Researching and understanding project-based learning is one step I wish to take with my learning. With this goal, I aim to effectively incorporate this educational tool into my teaching. To create meaningful projects, educators must first have an understanding of the subject matter and what tools are necessary to increase student learning and engagement. Therefore, by continuing my learning on this subject, I can better align learning standards and objectives to ensure that students gain the essential skills while working on their projects. Understanding and learning more about project-based learning can result in valuable discussions, critical thinking, and opportunities for feedback. By integrating more projects into lessons, student engagement grows, enabling them to be creative and allowing opportunities for questioning. 

To attain my objective, I intend to center my efforts on the math curriculum. I will design individual projects corresponding to each of the six units. This strategy is logical because it enables me to focus on one subject at a time and encourages active engagement from my students in their learning journey.

In the initial project, I modified a lesson related to volume, tasking students with creating a poster that offers a solution to a continuous story problem covered in the unit. By using various resources such as math manipulatives, Chromebooks, scissors, and glue, students worked collaboratively to address the challenge of determining how to box a specific quantity of baseballs. 

To enhance my focus on cultivating creativity, I have started reading the book titled, The Wild Card: 7 Steps to an Educator's Creative Breakthrough by Hope and Wade King. This book has already broadened my perspective on creativity through the big ideas presented in the first few chapters. One of the key takeaways is that "Creativity is a Mindset," and by shifting the narrative of what is expected and limited in the classroom, teachers can foster more engagement from their students. Another important point is to "change the dialogue" and embrace mistakes as opportunities for growth, leading to greater mastery of creativity within the classroom. I am excited to continue learning from this book and applying its principles to my teaching practices.

After reading Warren Berger's A More Beautiful Question, it became evident that my journey of understanding student questioning and inquiry needed to persist. This book illuminated the significance of nurturing a student's ability to ask questions, emphasizing that questioning not only fosters better comprehension but also enhances engagement in the learning process. Creating learning environments in education that encourage students to inquire and explore, bolsters the significance of their learning. Thus, my final educational objective is to further explore methods to be able to facilitate meaningful inquiry for my students.

To achieve the goal of effective questioning and inquiry, it's vital to teach students how to question effectively. According to my research, the first step towards achieving this is to model being a 'curious thinker'. In her article, "Create a Culture of Inquiry in the Classroom", Jill Sims outlines two other steps: design and guiding. By designing specific learning experiences that encourage students to ask questions and engage in discussions, we can then guide them in reflecting on and connecting the learning they have acquired. These three initial steps would help me to demonstrate the significance of questioning in learning to my students.