Friday, January 16, 2015

In the Process of CBL Spring 2015-Week 2


This week we worked on creating our Guiding Questions and planning out our investigations. At first, students were given ten minutes and asked to silently write down any questions they could think of in regards to their challenge. Students were asked to focus their questions on the following: where they are now, where they want to be, and who can help them get there. Students then worked together to combine, edit, refine and establish their group's Guiding Questions. 

Then students work together to create an Aha-Board for their group's Challenge. These boards work much like a web with the Challenge in the middle and the Guiding Questions on the outer edges. Leaving enough space between Guiding Questions for students to keep notes and activity that relate to each. These Aha-Boards are used to keep each group focused and at the same time creating some accountability within each group and beyond. 




As usual,  at the end of class we took the time to reflect about the part of the CBL process we worked on today.  Since much of our time was on questioning, my students were given the following prompt:  It is important to ask good questions, because___________ (Please use real life examples).


Links Mentioned
Challenge Based Learning 

How to Play Mancala

More on Aha-Boards

Friday, January 9, 2015

In the Process of CBL Spring 2015-Week 1



At the end of class, students were asked write in their Interactive Notebooks and explain why it is important for us to know the CBL Framework before we get started on our challenge. Here is what one fourth grader who entered the program after our challenge had begun wrote this:

I think we need to know about the CBL framework before we get started so that I know what to do and where my place is. An example, would be last year when we were suppose to be asking Guiding Questions I kept thinking we have our question and our challenge. Now I understand that the Guiding Questions are suppose to guide our research. It is going to be nice to know and understand where I am in the process this year. 

Here are a few shots I took of my students using the Chalk Talk routine to break down their Big Idea.







 Links Mentioned






In the Process of CBL Spring 2015-Introduction


Here is a link to more information on Challenge Based Learning (CBL).