Following on from our very first Project Presentations last Friday, this week we began a new Project. For this particular Project, we are working with the students in their ‘Stage’ groups – Stage 4: years 7 & 8, and Stage 5: years 9 & 10. Sally and I are supporting the Stage 4 students.
The introduction for our Stage 4 students was a short video on youtube called ‘Come Play’ which was a promotional video to engage the Australian public in the 2012 World Cup. If you haven’t viewed it, do. – It’s fabulous! We ended up watching it three times!
Project Based Learning means that we, the teachers, pose particular leading questions and supply the students with research data, we then guide and support them with their tasks. This new Project – ‘Come Play’, has three key learning areas/modules, – PDHPE, History and English. The first week we kicked off with the PDHPE module, our focus has been ‘the benefits of a healthy lifestyle’. This included reference to regular exercise, nutrition and finding a balance within our normal daily lives.
For the beginning of the Project we randomly mixed the students from the two years together. – This worked surprisingly well.
(One thing we are working hard to promote at IFS is a supportive relationship between students. Provided we can create this type of environment, (and we will!) we believe that the issue of ‘bullying’, which exists in most every college in Australia, will not occur here at IFS.)
On Wednesday afternoon we allowed the students to put themselves into groups of 3 or 4, their task is to create a brochure promoting the benefits of Regular Exercise. On Friday we will receive the fruits on their labours.
Rodney
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