2.2 Varied Learning Approaches

Self-Assessment: Prepared

Wellcome Middle School is committed to ensuring that all students experience authentic, meaningful, and engaging learning. Across the building, more than 75% of our non-STEM teachers implement student-centered and personalized learning opportunities at least twice per week, using approaches such as choice boards, differentiated pathways, learning stations, thematic units, and real-world simulations. These practices allow students to take ownership of their learning, pursue personalized goals, and demonstrate understanding in multiple ways.

In STEM-related classrooms, teachers consistently incorporate hands-on, inquiry-driven experiences, including design challenges, laboratory investigations, engineering tasks, robotics, coding, and the use of design-based software. These opportunities mirror authentic STEM processes and encourage students to explore, test, revise, and problem-solve collaboratively.

In addition, the vast majority of students participate in at least two cross-curricular projects each year, where teachers from two or more subject areas intentionally co-plan and coordinate interdisciplinary project-based learning experiences. These PBL opportunities require students to apply knowledge across multiple disciplines to address relevant, real-world problems, deepening understanding and building critical thinking, communication, and collaboration skills. Through these combined efforts, Wellcome Middle fosters a vibrant, student-centered learning environment where Strategies That Engage Minds are not isolated events but a consistent, schoolwide practice.

Wellcome Middle School's teachers received Professional Development on authentic, relevant, and student-centered/personalized lessons. The majority of teachers implement blended learning lessons frequently. The choice board activity is an example of blended learning used in an 8th-grade classroom. Students also participated in a microscope lab activity where they examined different slides under the microscope.

Our students participate in several hands-on activities some of which include design-based software. Examples of hands-on activities can be seen below. We have an Ocean Layers lab in which students looked at the layers of the ocean and created a design. We also have the historical markers activity that was completed by 8th graders. They had to design a historical marker using Tinkercad based on a woman in history.  Our teachers frequently use hands-on learning opportunities in their classrooms.

At Wellcome Middle, we challenge our Science and Social Studies teachers to design PBLs every quarter. An example of a PBL that was completed during the 22-23 school year was the Rover Mission (and has been utilized every year since). Students were learning about space exploration and were tasked with building a rover using Vex Robots.  Other PBL projects included volcanoes and pyramid construction, which integrated science and social studies. 

75%of STEM -Related content area teachers occasionally use hands-on or design-based learning opportunities:

Integrated units are linked in the document above. Each unit intentionally integrates with ELA by incorporating writing from the AVID WICOR framework. Some PBLS, such as Pompeii and Volcanoes, integrate science, social studies, and ELA. While these projects/lesson are categorized by quarter, components of the projects occur on a weekly basis.