Dr. Hilary Sowers teaches our fifth grade GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) class at Brooks. This year her students took on a challenging PBL (Problem Based Learning) experience. Sowers explained that her students created a ‘driving question’ (as is done with all PBL projects). The question was, “How can the town of Windsor remodel Hall Park so that more people will use the park?”
Olivia Lemen, a management analyst for the Town of Windsor, came to the classroom to introduce the project. She discussed the scope and sequence of the project, the goals, the budget limitations and the other professionals that would be involved.
The children created interview questions about the proposed remodel of the park for students and adults at Brooks. They interviewed 71 students and some adults. They also wrote questions that were included in a survey that Lemen sent out to families in the community surrounding Hall Park. Further, for several weeks, Sowers’ students recorded observations taken from observing the park at different times during the day.
Lemen returned to the classroom and brought Ric Hendricks, the landscape architect who would be creating the plans for the remodeling proposals. Lemen gave the students copies of the responses that she received from the community survey and she showed the students how to interpret the data. Then, the students shared the data from their Brooks survey.
The class analyzed all of the data from Brooks and the community and created a list of what the customers, children and adults, would like to have in the park. The students then worked in pairs to do research on specific components for the newly remodeled park and found specific equipment that they could recommend.
The students included what they learned from all of the data and what they would recommend for the park in an Adobe Sparkpresentation. Sowers and a few students presented their findings to the Windsor Parks & Recreation Commission. A question and answer period followed. The students were able to understand all the proposals for the park design and hear about the timeline for the project.
This is a wonderful example of PBL and students working individually, in groups and as a class to experience cross-curricular learning. Mathematics, language arts, technology and contemporary social studies were all a part of this project. However, the excitement of the students was proof of the success of this experience.
One student, Jordana said, “We learned how complex it really is to do a project like this.”
Another student, Jake L. remarked, “It was fun. I liked doing the research,” while Ella summed the project up by saying, “It was nice to be able to give back to the community.”
Kimberlee Kimes is the principal at Brooks Elementary School
