Project-Based Learning Research: Evidence-Based Components of Success. You've Got to Reach Before You Teach. "Whether at the start of the school year, the re-start of school after the New Year, or at any time when we want to strengthen our students' engagement in school and learning, it is valuable to have tools at our disposal that help us effectively reach students.
" This is a quote from Paula Prentis, Chris Parrott, and Amy Smith's collection of marvelous activities to enable teachers to do exactly that collection of marvelous activities. Here are two of my favorites, including one particularly relevant to the holiday season. Giving Back, Giving Thanks Particularly when students are going to have a long break from school, it's useful to ask them what they are going to do during that time. You will hear about ways they plan to enjoy themselves, maybe time they will spend with family or friends they don't usually see, and maybe what they expect to "get" over the holidays.
You might be greeted with incredulous responses, or simply gawking stares. How to Get High-Quality Student Work in PBL. "I thought the project was going well . . . but by the end, I felt that the work my students produced was not as good as I imagined it would be.
I was a little embarrassed and almost wanted to dial back the audience's expectations on the night of the presentations! " This is a common concern of teachers who are new to project-based learning. Things can appear to be going smoothly -- students have been engaged by the project, they've been learning content and skills, they've been busy and meeting deadlines -- but their thinking is not as in-depth and their final products not as polished as they should be. If this is your experience, it's time to ask yourself some questions: Why BYOD Makes Sense: Thinking Beyond a Standardized 1:1. I was recently asked, "Why are you giving the teachers choice of a laptop?
Why not just go all in with one device? " My answer, simply stated, is that homogenization of any tool is never a good idea in a context that is intended to foster creativity. The same argument is underway with the Common Core. Many fear that we are homogenizing educational standards and limiting opportunity for creativity, hacking and boundless exploration. That explains the viral popularity of Ethan Young, a Tennessee student who, at a school board meeting, provided an eloquent breakdown of what the Common Core really is and how it is affecting teachers. However, this post is not about Common Core or educational politics.
Standardization vs. Resources and Tools for PBL Start to Finish. Tips for downloading: PDF files can be viewed on a wide variety of platforms -- both as a browser plug-in or a stand-alone application -- with Adobe's free Acrobat Reader program.
Click here to download the latest version of Adobe Reader. Documents to Help You Get Started. March 20, 2013. Search. Academic Discourse and PBL. Author Danielle Lynch with her math students.
Photo credit: Laura Zimmerman Sammamish High School has defined seven key elements of problem-based learning used in our classrooms. This week we will explore the key element of academic discourse. How students communicate their discoveries and connect them to the overall learning is an essential part of what we do. Without proper communication, progress cannot be made on many projects. What is Academic Discourse? Academic discourse encompasses the idea of dialogue, the language used, and a format that facilitates a high level of communication in the classroom. Academic discourse is not something that comes easily to most students; rather, it is something that needs to be taught, modeled and recognized by both teachers and students. We defined the most important components of academic discourse within a math classroom and developed an approach to implementing these components. Processing the Problem. PBL & 21st Century Skills / Five-Minute Film Festival: Tips and Tools for PBL.
PBL Course Development: Collaboration Among Colleagues. Author Jayesh Rao collaborates with his AP Biology design team.
Photo credit: Bill Palmer. A Crash Course in Innovation. Helping today's students become more innovative thinkers is a serious goal endorsed by President Obama, corporate CEOs, and a host of others.
But here's an inside secret: Learning how to innovate is downright fun -- for students and teachers alike. I recently spent three days with about 25 educators gathered for a Foundations of Innovation workshop in Detroit. The professional development experience was facilitated by experts from the Henry Ford Learning Institute, which is developing a network of innovation-minded public schools, and the K12 Laboratory at Stanford University's d.school, a hotbed for bringing innovation strategies to classrooms and communities around the globe.
Shoe Design Offers a Trojan Horse for Problem Solving with Design Thinking. "Design your own shoe.
" That's what high school students thought they were signing up to do when they volunteered for an immersive experience in design thinking. Truth be told, the course description was not quite accurate. Shoe design "is really a Trojan horse for solving problems in a new way," acknowledged Chad Faber, director of the Knight Family Scholars Program at Catlin Gabel School, an independent K-12 school in Portland, Oregon. He facilitated the four-day, hands-on learning experience along with Greg Bamford (@gregbamford) from the Leading is Learning collaborative in Seattle. Several more Catlin Gabel staffers took part to learn by doing, building a cohort of teachers with design chops.
Twenty Tips for Managing Project-Based Learning. In honor of Edutopia's 20th anniversary, we're producing a series of Top 20 lists, from the practical to the sublime.
Project-Based Learning. The Role of PBL in Making the Shift to Common Core. Editor's note: John Larmer, Editor in Chief at the Buck Institute for Education (BIE), contributed to this post.
The Common Core has embedded within it some Big Ideas that shift the role of teachers to curriculum designers and managers of an inquiry process. PBL and Culturally Responsive Instruction. Cultural responsiveness in the classroom can often be written off as something patched by a quick fix, especially in an English classroom where swapping a traditional (read: Dead White Guy) text with something written by a person from an underrepresented background can take the place of more significant cultural response.
Don't get me wrong, I think that putting Zora Neale Hurston, Chang Rae Lee, and Junot Diaz into "the cannon" is an important social step for our discipline, but doing this at the expense of also having substantive structural changes in the classroom is a temptation that one has to be careful of embracing. Knowledge in Action: "AP+" Project: Research on a Project-Based Learning Approach to AP. Student: I run the Washington Post. Student: I ran for President. Student: I lobby Congress. Amber: We had one student in my former district who dropped out of high school and came to AP Government every day till the end of the year.
And he called himself the worst drop-out in the history of drop-outs, because he still showed up. PBL-WL updates and LangCamp on Twitter. Greetings everyone! I trust as your school year winds down, and your summer plans kick in, that you are including some time for reflection about the past year, and making some plans for the next one. I would love to hear your thoughts here on the forum! In other news... I have been building a non-collaborative wiki on PBL for WL. I am happy to hear from you, again here on the forum, about your thoughts, ideas, and comments about anything and all things connected to this on-going research. Cinjo : #pblworld. Summer Planning for Successful PBL. Photo credit: iStockPhoto It is often said that leading and teaching in project-based learning schools are like building an airplane while flying it. During the summer, we land the plane and we have a chance to just build.