K-8 Social Studies Resources

I've had a great term teaching Social Studies Methods to pre-service teachers at Brandon University. One of my goals as a university instructor is to engage my students in assignments that are useful and relevant to their future teaching practices. This year, one of our assignments was to create a collaborative collection of K-8 social studies teaching resources. My students sourced a ton of great resources, and I'm excited to share the document with you here. 

The Museum Hack

 In January 2018, I enrolled in Advanced Research Methodologies at University of Victoria with professor Dr. Kathy Sanford. Kathy is a feminist and post-structural researcher in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction as well as the graduate advisor there. I learned a lot from Kathy, and perhaps one of the most interesting things she shared with us was her work in museums. Together with colleagues Dr. Darlene Clover and Dr. Nancy Taber, they developed the feminist museum hack--a pedagogical and methodological approach that encourages museum visitors to examine exhibits through a critical feminist lens. This disruptive practice challenges the museum as an authority on history and promotes the inclusion of different perspectives, diverse groups, and seldom-heard narratives. Museum hacking can also act as a form of resistance against gender oppression and injustice. Kathy took our class to the Royal BC Museum where we had the fascinating experience of "hacking" the exhibits. 

This experience stayed with me, and when I found myself teaching Social Studies Methods at Brandon University in 2020 and 2021, I wanted to expose my students to this pedagogical approach. With Daly House Museum only a short walk away, it seemed like the perfect learning experience to accomplish a number of outcomes: i) demonstrate the role of museums in the teaching of social studies; ii) strengthen my students' understanding of experiential learning approaches; iii) develop their ability to examine museum exhibits and curatorial statements; and iv) give them the knowledge and experience to hack museums with their future students as part of social studies teaching. 

To build knowledge of the approach, we connected with Dr. Sanford and asked if she would be willing to talk to our class via video call. To prepare for the call, we read one of Dr. Sanford's articles on curatorial statements (available here on p. 190) and listened to a podcast interview with Dr. Clover. I also pulled out some resources from Silvia Tolisano (2011) on how to turn a Skype call into a learning call. As it often is when teaching pre-service teachers, my purpose was two-fold. I wanted to demonstrate for them how to maximize the learning surrounding a video call so they could do this with their own students AND I wanted to make this a rich learning experience for them. We began by searching Dr. Sanford online and used Google Maps to see where she was located. We confirmed the time zone and season there. Using a shared Google Doc as a planning tool, my students assumed a variety of roles: greeting Kathy, providing a territorial acknowledgement, asking questions (added to the Google Doc before and during the call), sharing our learning via Twitter, and thanking Kathy. 

Samantha shared a Treaty 2 territorial acknowledgement. 

Cassandra welcomed Dr. Sanford to Brandon University and our class. 

Dr. Sanford shared a presentation with us for about 25 minutes, and then the students asked her many, many questions about her work and the museum hack approach. It was a fascinating 45 minutes of learning and sharing. 

Dr. Kathy Sanford presented on her work with museums and the museum hack approach. 

Take a look at some of my students' takeaways here.

Our next task was to decide how we would approach hacking the Daly House Museum. Kathy had shared a variety of ideas, such as leaving sticky-note suggestions and questions on exhibits, re-writing curatorial statements, and redesigning exhibits to make them more inclusive and representative. First of all, we wanted to look at all the exhibits and match them to Manitoba curricular outcomes for K-8 social studies. For the actual museum hack, my students came up with their own approach based on the book snaps we had created earlier in the course. They decided to photograph exhibits, then use text-over-image tools to annotate the pictures with their questions, criticisms, and suggestions to improve the exhibits. The images were then shared via Twitter using the hashtags #ssmethods and #museumhack. Take a look at the students' visit to the museum here.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Leah Obach + Devon Caldwell (@kgeducation.ca)

And check out my students' museum hacks:

This was a powerful learning experience and my students' feedback was very positive. We loved getting out of the classroom (which seems to happen rarely during COVID) and we really enjoyed examining the exhibits with a critical, contemporary lens. It made for a more engaging and relevant museum visit that had true purpose. Are you interested in trying the museum hack with your students? You can apply this strategy to in-person or virtual museum visits as well as online exhibits. Learn more here:

• listen to a podcast interview with Darlene Clover on the museum hack (also available on Apple Podcasts)
• read the Feminist Adult Educators' Guide to Aesthetic, Creative, and Disruptive Strategies in Museums and Community (edited by Clover, Dzulkifli, Gelderman, & Sanford, 2020)

Access online exhibits and virtual tours here:

• Google Arts and Culture
• 8 Virtual Tours of Canadian Museums 

9 Online Teaching Strategies and Tools...and a Kindergarten Diva Update!

Hey everyone! So it's been a hot minute since I added a new blog post to Kindergarten Diva...and although my husband and family will tell you that I'll always be a diva, I'm no longer a kindergarten one 😢 I concluded my kindergarten classroom practice last June when I made the decision to move to a resource/inclusive learning support position. Why? Well, a few factors informed my decision:

• I have a Master of Education degree in Special/Inclusive Education, and when I lived in Victoria, I worked nearly exclusively in special education. I absolutely loved it. 
• the pandemic wasn't going anywhere, and I had no desire to EVER teach kindergarten online again. And, I was really concerned about how the pandemic would impact my pedagogical approaches to in-person teaching. 
• there was a very small number of K students coming in, which meant that it would be a K/1 multi-age class. Since I'm only 0.50, that meant a job/class share situation--zero interest in that! 
• I knew that I'd be collecting data for my PhD dissertation research for the 2020-21 school year. A resource position just seemed like a better fit with the busy-ness of data collection. And it really has been.

So how has my school year gone so far? Well, I think I made the best possible decision moving to resource. Although I miss teaching kindergarten (and project-based learning, and the students, and all the fun) SO much, I knew myself well enough to know that pandemic teaching and job sharing was not for me. My principal has allowed me to work full alternate days, so some weeks are Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and other weeks are only Tuesday and Thursday (my absolute favourite of course)! The rest of my time is filled with:

• data collection (I'm currently conducting a mixed-methods multiple-case study in one rural and one urban school division). More info coming soon--this definitely requires its own post. 
• teaching online at Brandon University in the Faculty of Education. In January, I taught an Evaluation and Assessment course, and now I'm teaching Teacher Identity in PENT (Program for the Education of Northern Teachers) at Brandon University.
• working with my teacher best friend Leah Obach at KG Education. Although our in-person learning retreats are on hiatus, we're having lots of fun blending wellness and professional learning through different online offerings. We have our online signature course, Cultivating Connection, a podcast by the same name (just search Cultivating Connection on Spotify or Apple podcasts), a wellness challenge, and we're currently launching another session of our online book club. 
• I'm the secretary of ManACE (not a super busy position of course)
• acting as the teacher professional development chair in Fort La Bosse School Division. My main activities are hosting/organizing our monthly podcast, Teach like a Bosse, designing monthly Potty PD posters for school staff bathrooms, and facilitating an online professional learning book club for FLBSD teachers. We just read Wab Kinew's book, The Reason You Walk, and it was so good!
• teaching yoga online from my home yoga studio. Online yoga has gone really well, and after a year of this, I've definitely got the technology figured out (this probably deserves its own post too). Find out what I'm offering with yoga here. 

Moving forward, what can you expect from this blog and a Kindergarten Diva who is no longer teaching kindergarten? I'll continue to share about my teaching and learning activities as well as my PhD research. My interests haven't changed--I'm still passionate about project-based learning, play-based learning, technology integration, and wellness. With that in mind, here's my favourite NINE online teaching and learning tools and strategies. I shared them on ManACE's Instagram account this week, and thought that teachers in this audience might benefit from this information too. 

9 Tools and Strategies for Teaching and Learning Online 

Waterfall questions: students type their response to a question into group chat but don't hit send until the instructor gives the signal. Questions cascade into the chat window all at once. Great for formative assessment, activating prior knowledge, and building community.

Would you rather: students are presented with two choices (can be just for fun or related to course content). Students share their response aloud or in the chat--excellent for building community, formative assessment, and activating prior knowledge. I'd also recommend applying this activity to numeracy--there's a wonderful site called Would You Rather Math that has so many great activities ready to go and free to use!

Socrative: free online quiz platform with multiple choice, true/false, short answer, and entrance/exit slips. This formative assessment tool is web and app-based and suitable for kids in Grade 4 and up. Find out more here.

GooseChase: create a virtual or in-person scavenger hunt using this free app. I use it to give students an overview of websites, curricular documents, or policies. Challenges include taking pictures, answering questions, and creating videos. Teams compete against each other in real time and it's lots of fun!

Seesaw: online learning platform that's perfect for sharing materials, submitting assignments, and creating a portfolio. Seesaw worked well for me in kindergarten and I love using it with pre-service teachers too. Listen to a podcast interview with a Seesaw ambassador here.

Calendly: students/families can schedule meetings with you online and a video conference link is auto-generated and emailed out. It integrates with Google calendar and many other tools. This year, I used it to schedule online parent-teacher interviews for our entire school as well as for booking podcast interviews, one-on-one meetings with students to begin a new university course, and online office hours.

Padlet: an online bulletin board that works well for discussion questions and collaborative brainstorming/sharing. It's web and app-based, although I greatly prefer the web-based interface.

Four Corners: four different activities in four different breakout rooms--basically digital centres! Students stay with their group and collaboratively complete each activity.

Jigsaw: using PDF annotation (Lumin), I split articles into four sections. Students begin in a "home" breakout room, choose what section they'll read, then I move them to their expert groups where they read and discuss the same section. Students return to their home breakout room to teach their group members about their section.

These are some of my favourite strategies and tools that I've used in my role as an online university instructor at Brandon University. Of course there are many more--what are your go-to tools and strategies? Comment on this blog post or connect with me on social media--I'd love to hear from you!

Instagram @devoncaldwellyoga or @kgeducation, Twitter @india0309.

Inside the Classroom with Kindergarten Diva, Episode 1: Exploring Feelings and Setting Intentions

I'm diving into the world of vlogging!  It seems like I never have time to draft a full blog post, so I'm experimenting with recording short videos to share my classroom practice.  Let me know what you think!  This week's episode explains how I kicked off 2020 in my classroom by exploring feelings to set intentions for a brand-new calendar year.  

Mentioned in the video...
Kindergarten Connections Facebook Group 

The OK Book

You Asked, Kindergarten Diva Answers: Four Practices to Save Your Sanity at the Start of the Year

"I feel like I'm expecting too much of my new Kindergarten class and I'm having them sit too long.  Things feel really chaotic.  Any suggestions?"

September in a Kindergarten classroom is a time like no other.  One of my good K teacher friends always used to say, "Kindergarten is yucky until after Halloween" and there is definitely some truth to those words!  Any Kindergarten teacher will tell you that introducing first-time students to the school setting is challenging!  It's an incredibly important time for you and your littles--starting the year off on the right foot will set all of you up for ten months of rich and productive learning experiences.  I find that too often, teachers are worried about academic outcomes from the first week of school (and no wonder...lots of pressure to boost literacy and numeracy achievement).  Instead, I believe that time invested in developing strong routines, procedures, and classroom community will pay huge dividends down the road in your classroom.

 Here are a few suggestions for setting appropriate expectations, keeping your little ones moving, and creating a calm and happy classroom atmosphere.

1) Frequent movement breaks:  at the start of the year, I maintain that a Kindergarten child should be able to sit and focus for five minutes (one minute per year of age).  I'm not sure where I got this notion from, but it generally seems to hold true.  So when planning activities, don't require your children to sit and be still for longer than five minutes at a time.  If they seem engaged, you can begin to stretch it out, but watch closely for signs of fatigue and restlessness.  What do we do for movement breaks?

• action songs/games:  sing them yourself or play them on Spotify or YouTube.  Below I've included a Spotify playlist with some of my favourites.  Of course Go Noodle is always a great option too...however I find that sometimes I lose my class while I'm logging back into the computer and finding the activity I want.  Action songs need to be quick and easy...usually I just sing them myself.  A quick game of The Farmer in the Dell or Ring Around the Rosie works well for a fun movement break too. 

• yoga: grab yourself a set of yoga cards and keep them nearby!  Depending on the length of the movement break, every child can choose a card or maybe the special helper picks five.  Go through the deck and eliminate the cards you don't want to do in your K classroom (headstand...not a good idea).  Hold up the card, demonstrate the pose, and let everyone give it a try.  Yoga is non-competitive and promotes balance, strength, and calm. 
• action counting:  jump 5 times as you count out loud, march 10 times, pat your knees 3 times... you get the idea. 
• move around the classroom:  I have two instructional areas set up in my classroom, one at the SMART Board and the other one at the circle.  We also have our table spots.  Throughout the day, we move frequently from one area to the next for quick and easy movement breaks.  I cover my eyes and challenge them to move so quietly that I can't hear them, then I make a big fuss that they mustn't be listening because I can't hear a thing.  They love it, and it provides excellent practice for moving around the classroom quietly. 
• math games:  I post the numerals 0-10 around the classroom in random places.  For a quick movement break, I'll give each child a ten frame/dot pattern card and they have to find the numeral it matches and stand in front of it.  A few rounds of this strengthens number recognition and provides some much needed movement.

2) Visual schedule:  consider setting up a visual schedule in your classroom to bring order and strengthen routines.  Not only is this a recommended practice for supporting students with exceptionalities, it is incredibly helpful for many learners.  A visual schedule uses pictures/symbols to order the events that are happening in the classroom that day, and after each activity is completed, you take it out of the chart or move the arrow to the next activity.  My students rely on it and reference it throughout the day to see when a favourite activity is scheduled.  If you have a speech language pathologist who is willing to help, they are a great resource for developing visual schedules in Boardmaker.  Otherwise, photograph activities and use real pictures, source copyright-free clipart off the Internet, or use your Bitmoji (get the Chrome browser extension) to make a visual schedule.  You can use velcro to attach them to the wall or a pocket chart works well too.  I build the visual schedule before the children arrive, and we review it at morning circle.

It can also be really useful to just hold up the picture for the activity that is happening next.  Instead of talking, walking silently around the room and showing a picture can be very effective.  I find that this practice is helpful for students with special needs as it limits the opportunities for arguing and minimizes language.

3)  Develop a calm classroom atmosphere:  Kindergarten classrooms can be busy, noisy places (as they should be), but calm and quiet times are needed too.  How to accomplish this?

• Insist on quiet before instruction:  there are countless ways to prepare students to listen (1-2-3 eyes on me, 1-2 eyes on you) or my personal favourite (criss cross applesauce, hands in lap, gingersnap, lips zipped, Cool Whip), so find one or two that work for you and your students.  Take the time to practice what good listening behavior looks like and why it is important.  Offer lots of praise!  
• Breath work:  to help regulate our bodies and emotions, we take part in different breathing activities throughout the day.  Breath work can be as simple as a few deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth, and both you and your students will feel more relaxed after.  In fact, I always maintain that breath work in the classroom is more for me than my students!  Check out this video for some ideas or grab this book from Amazon.  
• Minimize classroom clutter:  cover your shelves with fabric, turn off the fluorescent lights and add some mini lights or lamps, and get rid of the glaring primary colours everywhere.  I haven't thoroughly looked into the research on this, but I know that my room feels calmer and more soothing since I made these changes (with more to come).  Take a look at my classroom here.  
• Soothing music:  while we engage in quiet activities, we listen to soothing background music.  Here's our favourite playlist at the moment. 

• Diffuse essential oils:  as long as families are supportive and you are compliant with school policies, consider diffusing calming essential oils such as lavender or Young Living Stress Away.  My kiddos love having a diffuser in the classroom and are so interested in the different oils and why we use them. 

4)  Schedule lots of play and small group activities:  we begin and end our day with play (if you need to justify this, the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada recommend 60 minutes per day).  It's a fun and easy way to start the day, and children separate more easily from their family members when they can take part in a preferred activity with their friends.  We play for 30 minutes in the morning, and 40 minutes at the end of the day.  In September, my little ones are so exhausted that play is about the only thing that keeps them going until the end of the day.  I integrate lots of small group activities throughout the day as well such as:

• math games:  simple dice games are easy to teach and fun to play.  They provide an opportunity to strengthen skills such as subitizing, one-to-one correspondence, number recognition, and turn-taking.  Here's a couple of my favourite games! 
• fine motor activities: developing fine motor skills and strengthening little hands is an important pre-cursor to more formal printing activities.  That's why we do lots of fun centre-style activities in the first term of Kindergarten.  Students love these activities, and often I integrate literacy, numeracy, and science outcomes as students develop their pincer grasp and increase hand strength.  Learn more here! 

What are your suggestions for starting the year off right in Kindergarten?  How do you keep busy four and five-year olds engaged as they learn the routines of school?  Comment below or reach out to me on social media--I'd love to hear from you! 

Project-Based Learning Goes Post-Secondary: Educators' Voices and Visions for the Future

For the past four weeks, I've been teaching 02:210 Teacher Identity in Brandon University's PENT (Program for the Education of Native Teachers) program.  I had 37 students from all over Manitoba--everywhere from nearby Sioux Valley to Oxford House and Gillam in northern Manitoba.  It's been an amazing experience, one that has confirmed for me yet again that I love teaching big kids as much as little kids.  And as always, my students have taught me more than I could ever hope to teach them.

When I teach pre-service teachers, I strive to explore the course content while introducing teaching strategies and approaches that my students can use in their own classrooms.  For those of who you follow my work, you'll already know that project-based learning is one of my preferred pedagogical approaches regardless of the age of my learners.  In Teacher Identity, one of the outcomes is to gain insight into the nature of teaching as a profession.  I decided that an educator panel would be the perfect way to talk to real educators while participating in an authentic project-based learning experience.  My goal for this project was for my students to inquire into the teaching profession, construct new knowledge, and gain experience in designing and implementing a project-based learning experience. Throughout the project, I wanted to explain the teaching opportunities and links to K-12 curricula as well as how students of diverse needs might be included.

When I presented this idea to my students, they were enthusiastic about an educator panel, but many had little to no knowledge of project-based learning.  As a result, I shared a presentation with them that Leah Obach and I had developed to share at conferences.  We examined the history of project-based learning back to the days of John Dewey and reviewed the relevant literature from the field.  Exploring resources from the Buck Institute for Education PBL Works and projects from Kindergarten-Grade 12 gave students a clearer vision of project-based learning (PBL).  With this deeper understanding, we were more prepared to plan and implement an educator panel using a project-based learning model.

Steps in Planning and Implementation: Educators' Voices and Visions for the Future Panel 

Setting goals: enthusiasm was running high, so we jumped right into developing a to-do list for our educator panel.  We were floundering a bit until one student suggested that we needed to examine what we hoped to achieve from the panel.  We took a step back and had a group discussion about our goals for the educator panel.  We decided that we wanted to gain knowledge of the different roles and positions within the education sector as well as the role of the Manitoba Teachers' Society.  This was the perfect time to highlight the emergent nature of project-based learning, the importance of student voice, and the role of the teacher as the facilitator.

To-do list: with our goals more clearly defined, it was possible to develop a to-do list to structure the project.  As always, the to-do list grew and evolved throughout the project and structured our daily activities until the educator panel took place.

Student roles: once we developed our to-do list, we decided to form student committees that would be in charge of a group of tasks.  After much discussion we decided that the following committees were needed:

Our committees evolved throughout the project.  Originally, we had a hospitality committee, but when some of the students decided to create handmade cards, they split into two groups.  One group decided to handle the refreshments while the other group focused on the cards.  This was a perfect example of how project-based learning continually evolves and how students and teachers need to be flexible.

Students signed up for the committees that appealed to them.  In a K-12 classroom, I might have made rules about how many students could be on each committee--and you can see that the committees were not balanced.  However, I decided it was more important that my adult learners had choice--and I was delighted to see them solve problems and negotiate who should work on what committee.

Panel guest list:  all students had the opportunity to provide suggestions for potential panel guests, then our invitation committee made the final decisions and contacted them.  Our invitation committee was committed to a balanced and representative committee, paying close attention to factors such as gender, Indigenous/non-Indigenous, years of experience, and role/position.  Even the panel members themselves commented on the broad representation and balance of the group of speakers!

Panelists included Donna Prince (Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre literacy consultant), Noella Eagle (Assistant Professor, Brandon University), Rob Tomlinson (principal, Earl Oxford School), Steven Kaskiw (resource teacher, Strathclair Community School), and Adam Grabowski (Park West School Division local MTS president and teacher). 

Panelist Donna Prince with her daughter Jocelyn Prince, one of my students 

Panelist Noella Eagle with her niece Jillian Chalmers, another student in Teacher Identity 

Questions and event hosting: three students worked together to develop a list of questions for the panelists.  They also developed a form to solicit questions from other students, giving them the option to ask the question themselves.  These students liaised with the panel guest committee, sharing information so that our panelists were emailed the list of questions in advance. This was an excellent opportunity to discuss the interdependent nature of project-based learning, as well as some of the important ELA lessons that might be taught to support this portion of the project. 

Stacy Desjardins welcomed the panelists to our event, and Nicole Friesen posed questions and guided discussion.  Questions focused on student diversity (cultural, English language leaners, and special needs), the role of the Manitoba Teachers' Society, the panelists' reflections on their careers, and advice for our students.

Trevor McIntyre asked his question from the audience. 

Kyle McIvor shared closing remarks and thanked the panelists for their time and advice. 

Location, setup, audio/video: before we could choose a location, we had to decide if the event was open to other classes and/or the public.  The students decided to keep the event limited to our class, John Minshull (director of PENT), and Dr. Heather Duncan (Dean of Education).  Live-streaming the event seemed like the perfect way to keep the atmosphere small and intimate while sharing the panel with a larger audience.  One student approached the education office to find out if they would be willing to let us advertise and live-stream the even through their Facebook page, and they agreed to help us with setup and filming.

Setting up our Facebook live-streamed event, which has had 662 views so far!  Watch the recorded event here. 

We requested permission to use the Little Theatre across from our classroom.  We discussed how this would be an excellent lesson for children on capacity/area/perimeter when choosing an event location. Since there weren't enough microphones available, we conducted sound tests to find out if a non-amplified voice could be easily heard.  The Little Theatre's acoustics proved excellent, and the students and I remarked that this project would fit in well with the science outcomes on sound. 

Thank you cards and gift certificates: four students took on the task of creating beautiful handmade thank you cards.  We held a class vote to decide on gift cards for our panelists, concluding that Chapters/Coles gift cards would be the best choice.

Refreshments:  the students felt strongly that we needed to offer our guests refreshments and have a "meet and greet" after the panel.  The refreshment committee approached the director of PENT and asked for funding to cover the costs of refreshments and gift cards.  I was thrilled when Mr. Minshull asked the students to draft a letter outlining their requests and submit a budget.  As a class, we discussed these fantastic teaching and learning opportunities--numeracy, learning how to develop a budget, letter writing, and persuasive writing.

Mr. Minshull agreed to support our project and the students had the great idea of comparing prices between Tim Horton's and Forbidden Flavours for coffee and tea.  Forbidden Flavours was only $1 more with the added bonuses of setting up and taking away the coffee for us (as well as being a local business), so we decided to go with them.  Fruit, dainties, and bottles of water for the speakers were the other items on the menu.  Delicious treats from another local business, Chez Angela, seemed perfect for our event.

Jocelyn Prince, Jamie Mousseau, and Lori Campbell checking out the refreshments following the panel 

Donna Prince (panelist) and Delilah Bruce chatting after the panel

Dress code:  I made the suggestion that students might want to dress up as they would be meeting some well-known educators from the field who could influence their future careers.  We discussed how Brandon University logo wear was a great option to dress clothes.  On the day of the event, our class looked sharp!

Christina Cochrane Monroy and Nicole Friesen visiting with panelists Steven Kaskiw and Adam Grabowski following the panel.

Social media:  as part of our course, all the students set up Twitter accounts and learned how to use hashtags to participate in Twitter chats and back channels.  We decided to stay off our devices as we wanted to be present and focused during the panel, but we did want someone to share on social media as the event was happening.  Kyle McIvor agreed to be our official tweeter, taking on the role of paraphrasing and sharing important information from the panel using the hashtag #PENTteacheridentity.

Reflection:  the day of the education panel was quickly over, and due to the students' strong planning and execution, it proceeded perfectly!  The next day we spent time reviewing our social media feeds and photographs as well as debriefing, discussing favourite moments and what went well.  We were delighted with all the nuggets of wisdom shared by our panelists and how prepared they were.  We congratulated our classmates for their hard work and the great job they did fulfilling their various roles.  We spent some time discussing how project-based learning resulted in authentic learning that made a real impact in the world, and how it felt to complete a project that made a difference.  Many students expressed how much they learned about the education profession and their interest in trying this pedagogical approach in their future classroom practice and communities.

As always, following a project-based learning experience, I came away feeling amazed with my students' abilities and the amount of learning that had taken place--as well as incredibly grateful for the opportunity to guide a wonderful group of future teachers.

Interested in trying project-based learning?  Find out more here:
Strengthening Students' Numeracy Skills Through PBL 
A Road Map for Success in Early Years: Project-Based Learning 
Walking for Polar Bears 
Reindeer Rescue: Project-Based Learning in Junior Kindergarten