Guest Post by Paula Ford, Kindergarten teacher, Manuel De Vargas Elementary School in San Jose, California (cross-posted on Personalize Learning)
Fourth grade buddies collecting change
Manuel De Vargas Elementary @DeVargas is a Title I school in the Cupertino Union School District in California. We have over 29 languages spoken at our school. Our school is in year 2 of transitioning to a STEM Project-Based Learning School. I wanted to share with you how my kindergarteners took charge of their learning around one of our projects.
Thinking and discussing…
Originally my kindergarteners decided they wanted to collect books to send to kids in Africa. We have a global partnership with the Cheery Education Center in Kenya. Their plan was to decorate boxes, put them by classrooms and have the whole school bring in donations. I asked them, “how will you let all the other learners know about your project?” After some thought and discussions, they concluded that I needed to contact each teacher. My response was that this would then be my project when actually this needs to be their project. Hmmm. More thinking and discussing. Then they remembered we have video announcements done by our school video production crew. So, the kids decided we could make a video explaining our Project-Based Learning (PBL) activity to ask for help.
African Dancing
More research…
We found out it costs over $65.00 to ship a medium-sized box to the Cheery Education Center in Africa. I brought the box into class and then we saw that it only held 8 books. So, we went back to our “what do we know” information and realized that it costs $50 for 2 children to attend school with meals for a month in Africa. That seemed like a more realistic project compared to sending 8 books for $65.00. So, we went back to the drawing board and the kids decided to collect coins. I explained the bank idea and that is how the kids came up with the collection jars called “Change for Change.”
They designed the signs on all the jars, loaded up my wagon, and made the deliveries throughout the school. They chose the groups to work on speeches for their video presentations. Each group had a different subtopic on our Africa PBL. Then we worked with our big 4th grade buddies to practice fluency, voice projection, eye contact, etc. Finally, we filmed it in front of the Chroma Key Green Screen. The big buddies were there watching the filming, and it was so cute how invested they were in my kids’ performance.
Pop-up store…
Some of the kinder kids made African-inspired crafts to sell at a “pop-up store” on campus to donate the money to the African school. They figured out pricing and ran the store during recess, lunch, and after school. Another group of kinders wanted to make a web page of sorts (like Go Fund Me). We used the large Apple TV so that they could be active participants in the process of designing the web page (drag and drop, etc). They put up some artwork and writings of what they have learned. In PE, the kids learned African dances. I have been teaching them all African rhythms with the rhythm sticks (great for learning syllables). In science, they learned about what people need to survive (focusing on our PBL in Africa). Our collection jars, “Change for Change,” are now in every classroom. My kids have made four videos for our video announcements about Africa.
African Masks
It was a great PBL…
Before they got the money, they had to decide as a group how they were going to count the money (i.e. stacks of 10 pennies in groups of 10 stacks, or stacks of 4 quarters, etc.). After we collected the jars and sorted the money, we invited our 4th grade buddies to help us count. The grand total was $470! We went back to our PBL board and talked about what that amount of money can provide. We were able to send over 18 kids to school for an entire month including meals with left-overs to pay for other incidental items.
My name is Paula Ford. I graduated from the University of California at Davis with my Bilingual Cross-cultural Language and Academic (BCLAD) multiple subject teaching credential, and have been teaching for over twenty years. I began my career in bilingual education and then moved to teach second language learners.Interested in checking out more of the Rethinking Learning podcasts and reflections, click on the podcast tab at the top, the logo below, or go to https://barbarabray.net/podcasts/
For more information about Barbara’s book, Define Your WHY, go to this page or click on the image of the book for resources, questions, and links.
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