The annual auction is coming up fast. Next Saturday parents, alumni parents, and other community members will join together to support and celebrate the mission of Pacific Northern Academy.

Every year each classroom creates a project with the involvement of students. These projects are then auctioned off, either in the silent auction or the live auction. This year, 5th grade has collaboratively created something really cool… a board game!

At PNA, we believe that learning with a purpose, beyond just getting a good score, is vital to maximizing student achievement, retention, engagement, curiosity, and academic enthusiasm.  Project-based learning is one of the primary methodologies we utilize in order to achieve this sense of purpose.

For our PBL project for our space unit, we planned, designed and created all of the elements of a board game, except the board (created in Photoshop by me), the board pieces (created with a 3D printer by Finn’s grandpa), and the board case (Created by PNA parents Charmaine Ng and her husband Johan).

Students created what we are calling “entropy cards” that each feature a different celestial object. Each card includes a description of the object as well as something that happens to you in the game that has some connection to the celestial object.

We start every unit by filling our PBL project board. This includes a section where students can indicated what they already know, what they need to know in order to successfully complete the project, and a place for any random burning questions that we can explore that relates in some way to the overall topic. Feel free to drop by the classroom to check out what the students have put up.

Below is the gameboard that I created with input from the students. This should be a fun game, but you’ll have to bid on it at the auction to get your own copy!