Project-based learning in Social Studies: Our Class Contract
Looking to incorporate project-based learning in Social Studies? This government project is perfect for middle or high school students. Students are provided with an inquiry planner that guides them through important steps to go deeper in their inquiries. Use this project guide for students to help them develop their own class law. This PBL socials project could be customized for elementary, middle or high school students.
ROADMAP
Stage 1 - The Successful Classroom
Your job during this stage is to observe closely. We want you to look, listen, and learn about what makes a successful and unsuccessful classroom. This stage will also set the learning for the following steps of the project.
Pathway 1 - Brainstorming
Brainstorm: share a mind-map of elements that make a class “bad”.
Quick Write: What is the “worst” class you have been in? What made it the “worst”? Look at your peers posts. What commonalities do you see?
Do a Brain dump: What agreements will help us create an equitable, engaging, and productive classroom environment? Doodle, list or upload a video of your initial thoughts.
Stage 2 - Social Contracts
What do you know about social contracts? What do you need to know? It's time to ask questions that lead to more questions! Do a deep dive around social contracts that interest you. Why they exist, who they exist for, and how they are set up. Think of some who, what, when, where, why, and how questions to start your inquiry.
Pathway 2 - Research
What do you know about social contracts? What do you need to know? Share a KWL (know-wonder-learn) chart.
Choose 3 Need to Know questions that you would like to focus on for the rest of your inquiry.
Upload a video explaining what you think the central ideas of a social contract are and why.
Research examples of classroom rights and responsibilities. What do you want to include in our social contract and why? Share your findings.
Stage 3 - Choose a Right
In this stage, you will decide on which "rights" you would like to focus on. You will work with others in the class who want to work on similar "rights." For example, do you want to focus on how we treat one another, or do you want to focus on the types of learning? Brainstorm all the"rights" and group together similar rights. Choose the right that matters to you the most to focus on. At the end of this stage, you will create a concept for your proposed agreements.
Pathway 3 - Proposal
Share a list of all the rights you can think of in our classroom. Group similar rights. Collect feedback and post again. What are you missing? Highlight your additions.
Create "Right" Criteria: What do we want to accomplish? What features do you want in your agreements? Think of guidelines that all rights must follow. Present these guidelines on Canva, slides or a google doc.
Upload a video of yourself explaining what your best "right" idea is based on your criteria
Seek critical feedback from peers, and generate a concept for your proposed criteria based off of that feedback.
Stage 4 - Come Together
This is the stage where you take everything you have learned so far and combine it to form your agreements. Engage in peer feedback and critique. Let's work together to reach a consensus on our agreements.
Pathway 4 - Agreement Writing
Ideate: Suggests ways we can combine agreements into a one social contract that we will post to our class Site and Classroom.
Write out your proposed agreement using precise language. Give and get feedback on all proposed agreements on the feed and revise accordingly.
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