As my work focuses on PBE in STEM for the CNMI, I wanted to be able to highlight their voices. I sometimes think of scholarly or peer reviewed articles and resources as relating to the brain, but these special stories and pieces of works are just as important as they relate to the heart. I think that it is important to have both!

The next steps for me would to make a title page and remove section headers. As of now, no support is needed :)

I've been really enjoying diving into the research for my literature review, Beyond the Reading Block: Balancing Foundational Skills and Transdisciplinary Inquiry. The articles have been fascinating... Google Sheets, however, has been a different story!

As you can see from this photo, I'm firmly in the learning pit right now. The formatting and I are not exactly on the same page, and I've realized I'm definitely not a spreadsheet person. But that's how learning happens, right? We have to be willing to sit in the messy middle before things start to click.

My plan is to finish organizing all of my research in Google Sheets, write a summary of my findings, and then try something completely new by turning my literature review into a podcast using Google NotebookLM. I've never used it before, but I've been wanting to give it a try, so this feels like the perfect opportunity to experiment.

Thankfully, I have a group of wonderfully tech-savvy high school students in the summer school computer science class who have graciously offered to help me along the way. 😊

We'll see how it all comes together! Wish me luck!

It's been cool to get to work on an assignment where we are able to choose a topic that is useful/relevant in our work! I was excited to have a reason to dive into the research on my topic. My repository is complete, the mapping exercise helped me organize my thinking and synthesize what I found into a few buckets, and I started writing my paper. Trying to do an alternate/creative version of the assignment would be very stressful for me - writing is the primary way I sort through things. Like, if we were required to do an alternate/multimodal project...I would still have to do the writing part first because that's how my brain works. So I'm sticking with the traditional paper! I uploaded my draft which is just a general outline and the first part complete. Lots more to go still but I do have a general sense of what will go in each bucket thanks to the mapping exercise so I'm feeling good about where I'm at.

I'm still reading the articles I included in this literature review, one by one, while filling out my Research Synthesis table (picture attached). All 13 studies are peer-reviewed, empirical research pieces conducted in secondary school settings. This is a global look, with studies spanning six countries and six US states! I have to admit, digging through all these details feels a little overwhelming right now, but I'm making great progress!

My goal is to turn this synthesis into a poster presentation for the next COE Graduate Students Research Symposium(fingers crossed! 🤞). I’m planning to put together in my poster the Intro/Problem, What PBE is, Key Themes, Global Research Locations, the Critical Gap, and References.

Since time is tight, I don't have a written paper draft to share in our class folder, but I'm using my synthesis matrix to design the poster directly. Can't wait to see what everyone else is working on!

Hopefully I'm doing everything correctly, I start to get hard on myself and compare with other peoples styles and work. So I just keep plugging along with what works for me.

Can't wait to see other peoples work and final projects.

One more update! As a very visual learner, I found myself unintentionally expanding my literature review into a visual concept map. From there, I added summaries for each of the four themes, which really helped me synthesize the research.

I've also been wanting to learn how to use NotebookLM (Gemini) so I can incorporate it into future classroom learning experiences, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to explore its video and podcast features. I hope you enjoy the 2-minute video recap and the 5-minute podcast overview of my literature review!

Aloha,
Serena

Working on my literature review has honestly helped me narrow my thinking a lot. I started with a really broad interest in place-based education, but as I've been reading, I've realized I keep coming back to lower elementary classrooms and how place-based and ʻāina-based education can support both academic learning and students' relationships with place. One thing I've been wrestling with is the critique that place-based education isn't rigorous enough. At first I didn't really know how to respond to that, but after reading more, I'm starting to see that it doesn't have to be an either/or situation. The strongest examples show that place-based learning can actually strengthen academic learning when it's intentionally designed. Especially when expanding my personal defention and understanding of literacies.

As a first-grade teacher at Noelani in Mānoa, it's been really interesting to read the literature while constantly thinking about my own students. I keep finding myself connecting the research back to things we've already done, like our flood unit, observing local birds, or using our school and community as part of our lessons. It's making me feel more confident that what I've been trying to do in my classroom has a strong research base behind it. I still have a lot to refine, but I'm excited because I feel like my literature review is helping me clarify not only my research question but also the kind of curriculum I want to create.

The topic for my literature review is about how do the linguistics of science act as an academic gatekeeper esp for our ELL students. This has gotten me to re-evaluate my science instruction and got me to think about how I approach many of my lessons. I hope that it also gets everyone who reads it to think about how they deliver instruction to their learning community as well.

Fun highlight of my week, just after I watched the returning the waters documentary posted in our class I attended the Remembering Wai documentary screening in Lahaina (presented by Lahaina Strong) it was so cool to watch a success story right before watching a documentary about our fights for water rights in our backyard. This coupled with my literature review got me so inspired to write some new lessons for my students specifically centered around water rights and sustainability. :)

Next steps for the upcoming week is to improve my literature review and continue to improve upon the curriculum that I am creating for my science learners!