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Project-Based Learning Fun!!
Start with a Garden!
Hey Teachers! Spring is around the corner! It may not seem like our country is getting ready for a thaw (especially since it is still snowing as I write this blog). But March really is only two-weeks away. The perfect time to begin thinking about all of the yummy fruit and vegetables that will make their way from some amazing farms and gardens, to our tables. Why not get your students thinking about the summer bounty too? Act 48 Academy of PA and The Teachers Academy have created a few exciting new project-based learning courses. Creating a School Garden will inspire teachers with links to beautiful gardens around the world and ideas on starting a garden regardless of budget or location!
It is no secret that our students learn best when they are fully engaged, interested and motivated by an activity. However, the amount of work required to implement a hands-on project tends to dissuade teachers. Our course, Creating a School Garden, shows how teachers can find time to implement lessons and activities that already cover the required standards. It will supply ideas and resources for fun hands-on activities that develop higher-level thinking and cooperative learning skills. One example of this type of activity is the Food Trade Lesson. To implement this activity, follow these steps:
- Divide students into countries. (Countries are chosen according to curriculum).
- Each country group is given a food-ingredient indigenous to that country. Next each country is given a recipe.
- The students in each country must trade with each other to gain the foods needed to make the recipe.
This type of activity can be used as a history, science, math or ELA lesson, depending on what the teacher wants to emphasize.
Do you love the idea of a school garden, but not sure where to begin with a garden project at your school? Teachers who take the Creating a School Garden course will also get a chance to create the materials needed to implement a garden project, from the proposal to the design of the garden. When creating the proposal, teachers are given plenty of resources and options to develop a customized proposal that fits the current education needs and budget of their school. They can spend professional development time defining the jobs, tools, time and money necessary for a successful school garden. The proposal is also where teachers can justify the importance of project-based learning!
Designing the actual garden is super fun! Again, teachers are given lots of links to beautiful gardens of all shapes and sizes to inspire a customized design that would work for their school. If your school is in Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Florida, Ohio or anywhere else in the USA, there is a garden idea for you! Weather, space and budget have all been considered when creating this course for our teachers.
Can you think of a more fun way to gain 15 Hours of professional development? Wait! There are a few more ways to have fun, create useful materials for your classroom and gain 15 professional development hours.
Video Production with Windows Movie Maker is an introductory course designed to improve comprehension, speaking, and higher level thinking skills through utilizing basic video production skills. Teachers are exposed to a whole new way of engaging students with hands-on video production projects. Creating a news report, a persuasive argument and animation are the projects to be uploaded in this course. Once teachers discover how easy it is to use Windows Movie Maker, they will be excited to allow their students to create their own customized video projects! Ideas for these projects are also endless: recording science experiments, math computations, weather and news reports, interviewing experts or family members and of course these projects are way more fun to assess!
Education is becoming more in-tune with the best ways to teach all of our students. Act 48 Academy and The Teacher’s Academy are companies created by teachers, for teachers. We understand how the changing educational environment can be overwhelming for teachers and we want to make their professional development effective, relevant and useful in this ever-changing environment. Go Teachers!!
We LOVE suggestions for courses teachers – please let us know if you have any ideas!