Interdisciplinary PBL Grade 1 Planning Grant

First grade is a pivotal year in education. In the U.S., it is often marked by an abundance of work on low-level knowledge and skills, neglect of science and social studies education, and a documented decline in students’ motivation. This project involves developing a curriculum framework for possible future development of a comprehensive first-grade curriculum. The curriculum framework will be developed through collaboration among researchers and practitioners, center on project-based learning (PBL), and fully address science, social studies, literacy, mathematics, and social-emotional learning. It will be developed with an eye toward scalability for the typical classroom. The team will build on the promising findings of PBL for second-grade students from low socio-economic status communities in the areas of content literacy and social studies (Halvorsen et al., 2012; Halvorsen et al., in preparation) as it turns attention to first grade and to all domains.