The sixth-grade students at Riverside Intermediate School in Plymouth presented information about different climates in the world Thursday afternoon. The students set up different stations in three different rooms to tell fellow students, parents and teachers about their specific knowledge about the region.
Zane Cooper, a Project Based Learning (PBL) educator at the school, said the students set up the areas just like the regions they are studying.
“They’re explaining the colder sections of the world like the tundra icecaps, a Mediterranean climate, and some of the warmer areas like the desert,” said Cooper. “We’re really focusing on all of those different climate regions of the world. We’ve separated it by classroom to make it a progression as you go from one room to the other.”
PBL students gather information in a group setting.
“It’s kind of taking a lot of the concepts and things that we have in traditional classrooms and adding collaboration, oral communication, being responsible and respectful and putting them all into one. We take the traditional and PBL environment and we try to mesh it together into an environment where the kids are both learning content, but learning how communicate and collaborate, plus get along and work well in group settings.”
Cooper added that Thursday’s climate presentation gives the students the best ability to be able to work together and work on the 21st Century skills they need to be able to move on after high school graduation.
