Connection

A Project-Based Learning Update!

For those who are joining my project-based learning journey mid-way through the year, my second graders are studying New York City for their social studies curriculum. So far this year we have studied Maps and Communities, and we are now in the midst of learning about the Five Boroughs of New York City. If you’re not familiar, they are Brooklyn, The Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island, and Queens. Specifically we have focused on the bridges that connect these five boroughs. We felt as a team that highlighting this idea of connection has a literal, useful meaning for the students’ to understand the layout of the city in addition to its abstract meaning that ties into the social-emotional curriculum.

Our unit started out with identifying and presenting background information about each of the bridges, such as when they were built and which boroughs they connect. From there, we asked the students to vote on which bridge they would like to build as a group. The Kosciuszko Bridge won in a landslide! The kids highlighted their fascination with the bridge lighting up in a rainbow of colors at night to convey their reasoning behind it being the top choice.

The Kosciuzsko Bridge at night

Because these students require significant support in the realm of executive functioning, or “mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully¹,” my goal was for them to be a part of the process from start to finish. More specifically, it was for them to take the lead and do a majority of the thinking, instead of the adults running the ship and providing all of the answers.

To begin, I asked them a) what materials they thought we would need in order to build the bridge and b) where we could find them. Immediately they began to throw out a slew of ideas, which you will see below I documented in the moment on a white board, because most of them need additional processing time. Although many have a language-based learning disability that impacts their reading, I was saying the ideas aloud to provide the verbal repetition that is also beneficial—that visual/verbal pairing really helps with language processing and literacy skills.