Project Based Learning: Compose Our World

Mr. Laurie’s freshmen students: Ben Dublin, Macy Norby, Carter Galyardt, and Kierstin Engelbart.

This last Thursday, April 26, in the Media Center Mr. Laurie’s freshman pre-AP class showcased an assignment where they were asked to define what makes one human. They were to answer with an interactive museum-like experience that helped other students to understand their views on humanity.

The ninth grade pre ap class is also called “Compose our World” and is considered a project based class. This specific project arose after the class read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a book that has many themes relating  to the unit’s question: “What makes us human?”

Mr Laurie said that the students had a lot of free reign, but one requirement was that the showcases needed to be interactive. “Anybody who comes to this ‘museum’ has to do something beyond observing; they should be touching or they should be reading and responding.” The entire project was worth 20% of the students’ grade.

Student Carra Power decided that “the ability to reason” answered the question at hand. her project demonstrated this by asking the reader if they would choose five dollars or a cookie, when I did the activity I chose the money, and explained I could buy more than one cookie with the money. Carra explained that this was an example of human reasoning, the other species wouldn’t be capable of doing.      

Kirsten Engelbart says that humans are unique because they possess imagination. She presented proof of this with images that were optical illusions and then asked what was the first thing the person interacting saw in the drawings was, an old lady or a young girl, a duck or a rabbit, and so on. Humans use their imaginations to create meaning from each picture. Animals can’t do that.

Laurie’s class was a part of a Project Based Learning study through CU Boulder and the Lucas Educational Foundation. Mr. Laurie volunteered to pilot this program and has enjoyed implementing it with his students. “My favorite part about the Compose Our World thing is how students are able to bring their creativity and their talents and interests from other parts of school and life and bring them into this classroom and make them parts of their projects,” Laurie said.