Meet the Teacher & Classroom
Three years ago I was trained in Problem Based Learning (PBL). This teaching method allows the teacher to interact with the students while they are solving problems presented to them. This methodology allows the students to become problem solvers, develop higher level thinking skills and become more analytical in their thought processes. In 7th grade, they will learn about life science. In our PBL classroom they will be given an overarching problem with smaller problems tying individual units to the main problem. For example, our overarching question for 7th grade is "Why doesn't everyone get cancer?", then their smaller question for when we learn about cells is "What does a cancer cell look like?" The questions tie together but get more specific for the individual units. PBL also places a heavy emphasis on vocabulary helping them understand their topic at a deeper level.
The 8th graders will take a different route and learn about earth science. This is a huge year covering a ton of information. The state standards for this grade are wide, but not very deep, so we have to learn and keep going at a pretty good pace. This will be the only grade they will have the opportunity to learn about our earth and the solar system.
|Contact: Anne Feist|