Word Thanksgiving PBL Group 3
Word Thanksgiving PBL Group 3
Word Thanksgiving PBL Group 3
Group 412
Group 3
Silvia Ponce Campos
Paula Tapia Jiménez
Irene Miguel Herrero
1. Essential question
How can we as museum curators design an exhibition of the Mayflower journey
as a part of Thanksgiving day history for an online audience at Museum of the
Americas?
● Number of students: 20
● Level (CEFR): A2 as it will be for 6th grade.
● Aim: Create an exhibition about the history of the Mayflower presented to
an online audience in order to connect Thanksgiving traditions with real
life situations such as emigration and being grateful for what we have.
● Objectives (SMART and Bloom’s Taxonomy. Described in terms of
observable behaviour): identify, describe, contrast, define, demonstrate,
create, state, list.
- Describe in a recording video the main reason why the Mayflower
sailed.
- Define in three lines the origins of the Pilgrims.
- List five actual or historical reasons of immigration by comparing
newspapers.
- Create your own story including at least four vocabulary parts of
the Mayflower.
- Contrast the routes of the Mayflower by creating a map with the
two different routes proposed by the Mayflower capitan to
demonstrate one reason why they have changed the route.
- Create a graffiti with three main words abstracted by the child
pilgrim letter.
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3. Create a schedule
WEEK 1
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WEEK 2
WEEK 3
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WEEK 4
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In order to allow our students to have a visual idea of the deadlines, we will
create a mural using cardboards, coloured pencils, etc., that will hang on the
wall of the classroom. For this purpose, it will be decorated following the topic of
the Mayflower, so there will be different points related to the number of activities
they will need to complete in order to respond to the essential question and the
benchmarks. Hence, the first point will be the introduction that coincides with
the departure of the ship from Plymouth (Great Britain) and the last activity will
be the presentation that is related to arriving in Cape Cod (in the actual
Massachusetts).
This way, the ship will be moved during the different days to point out in which
activity they are and how they have to manage their time to complete the project
reminding the timeline as the dates in which the tasks should be done are
written.
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First of all, it is essential to mention that both team and project rubrics will be
used by the teacher but shared with the students in the first class, so they will
have the chance to know specifically what they will need to accomplish.
Group:
Item 1 2 3 Comments
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Example of a team rubric used in the project. This rubric is going to be used
by the teacher in order to assess the group work as a team taking into
consideration the role of every member.
Group members:
Item 1 2 3 Comments
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5.1. Feedback
To guide the students through the project, the teacher will monitor them using a
clipboard to write down the main things, mistakes, difficulties and strong
features they have. This way, the teacher will annotate different categories such
as grammar use, pronunciation, vocabulary, etc. Besides, we won’t be
interrupting our students as we want the tasks to be a communicative action, so
the weak and strong features will be discussed at the end of the project.
It has been proved that the one of the best ways to correct student’s mistakes is
to make them correct themselves. However, there could be students unable to
develop that self correction; in that case, peer correction will be extremely
useful for them. As a consequence of that method; especially with challenging
questions, because then it is unknown who in the class has the right answer
and who does not, attending to this fact, we have created a chart which could
be used by our students with that concrete purpose.
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5.3. Self-assessment
The students will complete the following rubric once the project is finished so
they can realize if they have accomplished the objectives and the knowledge
they’ve acquired.
ITEM 😀 😐 😟
I help my
teammates when
they need it.
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I feel motivated to
accomplish the
project.
I communicate
with the group to
have a better final
result.
I propose
solutions when a
problem appears.
I know 3
characteristics
about the
pilgrims journey.
I can identify
different reasons
why people
emigrate.
I can name
different parts of
a ship
(Mayflower).
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While preparing a project, it is very important to be aware of the daily work and
how students manage to get the competences and knowledge necessary to
complete every task. In other words, it’s essential for them to take notes on their
experience on the learning process because, according to Kolb, knowledge is
continuously gained through both personal and environmental experiences.
This is what is called experiential learning. To be conscious of their learning and
have a critical reflection, the students will have to record their thoughts as
answering some questions after everyday activities. Following Jacobson and
Ruddy's questioning model, the questions they’ll have to answer are: Did you
notice…? Why did that happen? Does that happen in life? Why does that
happen? and How can you use that?
In addition, they will complete a worksheet writing down their feelings and
experiences during that day to see what can be improved too.
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This way, the students and their teacher will reflect on how the work has been
done, how and why they felt during these lessons as a whole group. Afterwards,
it would be a good idea to share a general evaluation taking into account the
project and team rubrics mentioned before.
7. Attention to diversity
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Related to that point, as teachers we should mix students with different abilities
on the grounds that, in that way, learning will be easier to acquire as each
member of the group will have the chance to improve other’s abilities.
Moreover, the final product of the project will be complete.
Nevertheless, we can't either forget about other student’s difficulties that can be
presented in our classes such as dyslexia or autism. For those one we have
investigate about other adaptations to include in our project, and we have
conclude with the idea that for dyslexia, we will provide our students with clear
written instructions, with bigger spaces between one another and clarifying the
information in few words to help them understand it better; about autism, we
have search for a website called Pictotraductor that provides them sentences
word by word and if necessary with pictures to help them understand the
message.
8. Activities
In the following paragraphs are the explanations of the different tasks of the
project that will be held in groups of 4 in the classroom. To develop these
activities, we will give them a sheet of paper with the instructions of each of the
tasks explained below.
To engage our students, in the first class of the project we will present a video
in which are shown images of the Mayflower and a poem about the pilgrims. To
do this activity, the students will listen to it as a whole group. Then, they will do
a brainstorming of what they know about the pilgrims, the Mayflower,
Thanksgiving, etc., to activate prior knowledge and what they understood of the
vocabulary presented in the video.
For this purpose, we have used a free sound found in the video editor Filmora
that promotes curiosity, a free video by American Experience and a poem about
the pilgrims written by Annette Wynne that we have read aloud (everything is
properly referenced below).
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After that, the students will be divided in groups of 4 and the calendar of the
ship, rubrics, and so on, will be presented.
8.2. Departure
In this activity, the students will have to focus on reaching two different goals.
They’ll work in groups of four, as in the rest of the activities. Firstly, they have to
search information about the pilgrims. They will be given some questions as a
guide for their work such as Why are they called pilgrims?, Why did they take
this journey?, Why did they leave their home country? or What they were
searching for?
Once they find as much information as they can to answer those questions,
they will compare the pilgrims’ reasons to leave their country to others
inmigration motives along history and nowadays to make it meaningful to their
own lives. To accomplish this task, some newspapers and its online version will
be used. The final product must be a table where the comparison mentioned is
shown clearly.
After hunting for the main reasons of inmigration nowadays they’ll have to make
a list highlighting them all. It is essential for students to look into the current
reasons why people emigrate so they are aware of the present social problems
and what would they do if they had to emigrate to a foreign country. Most of the
people who emigrate are looking for a better life and if they investigate why they
are doing it they could empathise with them.
As it can be seen, this is a deep activity so students will have three classes to
complete it properly. The main skills worked with this activity are reading and
writing emphasising the importance of reading comprehension for a better
outcome.
In the first two days of the second week, the students will work in groups of 4
creating a task to introduce the ship’s vocabulary and to express the functions
of expressing preferences, agreeing and disagreeing.
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Before that, they will have a dice and a cardboard in which are different letters
related to the parts of the ship to engage our students with a game. This way,
when the learners roll the dice, they will have to create on a sheet of paper a
story of a mouse that is walking through the variety of parts of the ship. Hence,
they will be developing the ability to agree and disagree as they have to discuss
how they want their story to be.
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8.4. On route
In order to understand the route the pilgrims did, we will allow the students in
the two last classes of the second week to do a web research and discuss in
groups of 4 different questions they will have to answer.
For this purpose, they will be given a worksheet with the main information they
will have to find for them to know when and how to accomplish the task.
Furthermore, if they want they can search for whatever they want to include in
their maps to gain further knowledge (and it would also be a great idea for those
students who have high capacities).
The questions that they will need to find, discuss and answer would be:
2. Can you find the current name of the place they arrived?
3. Can you find the name of the place they originally wanted to arrive?
Afterwards, they will have to illustrate their ideas on a map using the website
TreasureMaps https://treasuremaps.kadsoftwareusa.com/ to contribute to the
online exhibition with visual materials. Hence, here we can see an example of
the map that we have created.
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For this activity we will use the Flipped classroom methodology. This is a good
way to introduce an activity because, based on Bloom’s taxonomy, the students
are presented new material outside the class so they do the remembering and
understanding processes at home and then, in class, they work with the teacher
in the more creative processes.
We, as teachers, will ask our students to watch this video at home the previous
weekend of the third week of the project. As this is a listening task we will
provide them a worksheet with the steps they have to follow. With this listening
we are combining bottom-up and top-down processing because in the pre-
listening they have to think about what the video is going to talk about. Then,
while watching the video they will have a guideline with some questions in order
to make them focus on the key words and those ones will be written in bold in
the paper. Finally, in the post-listening we will ask our students to say key words
to answer those questions with a brainstorming on the black board.
WORKSHEET
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The first day of the third week of the project, back to normal methodology in
class, we will use a Kahoot in order to check what the students have
understood about the video.
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After the Kahoot activity, the students will have to work again in the groups of
four formed at the beginning of the project and now the objective is to recreate a
role play where they will perform an interview in a TV programme. One member
of the group will play the host role, other will play the captain of the Mayflower
role and the rest (two students) will be pilgrims. The aim is to perform an
interview where they have to answer questions related to the worries they had
during the journey in the Mayflower, for example, what they brought to eat, what
happened with the route or how they slept in the ship. Each one of them will
have to mention at least one problem.
To complete this task they have to search for more information online but they
will be given a list of questions to guide them in that research in addition to
some web pages too.
- How many people were in the Mayflower? How many women and men?
- How were they divided in the Mayflower? Was it comfortable to sleep?
- What did they eat during the journey?
- How was their clothing? How do they used to dress up?
- How was living together?
This task will last the four English sessions of the third week as it requires much
time to prepare everything and record themselves with tablets. The last session,
the one which takes place on thursday, will be used to present every group’s
video and give feedback to the work.
With the role play activity, students will be working on their communicative
competence and the three skills as they will improve writing while recovering the
key words to make questions and answer them, reading as they have the
chance to search more information online (information about the food, the
clothes they wore…) and speaking while they do the performance.
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The aim of this activity is to develop reading and writing skills, we will dedicate
two sessions to complete it. They will work firstly in the whole group during the
reading, in the first session, and in group of four during the second session
while writing.
Firstly, the first session will be based on reading strategies, we will show our
students a picture of a pilgrim child and ask them to reflect about children's
papers in the mayflower, specifically to reflect about how they felt there, to
activate, in that way, their prior knowledge. It has been consciently selected as
a child’s letter as in that way we can apply their feeling and make them feel
more identified with the context.
Secondly, we will read the letter and the teacher may monitor the process by
asking questions , making them think and reflect about the ideas and
information in the text. Consequently, he/she will be able to prove that they are
understanding the text given. With that method, we are developing the whole
language approach as we are looking for the overall understanding of the text.
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To clarify that they have understood it, we will use the graffiti technique, known
as a reading strategy as well, in which students will have to write keywords in a
wall hanging paper with the form of a ship, encouraging in that way, cooperative
learning.
The second session will be based on creative writing in which one by using
YERAY website (http://www.yeray.com/generadorcartas/), they will be able to
create their own online letter. In order to achieve that goal, our students will be
given a guideline with some key points that should be taken into account while
writing, such as the use of linkers, divide the text in paragraphs, include some
questions that make them feel motivated to write the text, etc.
Imagine that you are standing on the deck of this ship, the Mayflower. It has
finally arrived in Plymouth Harbor on this cold December afternoon.
You have been on board a ship for 66 days. It has been a hard crossing with
fierce storms, sickness, and bad food to eat. You are watching the men row to
shore, but there are no people to greet them nor houses for shelter. You see
nothing but wilderness.
What are your feelings?
If you could send a message back home, what would you write?
Here there’s an example about how would they write the letter by using the
website mentioned:
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The aim of this activity is to make our students reflect about something they are
grateful for, as a conclusion of this project where they have been working with
topics related to immigrations. They will work in the whole group and it will take
them only 15 minutes, they should use their tablets to write it on classroom’s
wix website, in that way, the online audience they were going to expose their
work to, could also interact and add new arguments for being grateful.
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8.8. Presentation
On that ground, they work speaking and writing skills as well as TIC
competences.
As we have been doing in other activities, they will be given a guideline with the
time (2- 5 minutes) and other issues that they must take into account.
Once they have finished ir, they will have to send them to the teacher, who will
upload them to their wix website as well as all the material they have produced
during the project development.
https://pauladenile.wixsite.com/project
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- Grammar
First of all, we need to consider that our project is for sixth graders and we had
an activity that consists of reading a pilgrim’s letter and then the students will
have to write their own letter as they were in the Mayflower. But, we analysed
the letter and realised that maybe it would be a great idea to use a combination
of the inductive and deductive approaches to teach grammar using this activity
as we detected that perhaps our students will have problems formulating
questions to the reader of their letter for example saying “Did I tell you that we
eat beans and cheese?” as Spanish speakers normally find really demanding to
formulate questions using the proper order.
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So, we thought that after reading the letter in which students will have examples
of the questions, they will be presented an activity to complete and hypothesize
the rule and this way this would be relevant for them as it is a way to revise a
grammar rule that they have problems with.
- Vocabulary
Moving on to vocabulary, we’ve created a task to learn the different parts of the
Mayflower by creating their own flashcards, but despite this is a great resource,
nowadays we think that it would be great to also use dictionaries to complete in
the back of the flashcard a description of each part to allow them to memorise
the meaning of the words by involving them.
- Pronunciation
10. Resources
Articles
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Lecture notes
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Websites
Larmer, J. (2012, June 5). PBL: What Does It Take for a Project to Be
«Authentic»? Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/authentic-
project-based-learning-john-larmer
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Videos
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