Teacher
Colleen Gunkel is a fifth grade teacher at Poplar Bridge Elementary School. Her math class has been transformed into a flexible learning experience where students are given voice and choice in their learning, instruction is personalized, and cultures and backgrounds are valued.Teaching Strategy
Colleen and her 5th grade colleagues attended the Google Summit in March and were inspired by a session they attended about 20 Time. After two weeks of collaboration and development, her team launched student passion projects in math. Colleen’s goals were to increase engagement in math, make learning more relevant to her diverse population of students, and to foster a growth mindset in math.For the first week and a half of the unit, students received twenty minutes a day to dive deeply into their passion projects. Prompts such as, “What are your three favorite things to do outside of school?” helped students identify different interests. Guided by the question, “How can I inspire or help others with my passion project?” students worked through a Google Doc template to organize their ideas and thoughts. Colleen utilized whole-group modeling, think-pair shares, and individual conferences to support students through each step of the process.
Now in the last four weeks of the unit, twenty minutes of class each week are devoted to students’ projects. Colleen reports that passion projects have been a powerful tool for her students that have allowed them to take ownership of their learning. Indi is using graphs and data to help make others aware of the number of refugees from different countries. Sam is sharing his passion for cooking by renaming fractions in recipes and publishing those recipes to his Google Site and YouTube Channel. Braylen is using his voice to write and sing songs that will help others remember important math concepts.
All students are finding ways to make math more relevant to their lives and Colleen has enjoyed taking on the role of mentor. Colleen plans to build on the success of this model and will continue to use passion projects as a way to engage her students.
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