Check out LVCP's NEW Project-Based Learning website! Here you'll be able to get a snapshot of our PBL schoolwide, see what's currently happening via our PBL blog with searchable posts by department, or take a look at the professional development resources we use for instruction. http://pblatlvcp.weebly.com/
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Rockets and Newton's Laws! This marks the fourth year in a row LVCP Physics students have launched rockets, the perfect chance to study Newton's Laws of Motion and make real world connections and memories that will last a lifetime! Each student builds and launches their own Estees rocket, collect data and then apply the laws of physics to calculate the flight of the rocket. Students present their findings during an oral presentation in front of their peers. Project-based learning gives our students the confidence to take their ideas and run with them, right into businesses for themselves...not just when the graduate, but right now while they are here. We asked our resident filmmaking students who created their own film company called Segment 7 Films to do this promo video for our school, and it's lead to some amazing real job opportunities to work on projects for the local community. "A local woman saw our videos and asked to have a life long dream of hers--to do a flash mob in downtown Livermore with her friends filmed by us. Since then we've now been offered a corporate contract for more work in the community," says filmmaker Zach Turner. Students created imaginary chemical companies. They were told to hire motivated and knowledgeable chemists for their imaginary company and were responsible every step of hiring process. Students wrote out the job descriptions, created interview questions, tests, and practiced for interviews. They have videotaped their interviews!
The guiding piece of this project is the plaster mask they create and decorate. The front, or outside, of the mask represents either how they present themselves, or how they feel they are perceived by others. The back, or inside, of the mask should represent who they feel they truly are inside.
Freshmen love this project. Here's their feedback in their own words: "I liked examining my outward feelings and thoughts and see how they reflect my inner ideals." - Taylor "I liked exploring my identity and watching other people around me explore theirs." - Cheryl "I liked that you get to learn more about other people and more about yourself. I like that you had to really dig deep inside of your self in order to get the perfect mask. I also like that you got to know more about people and become better friends with them." - Grant This project asks you to consider the question “how it is used” and so to redefine the value and importance of the shipping container through its re-interpretation- from its material form to the perceived outcomes of its associated use. Students analyzed speeches, essays and children's books to see how powerful lessons can be conveyed through words. In teams, they selected an important lesson, then taught the lesson by creating a children's book and writing an essay. The children's books are publicly available for print-on-demand purchase through Amazon.com, or directly at these links:
Enjoy Your Life! Have Some Fun! - by Harting Hung, Verona Cong, Kelly Lin, Jack Ahmat, Rose Sawut, Wilson Sun, & Bryan Mahmut Chinese New Year - by Hengjie Gao, Qingshan Li, Jiahui Lin, Yanzheng Pan, Wenhao Sun, & Jing Zhu The Rabbits' Great Adventure - by Ruiyi Shang, Tumaris Yalkun, Ruhsane Sawut, Hongru Lin, YikTing Hung Eight Planets in the Solar System - by HengJie Gao, YanZheng Pan, HaiTao Zhang, QingShan Li, Erfat Ahmat Greetings, Comrades of Cardboard!
How can we be more creative? Here in Creative Writing, we have been crafting and questing to build cardboard creations of the highest caliber. The Creativity Project, also known as "Neon Galaxy Pogo Sticks Cascading into a Kaleidoscope Airplane," is all about exploring what it means to be creative, generating as many unique, practical, and flexible ideas as possible and stretching our imaginative minds in a number of ways, including building and writing. This experimentation resulted in lots of cardboard tinkering and lots of notebook scribbling, and it culminated with pages and pages of ideas in our Creativity Notebooks (which we will pull from to write poems, stories, memoirs, and novels) AND our participation in the second annual Cardboard Challenge at LVCP on October 3, during a school-wide extended lunchtime. Students built a helmet, a series of masks, a full-size cat, a minecraft character, a train, a globe that doubled as a hat, Literary Monopoly, a large scale checkerboard, and other manifestations of the visionary mind within. Take a look! On the night of our Homecoming dance, members from Segment 7 Films (an independent film crew comprised of LVCP students) recreated a performance of the "Epic Patty Cake." The total production time came in around a total of three hours, but the performance itself they did in just one take. Amazing!
Students become a "personal trainer" and create a personal training program that they can teach to the class. |
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