Quota protocol. Students wrote ideas on sticky notes for about 5 minutes. However, every 30 seconds or so, I threw out a new question to help generate more ideas such as "what could we include to celebrate different languages?" and "what could we do to take care of nature in this space?"
• Raining Ideas - In order to recognize that the ideas each individual student wrote now belonged to the class, we made it rain ideas! Students gathered in a circle with their sticky notes and threw them up into the air. They then collected sticky notes that were not their own and stuck them to the board. 

• Saturate and Group - Ideas were divided up amongst table groups. Students worked together to create categories and group ideas. As a class, we shared categories and created a designated space for each. Students did some rearranging of their ideas and brought them to the correct category.
• Anti-problem - Students worked with a parter to come up with an "anti-solution." What would make the outdoor classroom really suck? There were some pretty goofy ideas, but a theme that did come up frequently was there being trash everywhere. We added the idea of trash management to our idea list. 
  

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Solution Building:

• NUF (FUN) Test - We took many ideas and narrowed them down to the best! Then, students selected which idea they most wanted to work on, which I used to form groups. 

Poster Session - Students were grouped based on their interests and created a poster to show their ideas. They did a great job using mostly pictures, and did a quick elevator pitch to the class. Classmates responded with "I like" and "I wonder" statements. Groups then had the opportunity to go back and adjust their posters based on their classmates' feedback. 

Authentic Audience:

• West OttawaDirector of Bilingual Programs, EL Director, Principal,  and Los Lagos PTO members, as well as a couple of other teachers and some other Lakeshore third graders
  

​​Final Presentation:

• The Pitch - Students were placed around the room and audience members were able to travel around in a gallery walk style to hear their pitches.

Click here ​for teacher's full plan.

​Reflection and Feedback:

• Blob Tree - Students identified which blob most represented their feelings toward their group's idea.

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

Meet the Educator:

Kelsey Ambrose teaches third grade dual immersion at Lakeshore Elementary in West Ottawa.
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     "PBL allows students to feel like they are the leaders in their own learning. Students take so much more ownership for their learning when they know that their ideas matter."