Project-Based Learning
My passion project for the year!
The following content may contain affiliate links. When you click and shop the links, I earn qualifying commission.
So I really wasn’t kidding when I said that writing about blocks for this newsletter kicked off a project at my new job. This year my second grade class is focusing their social studies curriculum on learning about New York, by:
Exploring maps of neighborhoods, cities, states, countries, continents, and the world
Comparing urban vs. rural environments
Highlighting each borough of New York City
Discovering the various cultures of each neighborhood in the 5 boroughs
My role in the development of this curriculum is not only to support the language needs of my students within these activities, but also to meaningfully integrate block building into the lessons.
Over the past two months, we have been studying maps! In doing so, we read the book Me on the Map and looked at a variety of different maps in preparation for learning about New York. The kids have really loved searching for their neighborhoods and places they have visited, and they often shared personal anecdotes about family members or vacations they have taken within class discussions. For instance, while talking about the 5 boroughs of New York City, one student told us that her mom used to work at a school in the Bronx, and another got very excited to locate Central Park on every map we looked at (no matter how big or small it ended up being!).
A very challenging concept for all of the kids was distinguishing the difference between New York City and New York State. In order to support their understanding of this comparison, we first focused on repetitively looking at both of the maps and pointing out important, familiar locations so that they could memorize what New York City looks like; in turn, the goal was for them to be able to identify it as a visual anchor when orienting themselves on a map of New York State.
It wasn’t until we had them color maps of New York State and then create the outline with blocks that they were able to successfully note the difference. As you can see in the picture below, my student used her graphic organizer as a visual guide to outline the shape of New York. She did this completely on her own, and was so proud of herself when she was done (as were we of course).
Another student was inspired by this idea, and while creating the outline was able to tell me, “okay the east side of New York looks straight….and the west side curves down” as she was building. I was so excited, because it wasn’t only the first time she recognized New York State, it also was the first time she was able to correctly identify East and West! Plus when she was commenting, her utterances were rich with attributive concepts—”straight” and “down” to describe the dimensions.
Week after week the whole class was so excited to build maps with the blocks, and that intrinsic motivation made a huge difference in their comprehension of the topic. Here are some other pictures from our Me on the Map unit:
Following the sequence of the book, we started with maps of their bedrooms.
Here you’ll see that the students were able to recreate elements of their rooms, like their bunk beds and dressers. Afterwards, they referenced these structures to draw maps of their bedrooms.
Next we explored maps of the five boroughs of New York City. Below is a re-creation of a student’s neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Using blue painter’s tape, I made a map of Manhattan and Brooklyn (our class only lives between those two boroughs, had they lived in Queens, Staten Island, or the Bronx, we would have created those too). The students, myself, and the teachers all added our buildings and placed them at the intersection of our streets. I then labeled the intersections.
A few of the kids are clustered in the same neighborhood and were thrilled to see that they were all neighbors. Others compared how close/far they lived from each other. We also put the school on the map, so that they could gauge the distance of their commute each morning and share what mode of transportation they take: school bus, city bus, ferry, taxi, family car, walking, or what most New Yorkers do—a combination!
Later on like I mentioned, we outlined New York State and the seven continents. Our final project was to make a map of the world. As a class, I have been focusing on the idea of collaboration and fostering close relationships both during project-based learning and the social skills groups I co-lead each week. The teachers also do an amazing job at fostering those relationships in other group learning contexts. We felt it was important in this moment that the kids work together, engaging in Shared Social Problem Solving, to create the map of the world. With very little cueing from adults, they were able to communicate with each other in order to create a circle out of blocks to symbolize “Earth.” One student said to the others, “let’s hold hands and get in a circle,” and another quickly responded, “yeah and then we can pass the blocks around one at a time to put down on the ground to make our circle.” From there, the head teacher realized that each student could build a continent, and had them all pick their assignment out of a hat. Below you will see the incredible result!
I created a social story for each of the kids to take home full of pictures that we took of their building together throughout the segments of this unit. I love providing visuals as a way to support personal narrative re-tells, or the ability to share a story about a personal experience. They were all so excited to look at the pictures, reflect on the experience with each other, and share it with their families once they got home. I am going to continue to make these booklets at the conclusion of each unit throughout the year!
If you’re wondering what blocks we are using for these lessons, they are a combination of the Haba extra large starter set and Keva Blocks. The kids love the variety of shapes and sizes that both sets provide!
