The Bahá'í Gardens and PBL21
These are some ideas I sent to a rabbi in Israel. He was a fifth grade teacher and he wanted some ideas on how to do PBL, Project-Based Learning. He wanted to motivate his students. He told me that the class was going to visit the world famous Bahá'í Gardens which were nearby. Amazing! I began brainstorming possibilities, and here is what I came up with in a short time. What other possibilities come to your mind? This is what I wrote to him:
Dear Arial,
One thing that should motivate students is the authentic purpose and relevance of the project and an authentic audience. If these students know that they will be presenting their final products to outsiders, their motivation increases quite a bit. Suppose they were going to be presenting their final products and findings to a panel including rabbis (other than at their school - either locally, nationally or even internationally)? And this panel would include experts from universities in the fields of Jewish studies as well as history, horticulture, etc? Or representatives of the Bahá'í gardens?
Why not tie this into environmental studies? What about psychology and philosophy - why do people create and maintain such gardens?
What about careers in landscape architecture - here is art, math, history, geology, . . . Jellicoes’ Landscape of man rightly proclaims:
One thing that should motivate students is the authentic purpose and relevance of the project and an authentic audience. If these students know that they will be presenting their final products to outsiders, their motivation increases quite a bit. Suppose they were going to be presenting their final products and findings to a panel including rabbis (other than at their school - either locally, nationally or even internationally)? And this panel would include experts from universities in the fields of Jewish studies as well as history, horticulture, etc? Or representatives of the Bahá'í gardens?
Why not tie this into environmental studies? What about psychology and philosophy - why do people create and maintain such gardens?
What about careers in landscape architecture - here is art, math, history, geology, . . . Jellicoes’ Landscape of man rightly proclaims:
The world is moving into a phase when landscape design may well be recognised as the most comprehensive of the arts. Man creates around him an environment that is a projection into nature of his abstract ideas. It is only in the present century that the collective landscape has emerged as a social necessity. We are promoting a landscape art on a scale never conceived of in history.
- Economics - what does it cost to maintain the gardens?
- Bahá'í Garden Ambassadors - If your class was collaborating with students who did not have an opportunity to visit the gardens your students could really be ambassadors to the gardens for those students elsewhere, even students around the world. Your students could create a virtual tour of the gardens - submit it to Israel's Department of Tourism and maybe get it published on their web site. They could also create educational videos on many topics related to the gardens, for example - what is the connection between the gardens and the local/national economy? Of course, the connections between the gardens, Jewish studies and the Bible. (which you did in your wonderful unit! - but create professional, quality videos.)
- Global Competencies - I know that time differences can be a challenge, although there may be a way to do at least one or two live, online, video exchanges - this makes it much more real to the students. Each of your students could also partner with one student in the other class, making it even more personal. See this video - much of it will not apply to this specific project, but notice on one part where the students traveled to Morocco and met with their student "buddies" in that country? The students from Chicago had to raise the money to make the trip. There is a school in the United States called the Ron Clark Academy (in Atlanta) for grades 4-8. By the time students have attended the school for 4 years they all have traveled to all six populated continents - and they are not wealthy.
- Some examples of PBL in Jewish Studies - Musings on Jewish Education
Other possibilities, not necessarily connected to Jewish studies:
- National Geographic's list of the Top Ten Gardens in the World
Taking a different approach - Religions of the World
Another great project would be to collaborate with a few classes from countries whose religions are primarily Hindu, Christian, Islam, Buddhist; I also saw on my research that there is a category called Folk/Tribal religions.
A group at one of my workshops planned a unit on world religions; their final product was going to be a theatrical production, performed for the community at a community center venue. They planned to get community businesses involved - for example, getting a printer to print tickets to sell.
I know people working in schools that are Hindu and Islamic and Jewish - in India, Malaysia and the United States. We went to India two years ago and visited a school. We knew of it because the Director had attended our Spring Institute in New York City the previous year, and he had shared with us an annual festival known as Navratri. It is always online, live, so we had watched it and loved it. So, when we were in Malaysia we decided to take a side trip to India to attend the festival. Please see this - these are photos and videos we took, and they provided me with the actual music from the festival.
Sharing information with each other about their religions and learning about other religions, etc., is a really excellent way to develop students' Global Competencies (see your multiple literacies documents).
Also, religion and food are certainly connected, and that could be another approach. See our developing Food and Culture project. Be sure to also look at the Issues and Themes page.
Do you have some teachers at your school who have your students part of the day for other courses? Together you could create a PBL unit connecting the Jewish studies to other disciplines in a project focusing on the gardens, world religions, festivals, or food and culture.
Other types of products - we talked about letting the students design video games. Smaller, easier products could be creating a web site (I love Weebly, and it is free. It allows you to have each of your students create their own web site - with a blog. It has beautiful templates and image library.) They also could create products using these tools (here are some examples) Glogster, Weebly, Voice Thread, MindMaps and this, and Concept Maps (like mind maps). Your class could collaboratively create a web site to teach the 54 laws you mentioned. I think I would (if possible) create a huge wall mural using bulletin board paper. Ask your students for their ideas on how that could be used to learn about and organize a product which teaches the laws.
Another great project would be to collaborate with a few classes from countries whose religions are primarily Hindu, Christian, Islam, Buddhist; I also saw on my research that there is a category called Folk/Tribal religions.
A group at one of my workshops planned a unit on world religions; their final product was going to be a theatrical production, performed for the community at a community center venue. They planned to get community businesses involved - for example, getting a printer to print tickets to sell.
I know people working in schools that are Hindu and Islamic and Jewish - in India, Malaysia and the United States. We went to India two years ago and visited a school. We knew of it because the Director had attended our Spring Institute in New York City the previous year, and he had shared with us an annual festival known as Navratri. It is always online, live, so we had watched it and loved it. So, when we were in Malaysia we decided to take a side trip to India to attend the festival. Please see this - these are photos and videos we took, and they provided me with the actual music from the festival.
Sharing information with each other about their religions and learning about other religions, etc., is a really excellent way to develop students' Global Competencies (see your multiple literacies documents).
Also, religion and food are certainly connected, and that could be another approach. See our developing Food and Culture project. Be sure to also look at the Issues and Themes page.
Do you have some teachers at your school who have your students part of the day for other courses? Together you could create a PBL unit connecting the Jewish studies to other disciplines in a project focusing on the gardens, world religions, festivals, or food and culture.
Other types of products - we talked about letting the students design video games. Smaller, easier products could be creating a web site (I love Weebly, and it is free. It allows you to have each of your students create their own web site - with a blog. It has beautiful templates and image library.) They also could create products using these tools (here are some examples) Glogster, Weebly, Voice Thread, MindMaps and this, and Concept Maps (like mind maps). Your class could collaboratively create a web site to teach the 54 laws you mentioned. I think I would (if possible) create a huge wall mural using bulletin board paper. Ask your students for their ideas on how that could be used to learn about and organize a product which teaches the laws.