In Jen and Christy’s session on passion based learning, everyone could see the importance of helping students develop their passions and learn how to apply inquiry based learning to explore their own ideas. The session mostly focused on how to accomplish this goal while still covering the curriculum. Many ideas were shared so that teachers will be able to start a passion based project in their own classes.
First we learned about the projects that Jenn and Christy had going in their classes. They used various techniques to help students get started and formulate a question. They encouraged students to choose questions with no real endpoint. They give the students templates that help them narrow their questions. Christy shares examples of first grader questions and 10th grader questions with her students and tells them that their questions should be somewhere in between. Students track their goals and progress using a google form. The teachers also model the process for their students. The students are graded on the process rather than the final projects to emphasize that the process is even more important. They keep blogs which are graded so writing is a focus.
I would like to apply what I’ve learned to my science classes. Students can choose an area to study in physical science. I may have two different inquiry levels such as a curiosity level and an exploratory level. I can create a spreadsheet like the one Jen used to track student progress. Here is a template to track student goals. Jen has the students keep track of the conferences on a worksheet so that she can listen carefully and then they can reflect on what was said. It reduces her record keeping and increases the effectiveness of the conference.