When the second grade at Hatfield Elementary was asked by their PE
teacher to plan and design a new field day game that incorporates force, motion
and/or balance, students jumped at the chance to create a great solution to this Problem Based Learning (PBL) challenge.
To build schema students worked in groups with hands-on activities to
learn about balance, rolling, spinning, and sliding. They researched various
field day games using books and iPads (internet).
After students had collected enough information and understood with mastery the concepts of force, motion and balanced, they worked together to design
a new game using what they learned.
Throughout the
project, to cement their learning and connect ideas, students used iPads to collect observations via several apps including the camera and other platforms. Once the teams completed
their research, they used Educreations to draw out a blue print of their
activity. Then they worked as a team to build a model using various materials
in the classroom and donated by families. In order to collect all of the
information and the process, students created a PicCollage of their learning
activities. They also created a Tellagami to explain how their game would be
played.
Once all of the pieces were finished, the teams created a video using
Videolicious, inserting all of their previous files and recording their voices
to explain the project in order to present their ideas to the PE teacher and to
the rest of the school.
The final presentation not only showcased the solution students came to for the initial problem, but captured the learning and integration that happened throughout the entire learning event.
Here is one example of the many projects completed by Hatfield Elementary's second grade led by Nicole Wallis:
