Book Cellar Project
By:  Amanda Tejchma

Project at a Glance :

The project was a collaboration with the Book Cellar store in Grand Haven. The bookstore has a current children's section and wanted to engage more kids to visit and interact with the children's section.
       
 
Driving Question:

How could we make the kid's space more engaging and inviting at the Book Cellar?  

Standards:

• W.2.1
• SL 2.1
• RI 2.1, 2.2, & 2.5

Team / Culture Building:

• Inner Heroes
• Playing Cards - Students have a playing card that showcases who they are on our team. It includes their picture and name, interesting fact about them. We also added our Inner hero the playing card. This helps when making groups to organize.

Entry Event:

• To gain interest around the driving question, teams visited the Book Cellar to learn about their space and meet the owners.

Mrs. Tejchma's class

Stakeholders:

• Book Cellar owner
• Book Cellar customers
• Students
• Parents

Empathy Building:

• Stakeholder Map

• Empathy Maps - After brainstorming the stakeholders, we created empathy maps around each ones in groups. We thought about what each stakeholder was thinking, feeling, saying and doing.

​Inquiry / Need to Knows:

• Interview Questions - The class brainstormed interview questions that we might ask Mr. Mike, the owner of the Book Cellar. This helped us to understand the nature of the problem and what his hopes were from the project.
• We also had the chance to interview other stakeholders about the space and then organized our interview answers to reveal thoughts and ideas for the space.

Incubation:

• 100 Ideas - We started our brainstorming with the 100 ideas protocol. Kids came up with as many ideas as possible in 10 minutes. We did one idea per sticky note! This was so challenging after the first few minutes as students hit a plateau. It helps to have our ideas and work so far hanging around the room for students to reference as they brainstorm.

• How Would . . . Solve This? - We used this as our final incubation protocol. Students imagined they were a stakeholder, their teacher, the principal, or someone famous and then brainstormed ideas from that person’s perspective! This one is SO fun because it allows us to have empathy, fun and get some more ideas and refine our thinking.

Checking in:

• ​NUFF Test - Students used the NUFF test as a part of our feedback session and a way for the business partners to provide us feedback within the context of our constraints. Are the ideas new, useful, feasible and fun! Our business partner and administrator rated the ideas based on those categories and we also did. This provided us with ratings on our ideas to help us narrow and refine them to fit with the driving question.

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Solution Building:

• Prototyping​

• Poster Session
• Dot Voting​
  

Critique & Revision:

• Feedback Session - after the poster session, we did a feedback session with our business partners and administrator. This allowed students to present their rough ideas working on presentation skills and hear feedback on their ideas.

Authentic Audience:​

• ​Parents
  
• Administrator

• Mike O'Brien, Book Cellar owner

​Final Presentation:

• ​Showcase - the showcase was held at the Book Cellar, students were able to share their ideas in front of parents, the store owners, and other stakeholders.

TOYS FOR KIDS

THE ACTIVITY ARTIST

KIDS CORNER

Reflection and Feedback:

• Using Seesaw students reflected on:
      What went well . . .
       What was tricky . . .
       My favorite part . . .

THE CHILDREN'S ROOM

SHOWCASE EVENT

     "I enjoyed the part when we all got to introduce ourselves at the presentation. I liked visiting the store and checking out the kids space." ~ Emerson, Student
​
     "I enjoyed having people watch and being in a big crowd for one of my first times presenting. It was fun seeing my sisters come." ~  Logan, Student 

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

Meet the Educator:

Amanda Tejchma teaches 2nd grade at Peach Plains Elementary, Grand Haven Area Public Schools.

​     "All stakeholders enjoyed the project, it was especially meaningful to students to have a voice in their local community!"