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Creatureville Project

Application of the Doreen Nelson Method of Design-Based Learning

2008-2010

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Table of ContentsThe Teacher……………………………………………………… 3

DBL Introduction………………………………………………... 4

Comparison between DBL and Traditional Design…..…….... 5

6 ½ steps……………………………………………………..….. 7

Long Range Boards…………………………………………..…. 8

My Story….…………………………………….……………….… 10

Criteria List……………………………………………………...… 12

Pathway #1 Instant City……………………………………...... 13

Pathway #2 NBS Introduction..………………………….…… 15

Pathway #3 NBS Body Object………………………..…….... 17

Pathway #4 Location Challenge…..……………….…..……. 19

Pathway #5 Land Division Challenge ………………...……. 21

Pathway #6 Individual Design Challenge……………..……. 23

City Put together, but not Complete…………………………… 25

Pathway #7 NBS Way to Move………………………..……. 26

Pathway #8 NBS Shelter………………………………..…… 28

Pathway #9 NBS Place to learn…………………………..… 30

Pathway #10 NBS Float………………………………………. 32

History Wall…………………………………………..…….……. 33

Why is DBL important?............................................................. 34

How did DBL change my teaching?…………………………… 35

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The Teacher

My name is Joshua Whittemore and I taught elementary school for six years. Historically, as a teacher, I taught in a traditional way. I presented the state standards, told my objective, taught my lesson, allowed for individual practice or another type of traditional assessment.

Having taught for six years, I desired to teach in a way that caused the students to understand what and why they were learning and to make more of an impact on children and their future as life-long learners.

I heard of a program called Design-Based Learning, which claimed to inspire imagination, higher level thinking, and kept student’s interest, as well as teaching the state standards.

I introduced the Design-Based Learning (DBL) curriculum during the 2008-2009 school year and continued it into the 2009-2010 school year.

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Design-Based Learning Introduced

Design-Based Learning is a methodology which employs techniques of the design profession to completely integrate the curriculum.

It builds on the backs of educational giants such as; John Dewey’s ‘make it’ approach, and Benjamin Bloom’s higher level thinking Taxonomy.

It teaches students to think critically according to Bloom’s Taxonomy and make connections between what they learn and real life. It teaches democracy, creativity, and problem solving skills.

It provides a context and a reason for learning. All learning is based on an ever growing story of challenges that is unfolding and being constantly revised on a grand scheme in front of the children.

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Design Based

Learning

Traditional Design Process

Use hands on

approach

Make use of Criteria

Implement Choice

Have and evaluative

portion

Has 6 1/2 steps Has 7 Steps

Used to teach

thinkingUsed to teach

design

Give it a try comes before

research

Research then try it

A comparison between the traditional design process used to train professional designers and Design-Based Learning used in schools as a methodology to teach all subjects

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DBL Compared to Traditional Design Process

• The major difference between the two is that Nelson’s DBL teaches students to think, not to be designers.

• Backward Thinking™ teaches the children to use their own wants and desires in a design and not simply to replicate what has been done.

• The traditional design process used by designers contains some preconceived ideas, while Backward Thinking encourages creativity and making things Never-Before-Seen.

• Both methods use many of the same steps, but in different order. The traditional design process starts by the teaching of a subjects and ends with a product. Backward Thinking starts with an ambiguous problem that needs to be solved by building, and ends in learning about several subjects that tie back into the object built.

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6 1/2 STEPS OF DBL1. I asked myself what I needed to teach. For example I needed to teach about community in the social studies standards for second grade.

2. I identified a problem from the curriculum. How do I teach about community?

2 ½ I stated it as a NBS challenge. For example, “Make a NBS Instant City.”

3. I set the criteria by creating a Don’t Wants and Needs list for students to reference. I used this to assess their product.

4. The students made the Instant City using the criteria, talked and wrote about why they have what they have.

5. I taught guided lessons that related to the NBS challenge. In an NBS Instant City, I taught lessons from social studies, math, language arts, etc. All lessons centered around the challenge. I taught about measuring by measuring the city. I also taught about writing by writing a description about the city. I used this challenge to plan for two weeks of guided lessons.

6. The students revised their original model applying what they learned from the guided lessons. After they learned what was in a real city the students found out that they needed to add things like hospitals, fire departments, and other ideas that were left out of their initial designs.

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Long Range Planning Boards

This is a picture of the year long planning boards that I made to organize my curriculum for an entire year. I presented these boards to the children, administration, and parents. They told everyone where they were going as well as show where they had been. The colors on the boards are grouped together. The picture on the left is a picture of the legend. This is movable and can attach to the front of any month so that everyone knows what is being studied. The picture on the right is a picture of how the movable legend attaches to a month and tells what guided lessons are going to be done in connection with each challenge. This shows how the curriculum is fully integrated and accomplished around a challenge.

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The Year Already Planned

This shows all ten boards, a whole school year, put together in succession. The bright red arrow at the top names each challenge. Some challenges are two weeks long, and some are one month long. The yellow row represents the Language Arts guided lessons. The pink row represents the Mathematics guided lessons. The purple row represents the Social Studies guided lessons. The blue row shows the Science guided lessons, and finally the green row shows the Art Lessons. The brown row across the bottom show the Meetings so that the children are learning democracy. Going vertically, and following the column down, each column represents a week of integrated guided lessons. Each individual guided lesson is divided into two sections. The top portion of the card, is the guided lesson, often based on Bloom’s Taxonomy in order to teach higher level thinking, while the bottom portion shows the state standard that the lesson is founded on.

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My StoryThe ‘story’ that I used to organize the year long second grade curriculum contained all of my

challenges, and explained how one challenge was connected to another. I used a story in my class

to engage students. One challenge builds on another in a physical way; one challenge built on, and

expanded on the previous challenge. The city that was built, was based on a real place, the city the

students lived in. For instance, the students learned who they were by being introduced to each

other- NBS Introduction, then they became something new by building a new skin- NBS Body

Object. The students became their object and found out where they live in the new world- NBS

Location. From here the story continued as students created a city where they decided what went

on their individual parcels of land- NBS Land Parcel and NBS Individual Design, how the government

would be run- Meetings, what kind of shelter they needed- NBS Shelter, what kind of place to learn-

NBS place to learn, and what kinds of ways they needed to move around- NBS Way to Move. The

products from each challenge were placed on a physical landsite which contained the city and

changed as new learning occurred. Finally the year culminated when the students designed a float

to relive the years accomplishments. The sequence began in a simple way by teaching them who

they were, and grew to more complex, a functioning, interconnected city. The second graders used

their high level thinking skills as the designers of a world of their making with the constraints of

applying curriculum to each challenge as guided lessons were taught. I organized each challenge

into a pathway that is made up of the challenge and guided lessons. And the progression of

experiences in the pathway became my story in the classroom.

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My Story (cont.)1. NBS

Instant City2. NBS

Introduction3. NBS Body

Object

4. Location Challenge

5. Land Division

Challenge

6. Individual Design

Challenge

7. NBS Way to Move 8. NBS

Shelter

9. NBS Place to Learn

10. NBS Float (culminating

object)

The year long list of design challenges that make up what I call my story. Each was a pathway that included a challenge and guided lessons.

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Sample Challenge Criteria ListDon’t Wants Needs-to forget the -to keep major landmarks

geography - to include shelters

-to include what -to have places to buy

is not there things

-out of scale This is an example of a criteria list that I used for each challenge. It shows the things that I

Don’t Want the students to include when they build the challenge and the things that they

Need. This criteria list was first created by the teacher apart from the students. However, I

began to allow the students to create the list by eliciting responses from them. I did not

include some important things that they needed on purpose. I did this in order to activate

their high level thinking skills to learn to fix a mistake. In the case of the above list, they

found they needed places to get well, a place to learn, and others. The needs list always

came from the standards. For example, the second grade social studies standards require

students to know what landmarks and are able to identify them on a map, they have to know

about different types of shelters (especially for animals), and about commerce in both social

studies and science. For each challenge these facts are included as the criteria to justify

students physical designs.

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Pathway # 1 The Instant City The challenges began in late August as the students

created an Instant City. This is an introduction to the

whole concept of Never-Before-Seen. They were

excited too, and were surprisingly adept at

contributing to the criteria list, though not as good at

following it. One thing that was difficult to do was to

teach the students to pay close attention to the

criteria list. When I began, I thought that DBL was the

sort of methodology where students make their own

ideas and there was no right or wrong. I was wrong.

It was not until a little later that I found out I was

completely in charge. I was always in charge but,

forgot, allowing the students to include anything in

their cities. Later I learned that the criteria could be

linked to the assessment of the challenges. When this

subtle change was made the children really paid close

attention in order to get the grade they wanted.

Here is an example of one city that did not go so well. This student forgot places to have fun and places to live. I asked many questions about functionality of her design. The positive part of this mistake was that during the revision process she corrected many errors and greatly improved on her original design, showing growth in learning to follow directions.

Each student got their own individual piece in

which to build their city on. From this the class

began to build from individual parts to the whole

of the final city.

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Instant City (cont.)

Don’t Wants Needs

-too crowded - 3-D

-copying -Places to live

-to look like our -places to live

Cities - places to shop

-places to have fun

- open places

-people

-scale

Instant City

Social Studies 2.2.1Locate on a simple letter grid

demographic features

Math 1.3 Measure the length of an

object

Arrange the coordinates of a

city on a number letter

grid

Measure the outside of the instant city in

inches.

When the students built their city they learned to identify the parts of the city then compared their

Instant City to a real city.

Criteria Chart

Curriculum Integration Chart

• Some guided lessons that I did with this challenge was to start the year off right

by connecting social studies, science, math, and language arts, all around one

challenge. They wrote home about their city, using city ‘language’. They decided

what types of buildings they wanted and argued about who had better Instant

Cities.

The students learned about map coordinates and measured the perimeter of their city

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Pathway #2 NBS Introduction Once the students had a chance to try out

the Instant City and began to understand the

NBS concept, they were better able to get to

know each other by introducing themselves

in a 3-D/NBS way. The students found this

challenge difficult, but from my perspective

difficult in a good way. This was the students

first chance to understand symbolic

representation; how one object could be a

deck of cards but represent a love of

mathematics. This was challenging in a good

way. One thing that doing this challenge

taught me was that it is okay to front load.

The first time I did this challenge I tried to

have them do it only after a brief

explanation. I was afraid of giving too much

information to them. After explaining what

representation is, the results were much

better.

Jelene, an ELD student, shared how she loves math by using the number cards, how she wants to be a doctor by representing it with a stuffed man and how she had a big family by using a picture of the a lot of people in a building.

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NBS Introduction (cont.)

Don’t Wants Needs

- to forget you -NBS

- to be embarrassed -3-D

- to be ignored - to show things

I like

- to talk while others - to show your

are working family

- a goal for the

future

NBS Intro

Speaking 1.5Organize presentations and maintain clear focus

Justify why you chose the items you did and what

they represent

Social Studies 2.1 Trace

family history through

primary and secondary resources

Plan and write a descriptive

paragraph about your family

Curriculum Integration Chart

Criteria List

When the students introduced themselves in a new way they learned to identify their own character traits then they represented these concepts in a new way.

This sample chart shows the integration of two subjects in school; Language Arts and Social Studies. I chose lessons that went along with the NBS Intro, and the standards are from the CA state standards.

• Some Guided Lessons that followed this challenge included writing about

themselves, reading stories about meeting new people, and in math, to count

the items used.

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Pathway # 3 NBS Body Object• Once the students learned about symbolic

representation, in the third challenge, they

chose one object that represented them in

another way, and it became their new

skin. By doing this the students

experienced new perspectives and

became something new and extended the

meaning of one thing representing

another. The students all enjoyed doing

this challenge so much that they didn’t

realize that they were learning. The

students learned categorization by

grouping themselves into families. They

were naturals in finding ways in which

they were alike and different. They

interviewed each other as the objects.

One boy who decided he was a football

decided, “ The grass is my enemy

because all the players throw me down

after a touchdown.”

These students dressed up in their NBS Body Object. The girl in the middle chose a clip board to show how she loves to work hard and how she is organized.

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NBS Body Object (cont.)

Don’t Wants Needs-to be embarrassed -to look like the real

object

- criticized by others - details that identify

-to be a live object - the object to take the full body length

-to be seen from across the room

- to be man made

-NBS

-3- D

NBS Skin

Science 4.0.4c

Compare and sort common

objects by two

attributes

Art 3.1 Explain how artists use their work to

share experiences

Determine different ways that chosen

items would be classified.

Plan a way to market

yourself to others by

creating new packaging for your product

When the students became a new object they learned to identify different character traits then they compared their object to others to gain new points of view.

• One guided lesson done in conjunction with this challenge was they wrote letters from

a book to a pencil box. They wrote about a day in the life of a piggy bank or whatever

their object was learning the point of view of their object.

• The first time that I did this challenge I found it difficult to keep the students to the

criteria. The second time that I did this challenge I really took charge and let them know

that they must look at and use the criteria list. This gave much better results and made

the children more aware of the vocabulary used.

Criteria ListCurriculum Integration Chart

Students learned about classification of objects by attributes, while at the same time classified their objects.

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Pathway # 4 Location Challenge This pathway led the students to find

themselves in a real place so that they

could redesign a familiar place with real

world constraints for the rest of the year.

Again, the students thought they were

playing a game, but in reality they were

learning the California State standards for

map skills. One student remarked, “This

is like a scavenger hunt.” The students

were engrossed in finding the different

parts of the city as well as where they

lived. For this challenge I was very

surprised by how adept the they were at

keeping up with map concepts. They not

only took to the challenge but easily

learned a lot about borders in cities, and

what needed to be included in the city.

They were very motivated to learn

cardinal directions and relative directions.

The students worked in groups in order to find themselves on a map to build the city in a real location. The children then shared their ideas why their city location is the best.

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Location Challenge (cont.)

Don’t Wants Needs

-to be too big -to include our school

-to be too small -to have landmarks

-to have separate -to include important

shapes businesses

- to give good reasons

-to be one solid shape

Location

Math 2.0 Use repeated

addition and counting to do multiplication

Social studies 2.1 trace the

history of family using artifacts

and other sources

Measure your city and use

your proportion to enlarge your city on a piece

of paper

Organize a map for future

generations that would tell

about the community around you

When the students located where they were on the map they learned to distinguish landmarks and details then they compared the map of West Covina to a map of California.

Criteria List

• A Guided Lesson that I did with this challenge was letter writing. The children wrote

letters to the neighboring cities to tell them about all the things their real city had to offer.

This taught them to use the vocabulary of cities. In Math they learned about

multiplication of inches and proportions when they had to make the map bigger.Curriculum Integration Chart

This shows how two subjects, that are usually not grouped or taught together can be when taught around a central theme, in this case city location.

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Pathway # 5 Land Division Challenge

The students decided who had the best idea for where the real city was to be built. Then they came up with several different ideas on how to divide the land up, ultimately deciding on this pattern with 20 land parcels. There were twenty parcels given one to each student. Each parcel was to be designed by each student separately, then later brought together to make one city.

This girl chose what part of the land that she wanted to design. The students decided to pick land parcels at random, which lead to a great discussion on the land grab system that took place during the pioneer days.

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Land Division Challenge (cont.)

Don’t Wants Needs

-the same size land -one piece per

for everyone child

-to few pieces -different size

pieces

-good reasons for

how to divide the land

Land Divisio

n

Social Studies 2.2.4 Compare and

contrast basic land

use

Writing 6.1 Write brief narratives

based on experiences

Use double-bubble map to compare urban and suburban

Imagine your life and write

narrative about your day

When the students designed a plan to divide the land in a city they learned that a whole piece of land can be divided into pieces many ways then they justified which piece they wanted and why.

Criteria List Curriculum Integration Chart

Students compared and contrasted urban areas and suburban areas while also learning about writing.

• During this challenge I saw how the students put their high level thinking and reasoning skills to the test. Each student decided what portion of land was important to them and had to give sufficient reasons on why. Evaluating is a second grade standard and I found this challenge particularly suited for that. Many times, I found that I wanted to ‘bail them out’. At first, when they found they couldn’t come up with an idea, I would give it to them instead of letting them reason it out. Then I started to let them reason it out themselves so they would learn how to put their ideas into words. I felt they were able to do this as a result of the talking and writing that they did in coordination with each pathway.

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Pathway # 6 Individual Design After the students chose what piece of

land they wanted, they designed what would be on their piece. They loved the idea of taking land that they live near and planning what want on it. Here I questioned them about their design. I asked what they wanted and why and made them reason it out. The students were fully engaged in the planning of their parcel. They loved talking to the other kids, bragging about what they put on their individual design. As usual, during this challenge I questioned the students about their designs always holding them to the criteria list and not letting them off the hook with any push button ideas or ‘I don’t knows’

When making the criteria list I noticed that the students left out some things that the future city needed. I was in charge of the criteria list so I did not allow them to include things like a hospital, or different kinds of stores. I did this in order to get them to realize the problem, fix it on their own, and learn to think in a critical way and have fun.

This shows one student’s individual design for his parcel of land. Individually this student’s design was well-done, but when put together to make a whole city the students recognized a new problem that needed to be fixed. The outline shows the border of their parcel of land.

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Individual Design Challenge (cont.)

Don’t Wants Needs

-to forget scale -places to live

-to forget proportion -places to shop

-to put what is not there -places for business

-places to eat

-places to learn

- places for fun

- roads

- places to keep laws

-NBS

Individual

design

Reading Comp. 2.6 Recognize cause

and effect relationships

Social Studies 2.4.2

Understand the role and

interdependence of buyers and

sellers

Assess what the cause and effects

of having an unfinished city

Judge whether or not our city has the pieces

it takes to surviveWhen the students built a NBS land parcel in a

real location they learned to identify what they had too much of or nor enough of then they defended what must be part of the city These and other Guided Lessons taught the students

to use high level thinking skills and connect two core subject areas

Criteria List

Curriculum Integration Chart

•In conjunction with this challenge the students wrote a narrative about how the city was designed. They made evaluations about the city as a whole and its sustainability. They learned about taking surveys of what businesses should be in the city and turned them into graphs. These and other lessons were done over a month to cover many areas of the Second grade curriculum.

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City Put Together…But not Completed

This is how the city looked before the NBS Way to Move. The students, each with their own parcel or landsite, put together for the first time, saw how they still had to experiment with placement after a Guided Lesson on borders. The first landsite used was made of cardboard and stood four foot by 5 foot. These were kept in the back of the classroom, and could be accessed any time. Later on I acquired a more sturdy landsite made of thick foam board that could be put together, take apart, used, fixed, and reused every year. The students began asking, “How do I get from my parcel to the others…there’s no road.” To which I replied, “Good question, let’s look at our next challenge.”

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Pathway # 7 NBS Way to Move When the students put their individual

designs together they identified one

major thing that was wrong with the

whole city. The roads that everyone

created only connected things in their

own parcels, and did not connect the

other parcels to each other. In addition

there were no ways to get around the

whole city. This challenge in particular

gave rise to a great discussion amongst

the children. Conversations like “I can’t

wait to tell Michael what I made,” as

Bershoun said, were not uncommon. I

found that during this challenge the

children had grown verbally. During this

challenge the students discussed the

details of their designs and took greater

ownership of what they ad created.

Growth was seen amongst ELD students

who held a high percentage in my class.

This young man, usually reserved (and an English Language Learner), found an outlet in DBL. He was able to tell about his way to move that relied on water ways. He spoke and wrote about how this would be cheaper than gas.

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NBS Way to Move (cont.)

Don’t wants Needs

-the same old way to travel -to be explained

-to forget the cities size -3-D

-to be too small -NBS

-to be too big -to try to make it move

-reasons how it will be better than other ways to travel

-a way to stop and turn

-to carry things

NBS Way to move

Art 1.1Show a variety of locomotor movements

Physical Science 1C Students

know the way to change

something’s position

Describe ways to move around the city and act it out with your

body

Hypothesize and test how far objects move with

pushing and pulling

When the students built a new way to move around in the city they learned to identify different forms of travel then they decided on the best ways to move around their city.

Criteria ListCurriculum Integration Chart

Two subjects normally not seen together, art and physical science, easily put together around the idea of a city.

• This challenge paired nicely with the second grade curriculum. The students named their ways to move and we learned about capitalizing proper nouns. After this they really seemed more attentive to capitalizing other proper nouns as well. They measured their ways to move, tested them out, thought critically about how they would work in the city and most importantly placed them in the city being built in order to try it.

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Pathway #8 NBS Shelter• After the students built a connecting

roadways in their city, they needed a place

to drive. That’s where they began building

shelters. The first time I did this challenge I

made a mistake in having the students use

things around the classroom to build. Over

time I found this to be a big drawback in

creativity. When non-specific items (no

labels, rolls, sticks) were used the creativity

and critical thinking were better expressed.

The next year that I did this challenge, 2009-

2010, I collected household items with no

labels, classroom items as pictured here, and

other ‘throw away’ items. The second time I

did it there was more creativity and

thoughtfulness. While proportion and size

continued to be an issue, students seemed to

stretch their imaginations giving justifications

for their changes on some of the every day

items.

This student found an outlet for her creativity in DBL. She came up with a shelter with moveable walls that would roll back in order to be able to put big things inside without problem. She also came up with a stackable house model where houses would be stacked up on top of each other.

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NBS Shelter (cont.)

Don’t wants Needs

-to forget where you are -place to cook

(climate) -places to sleep

-to leave out different types -place to bathe

of shelters -general meeting place

-only one room shelters -way to cool/warm

-to use books -place to use the restroom

-to use markers -NBS

-3-D

NBS Shelte

r

Writing 2.1 Write brief narratives

based on experiences

Math 2.0 Students identify

and describe common objects

in space

Classify the shapes used in the shelters

by geometric names

Write brief narrative

about a day in the life at their own shelter

When the students built a shelter they learned to identify the parts of shelters then they compared and contrasted their shelters with those of animals

Criteria List Curriculum Integration Chart

The students wrote narratives as well as classified the shapes used in their designs.

•The students did a lot of writing about their shelters. They wrote narratives

about a day in their city land parcel, as well as planning the plants that would be

in their yards. They also read about and compared their shelters to animal

shelters.

•Many students included retractable parts in their shelter which led to great

discussion on California’s climate as well as mechanics, such as simple machines

and magnets, both under the second grade curriculum.

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Pathway # 9 NBS Place to Learn Now that the students had a city, a way to

get around, and a place to live, they now created a NBS Place to Learn. This challenge tested their creativity. One student replicated the existing place to learn. I really had to push them to come up with new ways to have a place to learn. But after a while of not letting them do the same old thing, they were soon asking me questions like, “Can I have two playgrounds?” or “Do the buildings have to have roofs?” I found that every once in a while I had to press them on paying attention to the criteria list. I found that the more I pressed them on this the more they felt its importance and followed the list. They were more willing to have that ‘serious fun’ that we talked so much about.

I did this challenge two times, 2008-2009 and 2009-2010. In the spring of ‘09 I saw their creativity stifled with the use of classroom materials. In the fall of ‘09 with a new group of learners, I saw their interest increase, and therefore production increased. This may have been due to having more scaled building objects on the landsites.

These two boys decided they did not like each other’s place to learn. I had them talk it out and justify why their own designs. Once they explained their designs, they found an appreciation for each others’ ideas.

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NBS Place to Learn (cont.)

Don’t Wants Needs

-the same kind of place to learn -NBS

-to be ONLY classrooms -3-D

-place to get books

-place to eat

-place to play

-place to relax

-way to protect the school

-place to meet

NBS Place to Learn

Number Sense 1.1

Count, read, and write

numbers to 1000

Social Studies 2.2 Compare and contrast

their daily lives with those of parents and

grandparents

Count the number of schools in

West Covina

Read and explore

schools in the past through

reading various

literatureWhen the students built a NBS Place to Learn they learned to identify the different parts of a learning environment then they selected, rated, and supported one place to learn in the city.

Criteria ListCurriculum Integration Chart

The students learned to add and subtract using the NBS Place to Learn, as well as how schools were in the past and present.

• Again, this challenge helped the children better understand scale which is an important map skill to have. The Guided lesson that were taught were; how to read and draw a map, compare and contrast to others ideas, read and explore about other schools, and many others all integrated.

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Pathway # 10 NBS Float

This is the final and culminating project in Creatureville. This was the perfect opportunity to review and assess the student learning over the year. The students found it fun to plan a parade through the city and to bring back into rememberence the old and completed challenges from the 2009-2009 school year.

The guided lessons were again, all focused around the idea of the city and planning for a parade throughout the streets on their landsite. The students measured the perimeter of the city as well as the parade route, wrote letters to friends inviting them to the parade, designing other advertisements about the parade, taking polls of what people wanted to see, graphing these ideas, as well as reading about real life parades. This was one of the most popular challenges that year.

The students stood proud thinking back on all that they had learned. I was able to have an overview of the year’s curriculum, to see where any holes in learning were.

It gave the students a chance to put everything together for one culminating activity. It combined a NBS Design Challenge, working in cooperative groups, high level reasoning, guided lessons, and hands on designing.

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History Wall

This is a picture of the History Wall. I used the classroom to visually represent what was learned. It was another way for the students to remember what projects were done and, like the city, grew throughout the year as each new challenge was completed. I created it by taking samples of student’s work and put it on a bulletin board. I did not have much room on my walls to create one large wall that is approximately 6’ x 9’, but instead I created one month by month. While I was creating it, I wasn’t sure of its value for students. However, after a while, the students took notice of it and referred back to it as the year went on. It helped them remember learning that went on. One child commented, “Mr. Whittemore, this writing is like the writing that we did during the shelter huh?” Then I felt sure that the History Wall contributed to reminding students and me that learning was happening and being retained.

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Why is the Doreen Nelson Method of Design-Based Learning™ Important?

This methodology was important for several reasons: It inspired students and sparked curiosity and creativity. In a

‘standards-based’ world, students are increasingly lacking in play and need are to do more because play builds social skills and can teach civic responsibility.

It gave a context for learning and presents ideas as they are in real life by integrating all curricula and not teaching them as isolated skills.

It gave students who are traditionally not self-motivated learners a voice and an interest in working hard by providing them with fun and learning opportunities.

It set high standards for learning and taught all students how to do things that most don’t believe they can do, such as plan a city.

It taught high level thinking skills that can transfer from grade level to grade level, even when smaller facts don’t.

Lastly, it was just plain fun. What more can you ask for, fun and learning? Nelson’s DBL brought them both together in such a way where the students didn’t know they were doing both.

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How Did DBL Change My Teaching?

After developing the Creatureville Project by taking this trip through the world of Design-Based Learning I learned a few things about my own teaching. First, I learned that orderliness and quietness does not necessarily indicate good teaching. People knew my class to be ordered and well behaved. I know now that this doesn’t guarantee anything about student’s learning. Often times now my classroom is louder than most, but it is a not a rowdy noise, but a focused, purposeful noise, because my project encouraged talking and discussion of ideas.

Secondly, I learned that replication was not the only form of learning. I would give different projects at the end of each unit of study where the children would produce some sort of item to show that they learned. In all reality it was just a copy of what they learned that was taken out of its context. There was no connection to real life. In my project what they built had a context, the city. All decisions made about the city effected it in real time. Rather than saying, “In the future you will need to know this because…” I told them, “Sure you can put that there or do any thing you want, but what will happen when you do?”

Thirdly, and on a similar note, I learned how important it was for themes and curriculum to be interrelated. In real life the average person is dealing in math, science, and language arts all at one time. When a consumer goes to the store to purchase food, he adds prices, thinks about health concepts, and reads packages all at the same time instead of compartmentalizing these concepts as is done so often in schools. I intend to continue to use and refine my project to best suit the new set of students that will come in the Fall.