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 8th graders after the TAKS test. As I’m always looking for things to keep the
8th 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, 8th 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 21st 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.
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