Think back to your most positive experience as a student — a time that was meaningful to you. Why did this leave a lasting impression? How did your teacher make this experience possible? What learning was embedded in this experience?
Talk with your colleagues about your experiences and memories. It’s likely you’ll find some consistent themes: working with peers, independence, choice, engagement, content-specific learning, and applying learning in a real-world context. Project-based learning offers all of this and more!
Watch this video from PBLWorks to see project-based learning in action. The teacher is knowledgeable and passionate about the topic. The children are making choices about what they do and how they do it, they’re asking questions, reflecting, and interacting with peers and adults by discussing their ideas and feedback.
Project Based Learning (PBL) is a critical aspect of Success Academy’s school design. Our scholars learn the thrill of becoming experts in a subject when they have extended time to immerse themselves in a fascinating topic from a cross-disciplinary perspective — including through field studies, art projects, and classes in science, reading, writing, and/or math. The culmination of PBL studies are museum presentations scholars can share with others; this allows scholars to demonstrate the learning and engagement they have achieved.
America has long been known as a nation of immigrants. The first two major waves of immigration happened during the Colonial Era and from 1815 to 1860. The third wave occurred from 1880 to 1930, during which nearly 12 million immigrants entered the country through Ellis Island, a federal immigration station in New York Harbor.
Before launching the unit with your scholars, read all of the texts in the unit to ensure you have the necessary content knowledge to facilitate this study.
The culminating museum showcases scholars’ project work and content knowledge of Immigration and Ellis Island. Communicate with parents throughout the unit about the study and museum.
Museums and project work should exhibit best effort and should be scholar created, eye-catching, and beautiful.
You will need lots of space! Plan for how to use your classroom to display scholar work. Include wall space both within and outside of your four walls.
Prepare scholars to present their museum to visitors, guide guests on a tour of their projects, and clearly demonstrate their excitement and expertise of immigration from 1880 to 1930.
Scholars will work with a variety of materials as they create their projects.
Scholars will use PBL journals and folders for their research and writing. Prepare these beforehand, making them special and exciting for scholars to use. These journals will be used as a way for scholars to record their thinking and learning about immigration and Ellis Island throughout the unit and must be displayed during the museum. See examples of journals from past units here.
This list includes titles that can be used by teachers for building scholars’ content knowledge through reading aloud and as mentor texts to show scholars models of great nonfiction writing. Make these texts accessible to scholars each day as they immerse themselves in the study and research.
Use this list to organize your reference materials for the unit. Click here for the booklist and texts by week.
Projects are not the dessert; they are the main course of project-based learning. Scholars will explore and learn about immigration and Ellis Island through these exciting projects.
What did seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time mean to immigrants?
What did immigrants experience after arriving at Ellis Island?
Journal Entry: Tenement Residents
resources
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