Water Analysis

Continuing my report of the year-long PBL project with my IPC classes . . .

Having anticipated that all groups would decide that drinkable water was their number one priority for survival, we planned that the second unit would cover water analysis and water purification.  Focusing on theses issues allowed us to cover the TEKS that dealt with solution chemistry - pH, boiling point, concentration, acids, bases, and salts.  We also pulled in changes of state and transfer of thermal energy.

This unit was the first that would get into the substance of the project. I was a bit daunted by the task of trying to come up with a list of items from the cruise ship that the students would be allowed to use.  It was a fine line between making the task solvable and challenging at the same time. For instance, we didn't want them to be able to use an aquarium filtration system, but we would let them pull out mattress batting if they wanted to use it.

The solution was another brainstorming session with Wendy Howe. This time another instructional coach, Phillip Lentz, joined us. Together, we devised a set of rules that would govern any materials that the students wanted to 'salvage' from the ship for the entire year. They could use anything they wanted as long as 1) they could justify its presence on a cruise ship, and 2) they were using it for something other than its original purpose. I would have final say on whether an item qualified under the rules.  This transferred the burden of listing the items from me to the students and made the whole exercise more learner centered. It also allowed for multiple correct ways to solve the problem of water quality.

Wendy and I bounced around ideas about what we would give them to test. Our immediate thought was 'fish guts' but after consideration decided that we would rather 'contaminate' the water ourselves so we could keep it safe (no amoebas) and so we could control what was in it.  We made two types of water - ocean and fresh. The ocean water obviously had salt, but it also had an oil slick from the wrecked ship. We put sand and coffee in it for particulates. The coffee also discolored it pretty well.  Fish food made it sort of smelly.  For the fresh water, we had previously decided that the island was volcanic for an upcoming geothermal energy unit, so we put powdered sulfur and sulfuric acid in the water.  The water also included coffee and sand.

Neither type of water was perfect so the students had to make a judgment as to which type would be easier to purify.  Part of the project required them to design a test that would identify the particular acid and particular salt in each type of water.

Some of the lessons I've learned from this project – there aren't enough clean beakers in the school (I've offered community service hours to the honor societies I return for dish washing).  More importantly, after years of 'lab safety' tests, these students don't have any idea how to actually use a MSDS sheet when they are choosing the chemicals. They don't realize that they need to analyze the products of the reaction for safety in addition to looking at the reactants.

This serves to prove the point that the teacher doing the work, the thinking, and the planning doesn't really embed the learning about it in the students. There's no enduring understanding about how to work with the chemicals or how to conduct a chemical reaction safely.

Another thing we've learned is that Critical Friends is a crucial piece of the process.  One group was just wrong about some of their test results, but were able to get on track by the time they had to present. Other groups were able to fine-tune their work and get a higher grade. The kids are pretty much brutally honest with each other, and are good about giving legitimate and constructive criticism.

Overall, I was pleased with the presentations and conclusions. Some of the groups showed truly inventive thinking about how they could implement their ideas with the limited resources on the island.  Many students are already looking ahead and anticipating the next steps.

As for me, I'm looking forward to my room no longer being messy and stinky.

(Next up . . . Nuclear power!)

Tsunami Mini-Project

With a years worth of STEM projects ahead of them, Wendy Howe and I decided to start the students out small with an analysis of the tsunami that trapped them. This project would serve several purposes.

First, it would be a review of 8th grade science from the previous year and give us a picture of how much they had retained.  Second, it was a gentle introduction to both PBL and a new way of functioning in the classroom.  The last thing was that we hoped it would accomplish was to give us an idea of whether we had done a good job creating the groups.

As a review of the previous year, we discovered that these accelerated students had a pretty good grasp of most of it. Two problem areas showed up however. The first was that they had a shaky grasp of the Law of Force and Acceleration. They could recite and even do the math, but they couldn't flip it around and apply it to a non-standard situation.  The second issue was their inability to apply convection to anything besides water. I'll be sure to work on both of these and check for understanding over the course of the year.  Both of these concepts will come up later in the year.

As an intro to PBL, the project gave a good snapshot of how comfortable they felt with independent work. Most of them were thrilled with the opportunity but a few were insecure about the lack of direction. I can solve that issue on a group-by-group basis by talking individually with each set of students. If they need more guidance, I can give it to them and thus each will have individualized learning.  Those that can run off without me are free to do so.

The most critical aspect was probably the grouping issue.  We had given the students the Color Quiz and tried to balance the groups with representatives from each personality type.  Most of it worked, but after the end of the tsunami project, we were able to adjust the groups slightly as we saw the need.

It has become clear as we proceed further with this project that we need to have workshops on interpersonal problem solving and  conflict resolution.  Wendy and Terry Ward, the campus learning liaison, will work with my classes on that before we get much farther in the year.

As a snapshot of the future and an introduction to a whole new learning paradigm, the Tsunami project was a great way to get started.

Year-Long IPC Project

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In the summer of this year, I approached @whowe67 about turning the traditional IPC curriculum into an all STEM project based learning class. The other thing I wanted was to put the 'integrated' back into IPC. In past years, we have taught one semester of chemistry and then one semester of physics.  She was interested in both ideas and we got together before school started to hash out a way to combine chemistry and physics into one class.

To this day, I wish I had been recording our conversation so I could describe the steps that lead us down the path to stranding my students on an uninhibited island for a whole year.

I don't remember how we got there – who said what that triggered the whole burst of creative energy. What I do know is that we wanted to start with something fairly concrete rather then some of the more abstract concepts in the TEKS. At one point, we discussed the water table and how parts of it always cause problems on tests. Our idea then was to look at solution chemistry, perhaps as an investigation in the water-strapped West.

Whatever energy was in the air that day inspired both of us. Soon we were batting ideas back and forth so quickly that we could barely write them down fast enough.

We decided to strand the students on an island ten years into the future. We created a scenario where a tsunami hit their cruise ship, wrecking it on the island. We considered the reasons why they were there, the topography of the island, the latitude and longitude where the island was located, and what materials they could salvage from the ship.

Once we had our scenario, we starting fitting each and every TEK for the IPC course into our narrative. We rearranged the units several times and used energy as the thematic concept that would unite the whole year unit into a continuous, on-going story.  By next May, the students would have a portfolio of information covering the entire year that wouldn't include science only, but would touch on math, English, and ultimately social studies.  Their final task would be to create a system of government that would administer the colony.

What we hoped for was that a project covering the entire year would unite the disparate parts of the IPC TEKS into an integrated whole instead of being taught one disconnected piece at a time.   We hoped that the students would be able to see the common themes and concepts that run through all science disciplines.

We anticipated that one of the problems with a year-long project would be grouping. With each group potentially taking different paths through the year, then switching groups midway through wouldn't be a viable option.  That meant that the students might be uncomfortably stuck with each other.

One thing that we didn't anticipate was the difficulty of having many different groups working on different things when the class size is very big. My largest class is a lot of chaos. The other issue is the squabbling that goes on with certain personality conflicts. My school Learning Liaison is working on helping with that one.

My plan is to report on this complex project over the course of the year.

Communicating with Parents

I have thoughts on both sides of this issue.  As a parent, I have gotten one child all the way through public school, and he is now a freshman engineering major.  I have two more, one in middle school and one in high school.

Most of the communication from my children’s teachers has been some form of ‘this assignment is missing’ or ‘you still owe fees for this activity.’  That’s good, I guess.  I’m informed about what my kids have done.  Better is the sort of communication that says, ‘We have this thing coming up’ or ‘This assignment will be due soon.’  Proactive, yay!

Having been in this district as a parent for over thirteen years now, I know how to navigate the website to find where the assignments and information is posted.  I can keep myself informed if I try, and if the teacher updates their website regularly.

I work in the same district where my kids attend, so I run into their teachers on a regular basis.   Most of the time when they hear my last name, I hear some variation of  ‘Your kid is so awesome!’ which I appreciate, I really do.  But I have to wonder – would I ever hear it if I wasn’t employed by the district?

Last year, I resolved that I would directly communicate with parents about the wonderful stuff their kids are doing.  On several of those phone calls, I could tell that the parents were bracing for impact when I identified myself.   By the end of the phone call, after I had told them, ‘Your kid did this great thing today,’ we were both feeling marvelous.  My goal was to get to every student over the course of the year with that type of phone call, but I must admit that time got away from me and I didn’t meet that goal.

This year, I have the same resolution and will definitely get to a greater portion of my class roster, shooting for 100%!

As for the proactive side of things, with all the technology and digital tools available to me, communication with parents should be a snap.   I’m working on a multi-stage attack on the problem.  I have a Celly account, I’m encouraging parents to follow my class Twitter, I keep my website updated, and I’m trying to nail down good email addresses for all of them.  Hopefully, with all these methods, each parent will feel informed and welcome to participate in my class.

This is even more critical in a PBL classroom where the rest of the school isn’t doing it.  If a parent walked into my class, I’m sure it would appear to be some sort of unholy mess on first impression.   From grading to the chaos, transparency and open communication with parents about what is going on is key.  The other benefit of this is that I know there are some parents out there who could be the sort of authentic audience that our projects need to be relevant.  How will I ever know if I don’t talk to them?

So that’s the plan for this upcoming year – I’ll see how it goes!

Taking a Left Turn

The phrase 'taking a left turn' is shorthand code between me and my kids. It comes from the road that leads out from our favorite pizza place. Taking a right turn leads onto the main road and home.  It is predictable and safe.  Taking a left turn leads to . . . the unknown.

Several times as we were leaving the pizza joint, someone in the car would look at that mysterious road running under the trees, and say, "I wonder where that goes?"

Because we all abound with curiosity, we eventually did turn left, at my daughter's suggestion, just to see what was down that road. We had a full tank of gas and no one expected us any place for several hours.  All of my children and I have been blessed with excellent senses of direction, so we weren't worried about getting lost.

It doesn't matter what was down that road or how long it took us to finally wander home.  The point is that we rambled off the known path and didn't worry about the details, and along the way we discovered some pretty cool things. 

Now when one of us suggests 'taking a left turn', the rest of us know that we aren't necessarily talking about a road. 'Taking a left turn' can apply to anything where we don't know exactly where we'll end up but we're willing to take the chance to find out.

I've been asked by several people in various classes this summer about how to get started implementing PBL in a classroom. My response is 'take a left turn'.

Starting PBL classes isn’t so much about what you actually do, but more about your mental framework and willingness to take risks.

Don't worry that you don't know exactly where you're going. Trust that your sense of direction won't let you get lost. Make sure your tank is full with all the resources you might need. Tell your administration not to expect you any time soon. Let your students suggest alternate paths and everyone keep their eyes open for the cool things to be discovered along the way.  In PBL, the journey is everything.

Over the years, my kids and I have taken many left turns. We've discovered some amazing things and learned things that we wouldn't have if we'd kept to the safe and predictable. We've never gotten lost and we've never regretted 'turning left'.

Once you start your PBL journey, you’ll never regret turning down that road.

Grouping

Project Based Learning depends on the group performance.  The process is very difficult for these students because it requires so much creativity, critical thinking, research, and then at the end, they have to pull all of that into some sort of a product.  The group composition is critical to the success of the project.

For every PBL project, the best number of students per group is four.  If you have less people, then some of the jobs get combined and overlooked.  If you have more students, then two of them will be sitting around and not contributing.  However, I inevitably don’t have class rosters that are divisible by four.  In that case, I’ve found that it is better to have smaller groups than bigger groups.  Also, sometimes I get students who come to me and say that they’d rather do it by themselves.  I usually talk to them to see what’s going on, but then I let them do it.  Sometimes it comes out okay, and sometimes they decide they want to be in a group in the future.  At the very heart of it, PBL is about student choice, so that is a choice that I allow them.

The group members should include:  a leader, the Team Manager; a creative person, the Project Developer; an organized person, the Materials Organizer; and a conscientious person, the Recorder.

A bit of a warning about the Recorder – having one student designated as the ‘recorder’ doesn’t mean that the other three don’t write anything.  This is a big misapprehension on the part of my students and they usually discover the problem when they come to the first summit.  Getting students to write in a science class is incredibly difficult, as though they turn that part of their brains off when they walk through the doorway.  However, as anyone who has looked at the steps of the scientific method knows, the last step is communicating results, usually in writing.  Also, I firmly believe that the act of ‘writing’, of organizing your thoughts about a scientific concept into some sort of order while your fingers are moving is a great way to embed your learning in your brain. 

This issue usually shows up in the Daily Learning Logs, where many times a group will tell me that the Recorder wrote the logs for everyone.  We have a little discussion about how the logs should reflect individual learning, not the group learning. 

At the first of the year, before I know the students very well, I picked the groups randomly.  By the end of the year, for the project that comes after testing, I let them pick their own groups, subject to my veto if I foresee a problem.   For the rest of the year, I have a general idea of students’ strengths so I make an effort to put the groups together with a balance between abilities. My classes are leveled, so there isn’t a huge gap in abilities in any one class.  However, if they weren’t leveled, then proper grouping would be an even more critical activity.  The sort of disorganized method I used for creating groups has worked well enough under these circumstances, but I think I can do better and thus serve my students better.

Last year, I probably did PBL about half the time compared to traditional units.  For the upcoming year, I plan to implement more PBL units.  In that case, the groups should be composed with care and an eye towards what each student can contribute to the group.  Instead of waiting until the school year has progressed to see what they are good at, I plan to inventory my classes the first week of school to see where they fall in the categories above.

Creativity can be tested in a variety of ways, as can leadership.  I plan to use things like Survey Monkey and other instruments to discern their interests and abilities.  In addition to helping with grouping, this will help me with differentiation.  In the past, I’ve looked at differentiation as something to do with the Special Ed or ESOL students, and something that applied in a general way to the rest of the population.  It’s all about the learning styles, right?  With the move to learner-centered platforms, each student should have an individual learning plan.  I need to know what they want to do and what they can do if I’m to guide them correctly.

Wow!  The first week of school is already crammed with ‘administrative’ tasks, from my Harry Wong ‘First Days’ things to sorting out iPad procedures when some students had them the year before and some didn’t.  And now I’m talking about taking more time out from the relentless pace of the curriculum to gather data about my students? 

Yes, I am.

As many people have pointed out before, Project Based Learning requires a huge time investment on the front end of each unit.  I’ve come to the conclusion that this time outlay includes the beginning of the year.  If I put in the effort during the first few weeks of school to assemble information about my students, I anticipate that the rest of the year will be more productive and less stressful, both for them and for me.

Asking Questions

My Learning Liaison asked for this post, requesting that I reflect on how I ask questions. We were discussing my most recent PBL unit where I had given my students the freedom to write their own driving questions.  I gave each group a Tubric from bie.org as a place to start and told them to pick a phrase from each column. When we met for the first summit a couple days later, we discussed their driving questions. My aim at that point was to make sure that the problem they proposed to solve was something that could be accomplished in both the time frame we had and the constrictions of what was available in my classroom.

A small note about my background - my most recent college experience before entering the classroom was law school.  I've mentioned my high school experience in a previous post. Both of these events left me with perhaps an unusual set of classroom perceptions.  Briefly, in high school, I learned not by listening, but by talking about a subject.  In law school, I was subjected to the Socratic method for three years, as well as being forced to do the assignments before they were explained, which I did religiously, although mostly out of terror.  (There's nothing quite like the prospect of losing a bunch of money to motivate exemplary performance out of a student).  In law school, the professors never give out answers.  Instead, you spend an entire class period being the subject of their relentless questioning.  “What about that?”  “What if this?”

I’m not advocating subjecting children to that.  However, I think that using that method in the classroom has benefits.  Additionally, the method of reading the material first and then discussing it later has become quite the buzzed-about technique, although we call it ‘flipping the classroom.’  We could learn a lot from law schools.

The first rule about asking questions is to have a good idea of what the answer should be. That seems obvious, but the concept of questioning requires that you have an in-depth understanding of the topic. That means study.  I have explained plate boundaries or galaxy formation so many times that I could do it in my sleep. However, as human understanding of both of those topics is subject to change, I have to keep up with current advances in the fields in the curricula.   Whatever your content area is, make sure that you really know what you want the final result to look like.

How does this apply to Project Based learning or more specifically, to the place where the teacher asks question – the summits?

If I am doing a regular PBL project, I have the learning standards that apply to the project as my guide. If I thoroughly grasp those standards, then I can guide the discussion to check for understanding within the group. I don't ever give answers because I think that violates the spirit of PBL and the struggle that leads to more in-depth understanding. However, a struggle that is unproductive, meaning it isn't leading anywhere, is frustrating for the students and will lead to them shutting down.  In that case, I still don't give them answers, but I do provide more narrowly tailored materials that will allow them to uncover the answers on their own. When they come back to summit, they are usually bouncing with excitement and a sense of achievement that they were able to master the concept.

In summit, when you are using questions to guide a group to a particular answer, start with the broadest or most obvious aspect of the topic. If I want them to explain that the periodic table is organized in columns by valence electrons and in rows by electron shells, that isn't the first question I ask. Instead I'll ask, "What is the most obvious organization?" or "What is the first thing you notice?"  They can always tell me that it's in order numerically by atomic number.

After that, I continue to ask increasingly narrow questions that allow the students to focus on the answer.  Usually at some point in this process one of the group members will 'get it'. At that point, I let that child take over the questioning, although I warn them not to tell the answer but to ask questions to help the other members understand.

What about in the case where there is no particular correct answer, such as in the case where the summit was a discussion of the driving question?

Again, the key is to know your topic, in this case the topic is 'What is a good driving question?'

Knowing the answer to that is partially the result of practice with writing your own questions for previous projects.  But a few things to keep in mind are that a driving question should be specific, it should apply to the real world in some way, and while it might not be 'solvable' it should be investigable.

In summit, when one group had a question 'How can we prevent drought in West Texas?' the problem was neither solvable nor investigable.   I asked them 'what are the causes of drought?' which they couldn't tell me.  I set them the task to research the causes of drought. When they came for the next summit, they had changed their question to 'How can we make the effect of the drought less?'  This version of the question was something that they might be able to answer.

Another group proposed this question: How can we educate the people of Texas about water conservation?  In this case my question was ‘how? ‘ And I kept after them with 'but how?' until they narrowed their driving question to: How can we educate the population of GMS about water conservation?

Awesome! It was narrow enough to be answered in the time frame we had and with the resources we had available.  And because their question was so well-framed, their finished product was one of the best that I saw for this project.

The temptation is always there to provide the answer, either in the interest in saving time or in saving frustration, but it has to be resisted.   In regards to the frustration issue, as I mentioned above, always have a fall back plan, a different way for the students to find the answer.   If you give them the answer, they won't develop the critical thinking skills that are the heart of not only PBL, but also Lead 2021 and the Common Core.

Time pressure is the enemy of PBL.  While we're all subject to the pressures of 'getting through the material', try not to be affected by the urge to hurry through PBL.  I'm guilty of this too; sometimes that ticking clock of looming testing is too much to ignore.  When it is clear from the discussion that the group does not understand the concept, the key in summit is not to give answers. If they haven't done the work, send them away to try again. If they have done the work, give them an alternative.

At this point, I would normally write a concluding paragraph summarizing what I've presented.  However, in the spirit of uncovering the answers on your own, I'll leave open the question of 'How do you ask good questions?'

What I Really Learned in High School

Or . . . "How My High School Experience Shaped My Teaching Philosophy"

West Virginia? Cutting edge?  This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

In the 1960s, the designers of the new high school to be built in my hometown of Charleston, West Virginia, were faced with a dilemma – how to make a school big enough to accommodate the huge number of baby boomers who where about to enter high school.  As anyone who has been to West Virginia must know, large tracts of flat and level land aren’t readily available without the creative application of dynamite.

Their innovative solution was to design a system where every student wasn’t in class at the same time, so that the school didn’t have to be as physically large as might otherwise be required.  They called it the ‘mod schedule’ and the day was broken into twenty-five seventeen-minute mods.  The school designers then further divided things into a six-day rotating week. 

The only problem with that was we still went to school on a five-day week, so memorizing your schedule took a bit of brain power.  “What day is it?” was a popular question, but we weren’t asking whether it was Wednesday or Thursday.  We wanted to know whether is was Day 3 or Day 4, because that made a difference as to what classes we needed to be in.  You might have English on Days 1 and 4, but math on Days 3 and 6.

I shudder to think about the enormity of the job the counselors had with scheduling all of that in the days before computer algorithms were available.

But the result of all of the confusion was that you had a schedule that was specifically tailored to your needs.  One year when I was struggling with math, I was assigned to math lab, which was a two-mod long extra tutoring session.  Lunch wasn’t at any particular time, but when you had some free mods in the middle of the day, you went to the cafeteria and ate.  Or not.  We didn’t have passing periods, but you always had a least one mod between classes.  Things like band and athletics were three mods at the end of the day so they could run over for practices.

The genius of the system wasn’t the complicated schedule, however, it was how each class was divided into three parts.  Each core class had Lecture (notes), Seminar (talking), and Quest (doing).

Everyone taking Chemistry, for instance, would attend lecture, which was just like a college lecture in the auditorium.  Every teacher that taught that class would be present for lecture, although they might not actually speak that day.  Lecture was usually three mods long.

The next thing was seminar, which was also three mods long.  Everyone sat in a circle and discussed whatever topic we were on, whether it was the Russian Revolution or literary devices.  The teacher sat in the circle too and guided the discussion.  They usually let us range pretty far as I recall.  Yes, that’s right – one whole class period was all about talking. 

The last piece was quest.  The length of quest depended on the class.  In science, quest was the lab part and lasted six mods, but occurred only once a week.  For English, quest was a writing workshop lasting four mods and meeting twice in a six-day week.

The schedule allowed for an amazing amount of flexibility.  By the time I got there, the baby boom was long past and the school was physically too big for the mod system.  What that meant for my friends and me was that there was plenty of empty classrooms that we could use during the course of the day for homework or projects.  I rarely brought anything home because I could get it done during the day, although I certainly wasn’t the best of students.

Sadly, since that time, GW has abandoned the mod schedule in favor of regular periods and a regular week.  I’m sure the declining population in Charleston was part of it, but also, for some students that schedule was probably a nightmare. 

I graduated high school in the 1980s and always thought my school was some sort of weird anomaly, a remnant of the sixties – a touchy-feely, Kumbaya sort of thing.  But last fall, I toured New Tech High in Coppell, Texas.  Much to my shock, that school was like being back at George Washington.   They have a mod schedule, not everyone is in class at the same time, they have empty classrooms available for teams to meet for work, and the cafeteria serves lunch whenever people show up within certain hours.  That school is considered cutting edge these days.  Hmm.

What my high school taught me was that talking about something is one of the best ways to learn about it, second only to doing the thing you are trying to learn.  After my English teacher let us select, by vote, what novel we would read, I realized that a degree of freedom to choose is a good thing, even for teenagers, and that an individualized learning plan is not as hard to create as you might think.  I learned that classrooms don’t have to be arranged in rows and that a teacher doesn’t have to be up on the stage, but can be really effective sitting with his or her students.  I learned that education doesn’t have to be an ‘us versus them’ proposition, that it can be a partnership built on trust and respect.

I’d love to have a time machine to go back to 2005 when the whole state decided to adopt Project Based Learning.  What an amazing undertaking!  Or barring that event, I’d go to the sixties when the mod system was proposed and listen to the community involvement, the teacher buy-in, and the staff development that must have taken place.  For both parents and teachers, that system must have been a completely new and shocking paradigm.  For the teachers, they must have had to learn a new set of unexpected skills. 

I’m sure that not all of my high school teachers were perfect at those skills, but I remember my classes with fondness and not with any sense of being oppressed by the system.  And that’s why I’m here today.

Things I’ve Learned about PBL

Last year at this time, our middle school science specialist sat down with me and said, “I’d like to try something.”  She had just come back from a tour of a New Tech high, and wanted to pilot a Project Based Learning system in a couple of schools as something to do with the 8^th graders after the TAKS test.  As I’m always looking for things to keep the 8^th grade out of trouble those few weeks between the test and the end of the year, I was happy to be a guinea pig.

Although it was a week before the TAKS test, we worked to pull something together as fast as possible, using the New Tech High model.  We finally settled on a space travel project that would integrate TEKS from all three grade levels with a trip to Titan as our goal.  Our entry event took advantage of the students’ obsession with the 2012 end-of-the-world scenario.

I consider that month to be the watershed event in my teaching career.  It opened my eyes to what even the lowest performing student can accomplish when they are motivated by an intriguing problem and given the freedom to explore that problem in their own way.  Since then, I have implemented several PBL units in both of my class levels.

1.     Driving Question – Writing a driving question is probably the hardest thing about PBL.  The question is critical because, as the name implies, it ‘drives’ the whole lesson.  A driving question that doesn’t engage interest or produce an enthusiastic response will derail the whole project.  The problem with designing these questions is something that may appeal to me may not be something that interests the students.  For instance, I had a driving question relating to dissecting the physics of video games that I thought they would love, however everyone was pretty indifferent.  On the other hand, a driving question about redesigning the periodic table was met with a high level of interest.  My next step is to let the students design their own question.  I plan to give them the Tubric 2.0 from BIE.org.

2.     Summits – I love summits.  There’s no better way to assess where my students are right at that moment.  I like sitting down with the kids in a small group and letting them tell me their ideas.  It’s a great chance to address misconceptions (on both sides, frankly) and to direct them in their next step.  I’m amazed at the creative ideas that come out during summits.

3.     Daily Learning Log – Students do not know how to record authentic learning when they are first introduced to PBL.  At first, their daily learning logs tend to be a list of things they did.  Instead, we have many talks about how that is different from things that they’ve learned.  The other thing they tend to do is to write, “I learned this,” without saying what they learned about it.  A correctly done daily learning log is a valuable reflection piece that they can reference when they sit down for a summit.

4.     Pushback – PBL is hard.  The nature of the work requires students to analyze, evaluate, and create.  They use their mental muscles in new ways that can be uncomfortable at first.  While ‘sit and get’ is incredibly boring, it also doesn’t require a whole lot of thinking on their part.  PBL completely reverses that.  At this point in the year, my students are tired of doing all the thinking and they definitely have lost a lot of their enthusiasm for the process.  Next year, I plan to make greater use of peer evaluations/critical friends, and get peer pressure working in my favor.  Also, with the district making a push for learner centered classrooms, I anticipate that more students will come to my class with experience in these critical thinking skills.

5.     Prep Time – I’m not going to lie.  PBL is hard.  It requires a lot of time on the front end – unpacking your standards, designing an entry event, plotting out where you want the whole thing to go, and collecting resources.  I tend to use the lesson plan template that comes with Microsoft Word to map out an overview of what I want to happen, including differentiation, assessments, and activities.  I pair that with a calendar that I give out to the students, so there are no surprises about when things are due.  Another great way to plan is the project overview document available from BIE.org.

6.     Presenting – No matter what their academic level, 8^th graders have no idea how to do a group presentation.  A few groups will have specific things each member is supposed to say and some sort of rudimentary script.  However, they won’t actually practice their presentations unless I make them do it.  Another thing I’m working on for next year is getting a better audience than their classmates.  For our final project of the year, we will be having a gallery walk presentation style instead of speeches.

7.     Learning – They don’t always take away what I expect them to during the course of the unit.  The Titan project was meant to be two parts – space travel and colonizing the moon.  I won’t claim that my students gained much understanding about the physics of space flight, but I daresay they will never forget how ecological succession works.  After the Newton’s Law project, they all vowed that they would be diligent about buckling their seatbelts.  In the Periodic Table unit, they figured out how to find valence electrons in a way that I had never thought of, but it worked for them.  Some of the groups have gone on to extend the units in ways I didn’t anticipate, but evidenced a very high level of thinking and analysis.

8.     Project vs. Problem – What is the ‘P’ in PBL?  I’ve found that focusing on the ‘project’ doesn’t work out very well.  For whatever reason, most of the time ‘projects’ have fallen flat and have not resulted in products that show a depth of learning or an engagement in the topic.  The only exception is the Rube Goldberg project, but that one gives my students a chance for nearly unlimited creativity.  The only limits were the laws of physics, so the project was a great way for the students to explore the practical application of those laws.  In contrast to projects, ‘problems’ seem to bring out much more enthusiasm from my students, particularly if the problem is one that might concern them or is one to which they can easily relate.  In the Titan project, the problem became how to terra-form an alien world.  In the periodic table unit, the problem was how to re-design the periodic table to make it more user-friendly. 

9.     ‘I can’ Checklist – In the past, my practice has been to make a list of TEKS-based objectives that I want the students to learn during the course of the unit.  As I said in my previous post, I am rethinking the whole checklist idea.  What I’ve found is that the students get hung up on the checklist, spending hours researching those items instead of focusing on the broader problem.  Some groups learn to delegate and assign each member a part of the checklist.  Does this mean that each group member masters all the objectives?  I think probably not.  My current plan is for each group to develop their own list of objectives for their learning in the unit.

10. Standardized Testing – There’s the rub, right?  The big, looming cloud of doom the hovers over our year.  I haven’t seen any test results, so I can’t say what PBL does for my test scores.  The mantra on the Twitter chats for PBL is, “Trust the process.”  From what I have observed in summits, my students have an in-depth grasp of some of the concepts.  Others . . . not so much.  But that is not a reflection on either the process or on them.  That is down to my planning and my design for the units.  At this point in the year, all I can say about standardized testing is I don’t know how it will work with the PBL. 

11. Observations – This year, my evaluator was our new assistant principal.  Early on, we had a chat about my intent to implement PBL throughout the course of the year, and he asked if he could do my observation during a PBL unit.  I gulped, remembered to trust the process, and agreed.  It worked out better than I could have hoped for.  While I sat down with one group or another conducting summits, the rest of the class was engaged in the process, directing their own learning, and managing their own behavior.  PBL is learner-centered, it involves the 21^st century skills that the students need, and summits give an incredible opportunity for feedback from me to the students, and from the students back to me.  Don’t fear that your evaluator will fail to see all of that.

12. Controlled Chaos – Following up on the last section, your evaluator won’t see an organized and structured classroom.  PBL is undoubtedly messy, sometimes literally so.  It’s also pretty noisy.  I’ve found that I can judge the level of engagement in the project by how much my students have rearranged my classroom.  The more interested they are in what they are doing, the more comfortable they get physically.  They push the tables around, arrange the chairs into groups, or hold discussions while they’re draped all over the floor.  Considering that I have a science classroom with a tiled floor, I’m amused by how much they like to sit on the floor.

13. Technology – PBL is absolutely possible without technology, although having it in the classroom does make it easier.   I’ve included books from the library, manipulatives, cutouts, as well as traditional lab equipment to enhance the PBL lesson.  Having many pathways for their learning gives students options to choose the way they feel most comfortable.

14. Support – For the past year, I may have been the only person in my school doing PBL regularly, and only one of a few secondary teachers in the district implementing it, but I never felt any lack of support.  The science coordinator and the science specialist are both totally on board with the process and have given me all kinds of help, from pulling together entry events to coming up with formative assessments.  The web is another endless source of ideas, or commiseration, or actual documents to use in class.  Twitter has regularly scheduled chats; there are groups on Edmodo or Edutopia that support PBL.

Like any new process, the learning curve for PBL is steep for both students and teachers.  I don’t think I’m anywhere near the apex of that curve, even after a year of working with the process.  To this day, some of the units soar higher than I thought possible, but some of them land with a dull thud.  But the ultimate reward for such a difficult journey is a class full of curious, talkative, and interested students who will throw all of their effort into solving the problem put before them.  With the move towards learner-centered platforms in nearly every district, PBL offers an outstanding way to change the classroom dynamic without marginalizing teachers.

Lab Rats and Inquiry Lessons

This started out as a tweet, but got too long and I had too many thoughts on it.

I have three children, the oldest of whom is about to graduate high school, so I've had the chance to observe their school progress for many years.  Their experiences have informed many of my classroom practices, from homework assignments to lab experiences.  I've seen what things fire their imaginations and what things don't. They are the perfect lab rats for what is inquiry-based learning and what is not.

For instance, on a recent project, the assignment was, "Remix a scene from Romeo and Juliet in a different setting. Make a video of your new scene."  This would seem to be straightforward assignment without room for much creativity. However, to do the assignment successfully, they had to have a thorough understanding of the scene in Shakespeare's language, translate it into modern diction, and then into the vernacular of whatever time period they chose. That required them to really dig into the scene and analyze not only the surface of the story, but the emotional content.  Then they had to actually talk through what the scene was about and how the events would be analogous to events in a different time period.  They had to research slang, customs, dress, and behavior from their chosen era. From what my daughter said, every group picked some time period other than the modern one.  

(All of which makes me long for sci-fi Shakespeare or some sort of Quest for Fire type thing with grunts and body language).

She and the rest of her group spent hours on this project and poured their hearts into it.  The project required all four of the C’s – collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication.  In addition for a deep and enduring understanding of their chosen scene, the number of things that they learned included how to cut scenes together using iMovie, that conveying emotion isn't all about the words on the page, and that while slang may not translate from era to era, Shakespeare's themes are universal.

On the other hand, a current project she is doing would seem to be very similar on the surface. "Pick one of the following movies and analyze this aspect of it for accuracy.  You can present in any media you like." However, the assignment also said, "Here's a checklist of things to include."  My daughter's take on it?  "This is busy work. The only thing it's testing is my ability to Google pictures."  If you give a child a checklist, by golly, that's what they're going to do - check things off it. And that's all they're going to do.  Granted, in this assignment, she’s had to look a few things up, mainly words she wasn’t sure about, so she has been learning a little about the subject of the project.

The very worst assignment of all was one that could have been wildly creative, but instead it had step-by-step instructions as to what they should do and a checklist.  Not only that, each item on the checklist had a certain number of points attached to it.  My child went through each item and said, “Do I have that?  Yep.  Moving on.”  She thought it was great because she already knew what her grade would be.  However, when she lost one point out of a hundred, she had no idea how it happened because she had completed the checklist as required.  Most importantly, she learned nothing about the subject of the lesson.

 
One obvious difference between the three projects is the group collaboration in the first that was missing in the other two.  While I definitely think that inquiry learning can happen individually, it works so much better when students can bounce ideas off each other, negotiate what they are going to do with the project, and learn how to divide tasks successfully. 

In any case, if I use my own children as a benchmark, hopefully I can avoid doing such things to my students.  Writing this essay has made me re-think how I just checklists in PBL units.  Usually, I give them a series of ‘I can’ statements that are objectives relating to the TEKS for the unit.  Next time, I think I’ll let them decide what their objectives should be and help them write a plan for their learning.

Someday, I may tell my children that they were part of the on-going science experiment that is my evolving teaching practice.  For now, I’ll appreciate the perspective they give me on things that go on in the classroom.

Things I’ve Learned about iPads in the Classroom

As a part of my district’s 21^st Century learning initiative, I have a set of iPads to use in my classes, one per student.  It isn’t 1:1 because they don’t get to take them home, but while students are in my room, they have an assigned iPad that is ‘theirs.’  We’ve had them since the first week after winter break.

1.     Logistics – keeping all of the iPads updated and synced is pretty easy if you go through the steps found at Three Teachers Talk.  They seem to need charging after about two days of use throughout all six classes.  I appoint students to pass them out and take them up to prevent crowds at the charging table.

2.     Customs and Norms – When dealing with 13- to 14-year-olds, the thing to remember is that they don’t have any experience with ‘business.’  They have to be shown how to title an email, how to express their opinion politely on-line, and how to save a file to make it easy to find again.  This last is especially important since they are sharing iPads with three other people who have the same assignments that they do.

3.     Dropbox – I thought I would be using Dropbox to have my students submit work, but it hasn’t worked out that way.  Separating each class into folders and then inviting everyone to participate was cumbersome.  The other problem is if two students choose the same name for their file, then the latest one is the only one that will show up.

4.     Show Me Your Work – Instead of Drobox, this is the usual way that I grade things that are on the iPads instead of having the students send me their products.  This method has the added advantage that I can stop and talk to the student while I’m grading.  We can discuss issues and misconceptions, or we can talk about what they learned.

5.     Test the App First – I have downloaded and then deleted more apps than I can count.  I make sure that it does what I want it to do for my lessons before I push it out to all the student iPads.  For this reason, and because the cloud is great most of the time, but sometimes it does things you’d rather it didn’t, I have separate iTunes accounts for my teacher iPad and for the student iPads.  The other thing I have to check is to make sure they are accurate and convey the concept at the level appropriate for my middle school students.

6.     Default Apps – the ones that come with every mobile product from Apple, and include Youtube, Google maps, iTunes, and the like.  If they disappear from the iPad, the only way to fix it is to plug it in to iTunes on a Mac and restore it from backup.  None of the default apps are available at the app store.  No, I don’t know how they get deleted.  All I know is that it happens.

7.     Ear Buds – required student supply. 

8.     Video Notes – I’ve found that everyone is much happier if I videotape my notes and put them on Youtube.  I still set aside class time for note taking, but everyone has their own personal teacher that they can control.  I’m there to answer questions if something isn’t clear or to help students take something further.  My students think it’s great because they can rewind me as many times as they need for understanding.  If they want to review, they can access the videos from home.

9.     Search Terms and Keywords – all my students walk in to my class and the first thing they do when asked to search for something is type the actual question into Google.  Hopefully, that won’t get them anywhere, and if it does, then I wrote a bad question.  We’ve had to have several discussions about pulling the keywords out of a question.  And we’re still talking about it.

10. Technology – keep up with changes, issues, and tricks.  Twitter is invaluable for app suggestions, website information, and chats with other teachers that are in my shoes.  Also, students teach me new stuff about the iPads all the time.

In general, this has been a remarkable experience that has put the whole world at my students’ fingertips.  Their enthusiasm and engagement every day is something amazing.  While some students make bad choices with the iPads, most of them understand what an opportunity they have and act accordingly.