Well, I’ve changed my HMW question since our last Face-to-Face meeting! I’m told this is often part of the process, so I’m just going with it… 🙂
I thought my HMW question was going to be: How might we develop an inquiry-based program to increase student engagement?
My new HMW question is: How might we better integrate projects across subjects, grades, and campuses?
I feel like there are many projects happening at my school, but we often don’t know enough about what is happening in other grades. This means opportunities are missed to connect students from different grades as “experts”/guest speakers, learning partners, and as authentic audiences to help give a real-life purpose for projects.
I’ve been thinking about project-based learning and making learning more visible for a few years now, but it’s been difficult to know how to keep making improvements in these areas. During our last Face-to-Face, the idea of “sphere of influence” really helped me approach my HMW question from a different angle. Thinking about my sphere of influence and going through the steps of the design thinking process are helping me be more focused in planning the next steps in my journey. It was helpful to prioritize, empathize, organize my ideas, and plan my next steps by breaking things down into what feels like more manageable chunks.
Questions I still have:
- What is the best way to gather and organize information about what projects are happening throughout the grades to help facilitate cross-subject, cross-grade, and cross-campus connections?
- How do other schools facilitate cross-subject, cross-grade, and cross-campus integration of projects?
