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?             

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. 

​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.

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.​

Incubation:

• Speedboat Protocol for the character(s) in book… what are their obstacles and opportunities?​

• 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.

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.

Click​  here for teacher's full plan.

​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 . . .

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."