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             How Do Our Environments Shape Us? 
                                                                               By: Jill Conrad

Project at a Glance :

This will be for the 10th grade required literature class which focuses on reading skills through use of a FICTION and NONFICTION units. The project explores the essential question below. Additionally, the project focuses a variety of  English standards including reading, writing, and speaking standards. This new essential question will guide students through the whole 12 week course.
       

 
Driving Question:


How do our environments shape us?             

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Standards:
  • Reading skills (understandings of main ideas, supporting details, inferring, and author’s craft) throughout with their book. Understandings of setting, characterization, historical/cultural context, and theme.
Team / Culture Building:
  • Students will select their top three books of interest, and the teacher will put them into groups based on interests. 
  • Use the Creative Types quiz  to help students think about themselves, how they have been shaped so far, and how they might best contribute in collaborative groups. 
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​Entry Event:
  • Watching the first six minutes of Megamind and exploring together the way we can see his ENVIRONMENTS were shaping him as a fictional character.
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Stakeholders:
  • Book Club groups (i.e., fellow readers of their book)
  • Students of other literature classes
  • People in the student’s environments 
Empathy Building:
  • Use a Character profile, map, diagram or other analysis tool
  • Other real stories from non-fiction unit already completed (Elie Wiesel and other book club author’s).
  • Students will learn  about some environments that shaped their teacher.
  • Have them think about their own complex experiences. 
Inquiry / Need to Knows:
  • Break down understandings of terms: environment, setting, and contexts.
  • Determine as a class some of the “sub questions” that go along with answering the DQ of how our environments shape us. 
  • As a class perhaps we agree on a common set of questions that we have to answer for the following
  • Invite students to think of some more questions that are more specific to their book.
  • Prep students for interviewing a person in their life with the DQ and other “need to knows” they’ve established. (How to extend the conversation, ask follow up questions.)
  • Guide them in book club discussions about characters.​
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Incubation:
  • Speedboat Protocol for the character(s) in book… what are their obstacles and opportunities?​
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  • Sticky notes in books to track characters, settings, contexts, curiosities
Checking in:
  • Use the Making Metaphors protocol– 
  • Forced connections – have dollar store objects/toys on tables, and students have to make comparisons to the character.
  • Check ins with groups at various points while students are reading.
    • ⅓ way through book - What have you discovered about the setting?
    • ½ way through book - What have you discovered about character’s conflict? 
    • End of book - How do you think the environments in book shaped your character? what connections have you made between the book and real life?

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Solution Building:
  • What they will create is in 2 parts:
    • GROUP will create a slide show about the two books they read.
    • INDIVIDUAL will create a slide answering the DQ for their life.
  • They will be thinking about how they answer the question for their characters and try to apply the same elements to their own life.
  • They will compare and contrast the characters, environments, conflicts, and resolutions to their own.
  • They will chose most impactful environments, for better or worse
Critique and Revision: 
  • They will come up with more than the 5 required ideas for each book and work as a group to narrow down the most impactful and fully realized ideas about environment. 
  • They will have the option to discuss the ideas applied to their own life with a peer or with me.
  • Teacher will conference with each student looking at the draft they created and giving feedback.
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Authentic Audience:
  • AP Lit students ​
Final Presentation:
  • The AP Lit students view student slides about their two books, as well as about their lives, and give feedback on sticky notes during a Gallery Walk. Slideshows will be submitted in an anonymous way providing privacy to the 10th grade English students.
  • Gallery Walk –  Each student will be assigned a number, print their 3 slides, post them in the room and hall, and have 5th hour AP do the viewing and feedback.
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Click​  here for teacher's full plan.

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Reflection and Feedback:
  • Gallery Walk including three colored sticky notes for:  Likes, Challenges, & Ideas for each project
  • Rubric (will be attached when completed)
  • Time in class to reflect the day after the Gallery Walk:
    • Together → Students will share the feedback they got with their Fiction Book Club (most recent book).
    • With Audience → They will write a sticky note back to their AP student telling them what piece of feedback meant the most to them and why.
    • On own → They will type comments back on their digital slide show for each slide… what feedback did they get? What will they take with them for future work or thinking?​

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

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Meet the Educator:
Jill Conrad teaches 10th grade English Literature & Writing, A.P. Literature & Composition, and Media Analysis at Hudsonville High School

      "Using more components of PBL/Design Thinking helps me meet students where they are to help them access MORE."
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  • Home
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