KBerryhill’s Intel Blog

I thought I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do for my project when I came to class, but after doing the curriculum framing questions, I changed it. After further reflection, I changed it yet again. The curriculum framing questions really force you to look at what you want to teach, and how you want to teach it. As a new teacher to the school, I have gone along with many of the lessons that the other teachers are doing, and sometimes have been doing for many years. Some of the units could really use some updating. I chose to redo a unit that was stale and unexciting and had probably used the same lesson plan since the school was built.

The ongoing student assessments also helped me clarify my project and the form it would take. How could I best measure what they need to know and how can my students best get that knowledge? I tend to rely on quizzes, rubrics, tests–and this activity will help get me out of that rut and start using some other assessments.

I think that project based teaching will be a tremendous opportunity for both my special education and regular students, as well as for myself. As a history teacher I tend to do a lot of talking. But I love projects because kids retain information so much better when they can discover it themselves. Also, a lot of their focus is limited–they don’t have the attention span to retain a lot of facts, no matter how interesting. They need to move around. Right now we are very focused on TAKS in my classes and it is hard to find time to do projects–so that will be a challenge also.

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