110 HAWAII PARENT September/October 2024 government, every student has the opportunity to experience and benefit from PBL. “Through our PBL program, our students develop critical thinking skills, creativity, and a deeper understanding of academic content by engaging in meaningful projects that connect classroom learning to practical applications,” explains Saʻo Faulkner, IPA’s Elementary principal. “PBL fosters strong teacher-student relationships and prepares students to succeed academically while equipping them with essential lifelong learning and problem-solving skills.” Spotlight on Grade 5 American Revolution Museum PBL On May 10, IPA’s fifth grade students provided a shining example of the power of PBL with their unit on the American Revolution. Their inquiry-based learning was driven by the question, “How do we as artists connect our community with the people and events of the American Revolution?” Their answer was to create a live, interactive American Revolution Museum. In the models and artifacts gallery, a student shows off one of the cannonballs she created for her exhibit on the Battle of Bunker Hill. There was no rote memorization of names, dates, and places of battles in this learning process. Instead, students were empowered to actively explore the events, issues, ideas, and experiences of that period in American history and make their own decisions on what they would create to best express their learning to visitors of the museum. “Student voice and choice is such an integral part of the PBL experience. It gives them a sense of ownership and agency that they would not get just through traditional textbook learning,” says Joe Villaluz, fifth grade teacher at IPA. “Since students were free to choose what type of artists they would like to be, their choices spanned a variety of subject areas, which allowed for seamless interdisciplinary integration since the range of student interest and talent is so great.” The students’ diverse exhibition concepts encompassed the visual, digital, performance, and culinary arts, as well as various digital technologies. They created artifact replicas, paintings, dioramas, “Their answer was to create a live, interactive American Revolution Museum.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTcxMjMwNg==