Virginia Mathematics Teacher Fall 2016

Table 3. Science and Math Topics Addressed in Participant-generated PBL Units.

Grade Level

Science Topics Addressed

Science SOL Alignment

Math SOL Alignment

Kindergarten

Gardens

K.1, K.6, K.7

K.8, K.15

First

Sun’s energy

1.1, 1.2

1.1, 1.9, 1.10

Second

Changes in matter

2.1, 2.2

2.11, 2.14, 2.17, 2.18, 2.19 2.17, 2.18, 2.19, 2.20

Ecosystems

2.1, 2.4, 2.5, 2.7

Third

Simple machines

3.1, 3.2

3.17

Properties of matter

3.1, 3.3

3.19, 5.18

Fourth

Weather

4.1, 4.6 4.1, 4.5 4.1, 4.2 5.1, 5.2

4.7, 4.13, 4.14

Ecosystems

4.14

Force/Motion/Energy

4.7, 4.14

Fifth

Sound

5.18

During the first summer institute, teachers worked in teams to generate entire PBL units in­ cluding an overview document, question map, and daily lesson plans. Selection of the topics of their PBLs was informed by their grade level Standards , alignment with the theme of Matter and Energy , and teacher topical interest. Table 3 describes the

tic student role, culminating activity, and resources (Figure 1). For example, in a 4 th grade PBL unit on Living Systems, the problem question was, “Oh, Honey: It’s a bad time to be a bee, does it have to be?” Teachers posed the following scenario to stu­ dents:

Bees affect your daily life a lot more than you might think. Aside from giving us honey and wax, they pollinate plants that pro- vide a quarter of the food eaten by Americans, ac- counting for more than $15 billion in increased crop value per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But bees around the world have been dying in droves for the past several years, and scien- tists are still struggling to un- derstand why. The problem seemed to be get- ting better last year. Now, how-

grade-level and content of the PBL units created by Cohort 1 teachers as well as science and math SOL align­ ment. These teacher-generated PBL units, which include unit over­ views as well as easily modified daily lesson plans will be available beginning Fall 2017 via a link from the VDOE Science Re­ sources website. Unit overviews and question maps are current­ ly available at http:// bit.ly/29DwkSt . Overview documents in­ cluded an over­ arching question, scenario, authen­

Figure 1 . Example PBL overview.

Virginia Mathematics Teacher vol. 43, no. 1

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