Tag: Authentic Teaching

A simple question or picture can lead to a huge project.  My Martian Colony Project (all school year for four years) started with a NASA video.  But authentic teaching doesn’t always lead to a project and that is fine.  Authentic teaching sometimes means a student answers a question and then moves on.  You can’t force that spark of interest that becomes an authentic project.

The above photo is of Haleakala Crater on the Hawaiian Island of Maui.  Research about what caused this crater and how the Hawaiian Islands formed (and are still forming) might lead to a short project, a huge project, or no project at all.  As long as students are researching and learning, that is all that matters.

A really important teaching strategy we learned early in our journey with authentic teaching was not to answer student questions.  If a student asked how the Hawaiian Islands formed, we did not simply give them an answer.  Very little learning takes place when students are simply given answers.  We usually responded with, “That is a great question!  Where do you think we can find information about that?”  We would then guide them to a good starting place for research.  This is one of the most important skills we can give students today.  Students no longer need to memorize facts and answers to questions.  Everything we need to know is literally at our fingertips – on our cell phones!  What students need to know is how to go about finding the information they want and then what they should do with that information.

Where would be a good place to look for information about how the Hawaiian Islands formed?  That is a great question!  Let me know what you find out!  And let me know if this becomes a starting point for an authentic project…

I live in the Eastern United States.  My husband is from the Western United States.  He has always laughed at the “hills” we call “mountains” on the east coast.  The mountains out west do put our eastern mountain ranges to shame.

So why are some mountains bigger than others?  How do mountains form?  How do scientists know this?  What kind(s) of scientists study mountain formation?

And this makes me crazy – why do the leaves at the bottom of our local mountains lose their leaves in the fall before the leaves at the top of our mountains?  Isn’t it colder on the top?  Isn’t that why trees lose their leaves?  I think I am going to find out exactly what kind of trees we have that are doing this, do some research, and create a book to explain this! (Yep – I started with a picture of a mountain and now I am writing a book about a specific tree and how and when it loses leaves in the fall – that is called an authentic project!)

I just returned from a trip out to Los Angeles.  While there I took this picture of the city from one of the highways.  When I looked at the picture later, I was shocked that I managed to capture an LA highway with only two cars on it.  We were totally surrounded by traffic, so I have no idea how I managed this picture!  (“Twilight Zone” moment.)

Los Angeles has some of the worst, if not worst traffic in the United States.  There are many cities around the world, including LA, that are on the verge of total gridlock. So, not only would a great authentic project be for students to start to think of creative ways to solve these traffic nightmares, it will most likely be one of our current young students who ends up helping to solve this problem as an adult.

Mass transit, tele-commuting, self-driven cars, monorails, flying cars…  Ideas?  Plans?  Diagrams?  Models?

 

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How do airplane engines work?  What is the difference between how propellers work and how jet engines work?  Some airplanes have hybrid propellers/jet engines, how do those work?

Authentic projects often start with a simple question, lead to research, and end with a student construction of a 747 (if you are lucky, it will just be a model).