July 2, 2018

Dear Sandi,

Thank you for sharing with us this innovative project-based learning instructional style, which
promotes community involvement, student authentic learning, and collaboration. Authentic
writing needs to be happening in schools for our students. We are inspired by your work and
energy. Your willingness to go beyond expectations and connect with community members on
your own is awesome!

AFFECT/MOTIVATION

We felt empowered because as students, we would have control over our learning. We
appreciated the teacher as facilitator and the agency provided to students.

We appreciated the Knows / NTK / Problem statement / Next steps because it provides space to
acknowledge questions we had in the work. We felt affirmed by your response of allowing us to
think aloud about the process.

Your listening skills helped us feel comfortable because you understood our thinking process
and you embraced that the work in PBL can be messy.

Your experiences and models toggled with the role of helping us to feel like students were
strong. You provided the opportunity to scaffold the experience as learner and teachers. We left
understanding your work and what and how we could approach this too.

PROMISING PRACTICES

You showed us how you scaffolded in due dates, group work, task-management, and time
management for your students that we can mirror in our own projects.

This helps us to respond to a standardized curriculum by providing activities than engage

students in new and different ways.

You showed students how to engage in multiple different technologies, even when you don’t
feel like an expert in those technologies yourself. We appreciated how much you were willing to
highlight the skills and passions of your students to give them autonomy and new experience.

Project-based learning creates higher leveled learning (i.e. Bloom’s Taxonomy), which is
creating critical thinkers. Additionally, we can utilize this framework at all grade levels and within
all content classrooms.
CCSS/POLICY/PR

Project Based Learning provides opportunity for learning with all Habits of Mind:
Curiosity: the desire to know more about the world.
Openness: the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world.
Engagement: a sense of investment and involvement in learning.
Creativity: the ability to use novel approaches for generating, investigating, and representing
ideas.
Persistence: the ability to sustain interest in and attention to short- and long-term projects.
Responsibility: the ability to take ownership of one’s actions and understand the consequences
of those actions for oneself and others.
Flexibility: the ability to adapt to situations, expectations, or demands.
Metacognition: the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and
cultural processes used to structure knowledge.

Maisa Units:
Oral community:
https://oaklandk12-public.rubiconatlas.org/Atlas/Develop/UnitMap/View/Default?BackLink=1220
39&SourceSiteID=&UnitID=15608&YearID=2014&CurriculumMapID=729&

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.2.A
Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information so that each
new element builds on that which precedes it to create a unified whole; include
formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., figures, tables), and multimedia when
useful to aiding comprehension.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.5

Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or

trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific
purpose and audience. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of
Language standards 1-3 up to and including grades 11-12 ​here​.)

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.6

Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or
shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments
or information.
QUESTIONS ARISEN

What do you do with the student that doesn’t believe in Battle Creek? What do you do with
students who want to change something?

In what ways can you rationalize this work to keep doing it, so that standardized curriculum is
powerful curriculum?

What small small sequencing can be done throughout educational experiences to support this
type of critical thinking and civic engagement?

We appreciate your hard work to be impactful as an educator! You rock!

Michelle, Elise, Marion, Dawn