SLA

After living four years in Costa Rica I got used to a dish named gallo pinto consisting primarily of rice, beans and eggs. It is easy to make, nutritious, and most importantly somehow better than any of the stand alone ingredients. As I was making it the other night for dinner it occurred to me that during SLA’s first year we hit upon a curriculum structure that, much like gallo pinto, that turned out to be greater than the some of its parts. The level of our classes improved when we applied the value of inquiry that is found in the best science classrooms, and combined it with UbD project-based curriculum. We started out with a strong teaching staff and talented students, but the results of applying the inquiry+project-based formula seemed to move everything up a notch.

Using Understanding by Design (UbD) to give project-based learning some heft is a great start. Letting the students explore problems and apply their learning to their projects by infusing the process with a spirit of inquiry builds interest, fosters questions, and deepens the work that goes on in the classroom. When teachers build curriculum from an inquiry-based framework- avoiding pat answers, textbook exercises, and fail proof worksheets- students begin to apply critical thinking skills to real problems.

Most outsiders know SLA through our 1:1 laptop to student ratio. In my best History lessons last year the computers helped facilitate the inquiry+project-based learning combination in a couple of ways. On the inquiry side, students could tackle problems in an open-ended environment instead of looking for answers in the textbook or its on-line equivalent. For example, during our studies of slavery in colonial America we used a substantial database of 18th and 19th century newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves and indentured servants. (The primary source content on the web that is available for History classes is immense.)

Laptops also helped students display the results of their investigations in a manner that was less “student-like” and more professional. When projects worked, it seemed that they screamed out to the viewer: “Take this seriously. There is something substantial here.” To me it is clear that the laptops pushed the envelope of what students did with their work. It takes a while to learn how to make something look “professional”, or for that matter time for some ninth graders to even see the difference. The 1:1, when we leveraged it right, got the many of the students to push their work out of the sandbox.

I feel that I have a lot more to do in this area, and that I am only just beginning to discover how to create these opportunities for students. For all of the kids that made progress there are many others that did not advance nearly as far. Even most of what worked last year has to be recast to get the bugs out of it. The whole prospect of putting the inquiry+project-base formula to work across all units and in every class is pretty daunting. It certainly isn’t as easy as making gallo pinto.

The Virginia Center for Digital History has some great material including the “Geography of Slavery” Project which catalogues the advertisements for runaway slaves and indentured servants: http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/gos/

For information on Understanding by Design here is a link to the wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_by_Design

While you are in wikipedia you might also want to check out what is said about gallo pinto; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallo_pinto (Without Lizano Sausa, however, it will be a pale imitation of the original: www.lizanosite.com)