Taking Flight

John McCandless STEM Charter School, Stockton

The team of five elementary school teachers will develop vertically-aligned STEM Project Based Learning (PBL) units on a central theme: Flight. The units will integrate technology, Common Core, and Next Generation Science Standards. Team members will write lesson plans on the concept of Flight under the guidance of Teacher’s College of San Joaquin STEM faculty. Team members will later implement the curricula, which will involve fabrication equipment and flight instruction devices and models, in a school-wide thematic PBL month culminating with a student-driven school Flight Museum. In the second year of the project, the team will study and integrate Design Thinking into the PBLs and plans to share the PBLs at the California STEM Symposium. They hope to become a resource for other educators transitioning to PBL in order to allow students to personalize their learning and make lasting memories.