Key Academic Skills & Content: Students read and listened to podcasts of selected essays from the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project, published in October 2019 on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first ship transporting enslaved Africans to the US. Students created museum-quality artifacts based on historic events or figures featured in the 1619 Project, supported by a written piece explaining the artifact’s significance. Next, in small groups, students took a “deep dive” into one of themes explored in the 1619 Project, researching and contextualizing the lasting legacy of slavery on America’s national identity. This in-depth research ultimately became the basis for the quilt panels that students created.
Final products: Students created quilt panels, inspired by the AIDS quilt, representing their interpretation of slavery’s impact on one of 6 themes explored in the 1619 Project (Capitalism, Sugar, Music, Politics, Urban Planning, and Prisons).
Funding for the materials and equipment for this project was provided by a Teaching Tolerance Educator Grant
This project was created with the generous support of the Avalon Foundation.
Essential Questions:
- How do people use nature to connect to themselves, each other, and the environment?
- How have people used the night sky to make important decisions in the past and how can we use it in future?
- Are public parks a luxury or a necessity in communities?
- As citizens, what is our role in maintaining, enhancing, and preserving parks on the local, state, and national level?
- How do we provide equal access to the outdoors for all?
Key Academic Skills and Content:
- In science: Earth/Sun/Moon relationship, the scale of the universe, gravity, Newton’s Laws of motion, light and the electromagnetic spectrum.
- In math: exponential expressions, scientific notation, and doing scaled drawings/designs.
- In humanities: politics behind National, State, and Regional Parks, and how we, as citizens, can use our writing to engage in the political process and advocate for these sacred parks. Students are writing letters to Congress to encourage funding to programs such as the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Students also immersed themselves in Nature while reading literature about immersive nature experiences.
Project Duration: 6-8 weeks
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
]]>Academic skills & content: Marketing and communication skills, working within bureaucratic systems, industry-specific needs for professional spaces, networking, effective real-world writing, engineering, architecture, interior design, computer programming, organizational culture skills, critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, social-emotional learning.
Final product: State-of-the-art professionally re-designed media lab
Suggested duration: A 3-4 year multi-phase project
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
]]>Academic Skills and Content: students learn storytelling techniques through the use of storyboards, script writing and technology integration. Students also developed collaboration skills as well as skills in leadership and social emotional learning.
Final Product: Students create short documentaries exploring what it means to build equitable and diverse communities, the formation of meaningful relationships, and the role of environment and activities in cultivating connections.
Suggested Duration: year-long
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
]]>Watch the short video on the left to hear students reflecting on their learning throughout the project.
Academic Skills and Content:
- How is the brain a system of interacting subsystems? (Brain anatomy, neuron anatomy, action potential – textile neuron model, dissection of sheep brain at HSU)
- How do environmental conditions affect our nervous system? (neurotransmitters, effects of drugs / toxins on the nervous system, effect of stress on the nervous system – earthworm lab)
- How can we use the model of input / process / output to understand how our brains gather information from the environment, process that information through our affective filters, and then respond with a behavior? (mirroring emotion lab)
- How has discrimination played out in American history?
- How does a group develop its sense of identify — and distance itself from the out group?
- What methods can scientists use to understand social dynamics?
Final Product: Interactive exhibits for families and lower elementary students
Suggested Duration: 9 weeks
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
]]>Specifically, Project Me students engaged in the following:
- Explored street art in Los Angeles guided by local artists
- Created traditional and digital artwork
- Researched famous street artists
- Communicated with street artists via Skype, in person, and on social media
- Developed business skills
- Explored entrepreneurial opportunities
- Partnered with community schools and arts organizations
- Provided service to the community
- Restored a neighborhood mural
And they created the following:
- Videos, slide shows, facebook pages, and artistic renderings of the field trip experience
- Positive stencil artwork
- Street art “dictionary”
- Street artist commercial/promo
- Mini murals
- Spreadsheets for grades and project budget
- Budget proposal
- Notecards, prints, and shirts with original designs
Key Academic Skills & Concepts
English Language Arts:
- Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
- Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
- Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others (Examples: Flip Grid, Skype, YouTube, iMovie)
- Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.
- Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
- Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and
Mathematics:
- Use units as a way to understand problems and to guide the solution of multi-step problems; choose and interpret units consistently in formulas; choose and interpret the scale and the origin in graphs and data displays.
- Make formal geometric constructions with a variety of tools and methods
- Understand similarity in terms of similarity transformations.
- Use technology to graph the functions, make tables of values, or find successive approximations.
- Experiment with cases and illustrate an explanation of the effects on the graph using technology.
Career Technical Education:
- Demonstrate skill in the manipulation of digital imagery (either still or video) in an industry-relevant application.
- Demonstrate personal style and advanced proficiency in communicating an idea, theme, or emotion in an industry-relevant artistic product.
- Create an artistic product that involves the effective use of the elements of art and the principles of design.
- Create original works of art of increasing complexity and skill in a variety of media that reflect their feelings and points of view.
- Use electronic reference materials to gather information and produce products and services.
- Practice time management and efficiency to fulfill responsibilities.
- Apply high-quality techniques to product or presentation design and development.
- Demonstrate knowledge and practice of responsible financial management.
- Identify the characteristics of successful teams, including leadership, cooperation, collaboration, and effective decision-making skills as applied in groups, teams, and career technical student organization activities.
- Understand the characteristics and benefits of teamwork, leadership, and citizenship in the school, community, and workplace setting
Suggested Duration: 12 to 18 weeks
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
]]>Essential Question: How do you make a toy for elementary students using gear mechanisms to transfer energy?
Final Products:
- A pull toy designed so that a gear mechanism attached to the wheels would make another part of the pull toy move (such as a wagging tail, flapping wings, or a nodding head).
- A “trading card” with information about the pull toy
- A one-page reflection on the process
Key Academic Skills and Content: The “Design Thinking” process; gear mechanisms including gear train with idler, cam and follower, crank and slider, belt drive, worm and wheel, rack and pinion, bevel, and chain drive; expository writing.
Suggested duration: 6 weeks
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
]]>Essential Question: How do we work together to produce quality products and market them to make maximum profit?
Final product: a handcrafted product that has been refined through market research and financial analysis, produced in a large quantity for sale in the Winter Crafts store.
Key Academic Skills and Content: Students demonstrate language arts skills by creating a product proposal, marketing materials and product display. Students’ math skills are reinforced by counting money, making change, calculating unit cost and item and profit analysis. This project also addresses important life skills that students will need for future success. In particular, students are guided in filling out job applications, learning customer service skills, and matching their strengths to particular skill sets needed for jobs at the Winter Crafts store. With this experience, students learn how crucial collaboration is for meeting goals in the project and in life.
Suggested Duration: 6-8 weeks
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
]]>Final Products: a playable board game with instructions, electrical circuit layout, and component list,
Key Academic Skills and Content: Understanding electronic components and how they relate to each other, reading and creating schematic diagrams, physics of electricity, collaborative design, principles of game-based Learning, conducting and evaluating playtests.
Suggested Duration: eight weeks
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
]]>Throughout the course of this project, teams harnessed the power of industry 4.0 through the use of a “chatbot” integrated into a website to articulate their understanding of their industry and it’s growth through the four industrial revolutions as well as to make a case for its continued growth in the future.
Students developed, prepared, and marketed an investment plan to pitch to our Shark Tank audience on an industry of the groups’ choosing. Students demonstrated their knowledge of each Industrial Revolution and had their chatbot explain how the inventions and industrial breakthroughs reflect that age. In other words, their project literally spoke for itself.
Key Academic Skills and Content:
ELA:
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.1 Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence
- CCSS-ELA-SPEAKING & LISTENING 11-12 4.b Plan and present an argument that: supports a precise claim; provides a logical sequence for claims, counterclaims, and evidence; uses rhetorical devices to support assertions (e.g., analogy, appeal to logic through reasoning, appeal to emotion or ethical belief); uses varied syntax to link major sections of the presentation to create cohesion and clarity; and provides a concluding statement that supports the argument presented.
Math:
- CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSF.LE.A.1 Distinguish between situations that can be modeled with linear functions and with exponential functions.
- CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSF.LE.A.2 Construct linear and exponential functions, including arithmetic and geometric sequences, given a graph, a description of a relationship, or two input-output pairs (include reading these from a table).
- CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSF.LE.A.3 Observe using graphs and tables that a quantity increasing exponentially eventually exceeds a quantity increasing linearly, quadratically, or (more generally) as a polynomial function.
- CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSF.LE.B.5 Interpret the parameters in a linear or exponential function in terms of a context.
Social Science:
- California Social Science Standard 11.2 Students analyze the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.
- California Social Science Standard 11.1.4 4. Examine the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction and of the industrial revolution, including demographic shifts and the emergence in the late nineteenth century of the United States as a world power
- 1. Know the effects of industrialization on living and working conditions.
- 2. Describe the changing landscape, including the growth of cities linked by industry and trade, and the development of cities divided according to race, ethnicity, and class.
- 4. Analyze the effect of urban political machines and responses to them by immigrants and middle-class reformers.
- 5. Discuss corporate mergers that produced trusts and cartels and the economic and political policies of industrial leaders.
- 6. Trace the economic development of the United States and its emergence as a major industrial power, including its gains from trade and the advantages of its physical geography.
- 7. Analyze the similarities and differences between the ideologies of Social Darwinism and Social Gospel
Final Products:
- Industry Website
- Propaganda Posters (Player Piano-Kurt Vonnegut novel tie in)
- “Chatbot” coded by students to respond to questions about their industry, as their industry related to the four industrial revolutions (developed in history and ELA)
- Exponential Growth Calculator (only required of students enrolled in Math III or Business Math classes)
- Regression/Exponential Growth Graphs (only required of students enrolled in Math III or Business Math classes)
- Shark Tank Pitch (Utilizing all other project components to create a case for industry growth and investment).
Suggested Duration: five weeks
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
]]>Academic Skills and Content: Proper scientific data collection and research techniques, nonfiction writing skills, local history and government content, graphic design, academic reflection, and critique.
Final Products: Students created books on the history of water in Compton, California, websites to share the water quality data, created a board game as an interactive art piece, and wrote letters to the local city council to express their voice and share their findings about local water quality.
Suggested Duration: 4 to 8 weeks.
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
]]>Final Products: Students created an art piece depicting significant images to represent the three individuals, along with a central image and the connecting adjective. Honors students also created transitional images connecting key figures and themselves. Some students also included quotes of inspiration from these individuals. Students created a website of all three individuals to explain the meaning behind their painting.
Essential Question: How Will I Transform the World?
Key Academic Skills & Content: European history including the renaissance, reformation, and enlightenment; collecting and organizing research; art skills including watercolor painting, ink drawing, and chalk pastel; explanatory writing; web design.
Students researched background information on their Renaissance figure and their modern inspiration. They organized their thinking into charts, triple venn diagrams, and other graphic organizers. Students practiced artistic skills with watercolors, acrylic paint, chalk pastel, ink, and pencils. Students used written skills through their explanations for their paintings, and they used technology for creating their website. Students worked on listening and speaking skills throughout the process.
Suggested Duration: 12 weeks
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
]]>Essential Question: How does food foster relationships and promote cultural awareness?
Final Product: 320-page published cookbook
Key Academic Skills and Content: fractions, decimals, ratios (math); narrative and informative writing (english); world cultures and historical influences (history); cells and human bodily functions (biology)
Suggested Duration: 3 weeks
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
]]>Academic Skills & Content: Collecting information through research, Scientific analysis, understanding bias and opinion, Native American culture, collaboration, critique.
Final Product: an exhibition of student work including PowerPoint presentations, Presentation boards, pamphlets, written pieces, and creative works.
Suggested Duration: 9 to 10 weeks.
Created with the support of the California Department of Education California Career Pathways Trust
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