Project-Based Learning: Hiking the Appalachian Trail

1. I chose this project for many reasons. First and  foremost, the subject matter they will learn through this project is directly related to experience they will encounter throughout their life. Maybe not hiking, but traveling by road or even by air. This project encourages students to plan ahead and prepare for all possible outcomes. This activity involves the environment which is important to me, and also promotes physical activity in a fun and exciting way. The layout of the website was easily navigated and the descriptions of the project were easy to understand and follow. 
2. I think that this project is using all of the higher level thinking skills. I'll start backwards: Evaluate - students are not only going to be evaluating their peers' contributions but they have to evaluate all of their gathered information. To do this they need to compare data from their multiple resources, increasing their evaluation skills. They also need to evaluate whether or not their plan would work in the real world. This project requires students to create a presentation at the end explaining their findings and their plan for The Hike. Additional higher level thinking skills include: analyzing and synthesizing. They need to breakdown each aspect of the hike into manageable parts - what to wear, what to bring, where to go etc. Researching this will require them to sort through the information and find the best and most applicable information to their specific hike. They also need to put everything they researched individually into a collective whole, making sure all participants understand all aspects of the project. I think this project develops a lot of skills including team building, communication, collaboration, and life skills. 
3. The only thing I would change about the project is that I would want to get the students some real life experiences of what it means to plan a hike. I think it would be fun to plan a day trip (even if its just hiking around the playground) and involve scenarios like "it's suddenly raining and there is no shelter nearby to keep dry... What should you do?" and this would require students to evaluate if they prepared for all scenarios. While it is unrealistic that every group will remember to prepare for every scenario I think that putting them through a simulation would allow them to get a more real life understanding. 

Hiking the Appalachian Trail

Middle School Project-Based Learning: Hiking the Appalachian Trail Print Page in IE