Middle schoolers share their personal passion projects (P3) at an annual P3 Expo at the end of Experience Week. In 2020, we hung signs around the room that said "Personal Passion Project in Progress" since students are expected to continue working on their projects for the rest of the school year.
Several of our students also presented their project at the IDEA Northern Suburbs MiniCon, which just happened to be the day after our P3 Expo. These students prepared particularly well for their Expo presentations. This highlights to me the importance of students having a an audience to share their work with. Whether it's sharing their work with parents, peers, and our school community at our Expo, or with a wider audience of area educators at the MIniCon, the students seem to put more effort into these presentations than they do for a typical school project. This is the third year for our P3 program, and I am amazed at how well the work comes together leading up to the Expo.
Students will share their work again at the end of the year, but I am not yet sure what form that will take. I look forward to seeing where each of their projects takes them, and the things they create along the way!
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As part of our middle school P3 program, students spend an entire week in January dedicated to their passion projects. This gives them a chance to really focus on the projects, communicate with their mentor, and prepare for our P3 Expo, held on the last day of the week.
One unique aspect of our program is that students have the opportunity to go off-campus during Experience Week. We work with parents starting in November to plan what students might do. Students use a planning document like this one to coordinate their Experience Week ideas with their parents. Students can go off-campus to visit sites relevant to their project with parent approval and transportation. Some of the things our students do off-campus during Experience Week include:
Going off-campus is not required- we plan a fantastic week for those who do stay on campus. This year for P3, we are using the design thinking process to help students solve a problem that matters to them. Therefore, our Experience Week on-campus activities included ideation sessions, prototyping workshops, elevator pitch writing reviews, and plenty of project work time. You can see the entire schedule of our on-campus activities here. Though Experience Week takes a lot of planning and coordination, it provides an amazing opportunity for our students to explore their passion projects in greater depth than the rest of the school year. Cross-posted on Roycemore School blog The third graders were just introduced to Sphero Mini, a small spherical robot that can be controlled with an iPad. As expected, they were very excited to try it. Cries of “That’s so cool!” and “I want to use one of those!” were heard as soon as the box was opened. After having some time to explore what the robot does, the students were given a task: using coding blocks, program Sphero to roll in a square. This required a bit more thinking. Students had to plan what their program would be, thinking about what steps it would take to create a square. They had to break down the problem and sequence the steps correctly. They had to work together to find a solution. When (not if) they didn’t get the code correct, they had to ask questions, learn from their mistakes, and keep trying. Our third graders weren’t just controlling a robot: they were problem-solving. Though their “problem” was to make a simple square, we know that technology and computer programming will increasingly help us to solve big world problems, from improving health care, to storing energy, to cleaning up the ocean. Today’s students will be the individuals who use technology to solve these problems. Whenever we can give Roycemore students a chance to practice such problem-solving skills, we take it, whether that be third graders creating squares with Sphero, Middle Schoolers planning their personal passion projects, or Upper School students creating apps to promote zero waste during the Creative Jam in November. Computer scientists, educators, and other professionals have realized the power of the problem-solving skills gained from computer coding. Though computing jobs are the #1 source of new wages in the US, these skills are not just important for those who will someday be computer programmers. All students benefit from the communication, collaboration, and creative thinking involved in coding activities. These are, in fact, at the top of the list of skill sets on the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report. The Hour of Code is a global movement to introduce computer coding to people of all ages, by encouraging them to complete one hour of coding during the week. It takes place during Computer Science Education Week, in recognition of the birthday of computing pioneer Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906). The movement began a few years ago and has grown exponentially since; this year there are over 105,000 Hour of Code events scheduled around the world. "The Hour of Code is designed to demystify code and show that computer science is not rocket science—anybody can learn the basics," said Hadi Partovi, founder and CEO of Code.org. "Over 100 million students worldwide have tried an Hour of Code. The demand for relevant 21st-century computer science education crosses all borders and knows no boundaries." Roycemore is hosting one of those events! We will hold our Sixth Annual Hour of Code Celebration this Friday, December 13, from 3:15 to 4:30 pm in the Multipurpose Room. All Roycemore students and families are welcome! Roycemore students will not only try the Hour of Code during our Friday event. Our Hour of Code Celebration serves as the culmination of a week of coding activities that will take place throughout the school. In addition to the third graders programming Sphero to roll around, kindergarten students interacted with Osmo coding blocks to build problem solving skills, first grade students coded a dance routine, and fifth grade students programmed games with a coding program called Scratch. And coding activities do not just take place during this one week in December! Several Upper School students are enrolled in our Computer Science course this year, where they are learning the Python programming language, and have created their own version of a fast-food kiosk. Middle School students have the opportunity to participate in two STEM-related after-school clubs: Robotics and Video Game Programming. Projects from all of these courses and clubs will be showcased at our Hour of Code Celebration on Friday. We hope to see you there!
Roycemore's Middle School P3 program allows each student in grades 5-8 to explore a problem they would like to solve. Students work on P3 throughout the school year, with time in their weekly schedule as well as a full week in January dedicated to the program. All middle schoolers work with a teacher/ coach and an expert mentor on a project entirely chosen by the student.
This year, all middle schoolers are connecting with a real-world problem associated with their own passion and interests. Students then use the Design Thinking process to design solutions to their chosen problem. The direction in which students take their project and solutions is entirely up to them. The learning goals for the P3 Program include:
The slideshow below outlines each step of the P3 process that our students follow. You can also visit this website for more information about P3. IDEA MiniCon P3 Slides - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires; Cross-posted on Roycemore School blog For many decades, traditional schools have divided what students learn in school into a few content areas: language arts, social studies, mathematics, science, fine arts, and so on. Of course, outside of school, our lives are not usually so succinctly divided. A simple trip to the grocery store involves reading food labels, calculating prices, and making healthy choices.
At Roycemore, we strive to make connections between content areas as much as possible. In all Lower School grades, students are taught in thematic units for part of the day. Themes include weather, simple machines, Chicago, rainforests, heroes, and many others. These units cover both basic and higher order thinking skills, as students work on applying their knowledge in reading and writing, math, social studies, science, and art. Though our Upper School students are mainly taught in traditional content area courses, students and teachers still work to make connections there as well. A recent example involves an Upper School history teacher working with an art teacher to study and then recreate ancient cave drawings. Roycemore’s signature January Short Term (JST), now in its 46th year, epitomizes the interdisciplinary approach. All Upper School students apply knowledge from multiple content areas when they embark on their 3-week JST project, whether they undertake an individual project or participate in one of the group projects. Many Middle School students recently completed a significant interdisciplinary unit around the theme of WATER. Fifth and sixth graders learned about various aspects of water in Humanities, Arc-en-ciel (a unique Art class that is immersively taught in French), and Science, throughout the first quarter of this school year. Students also took various field trips to support this interdisciplinary learning. The fifth and sixth grade water unit began with students reading A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. This novel tells the true story of a Sudanese Lost Boy, as well as the fictional story of a young Sudanese girl who must walk a long way for water. While reading the novel in Humanities, fifth and sixth graders created several relevant art projects in Arc-en-ciel, including portraits of the characters, landscapes of South Sudan, and clay Sudanese cows, all while learning new French vocabulary. In fact, all Arc-en-ciel art projects for the first several weeks of school involved water in their creation: a call back to the main theme of the unit. Reading A Long Walk to Water, learning about Sudan, and applying this knowledge helped students understand what water is like outside our own community, and to explore challenges related to water access faced by people in other parts of the world. Classes then began to focus on what our own water, and access to it, is like. Students learned about this in many ways at school, including conducting a water filtration lab during science class, during which students also reviewed the scientific method. They focused on the concept during various field experiences outside of school. On the overnight trip to Indiana Dunes, Middle Schoolers conducted water quality testing. A trip to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago also included a water lab, where students learned what microorganisms might live in our water. Lastly, a trip to the Evanston Water Treatment Plant on Lake Michigan helped students understand how our water is cleaned and delivered from the lake to our school and homes. All of this water-related learning could have taken place in isolated classrooms at different times of the school year. However, research shows that brains grow best when connections can be made to existing knowledge, and among the varied topics students are learning. The water unit allowed students to apply their knowledge to real-world concepts and to go deeper in their learning. They are now able to make connections to current events, such as the Cape Town and Flint, Michigan, water crises. Students will also be able to make connections to future units of study, such as how water has affected civilizations throughout history - an upcoming unit in Humanities. Another benefit of thematic learning is that it models positive teamwork to our students. To plan an interdisciplinary unit, teachers must work together to plan lessons and discuss the theme well before actual lessons are taught. They must make sure all relevant content is thoroughly covered, and that all students are learning at the right level during the various projects. They must work through scheduling difficulties, and even disagreements at times. As a result, teachers implicitly teach students to become more resilient, flexible, and confident learners. Occasionally, Roycemore is able to make interdisciplinary connections that bring the entire school together. Throughout this week, students around the world, including Roycemore students, will be working to make connections between what they are learning in classes to computer science. The Hour of Code, a worldwide movement to encourage young people to spend at least one hour learning computer programming (or coding), takes place this week: December 3-9. Many Roycemore students will try coding activities during the school day. The week will end with our Hour of Code Celebration on Friday, December 7, from 3:15 to 4:30 pm. All students and families are encouraged to attend. |
AuthorElizabeth Shutters is the Director of Curriculum and Innovation at Roycemore School. Archives
January 2020
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