Dispelling some misunderstandings about PBL I spend a good chunk of time on Twitter, often participating in or lurking on a Twitter chat. I have seen project based learning — PBL — a topic of discussion, but at the same time, I see a lot of claims about PBL that are just not true. What bothers me about these claims is not that they are wrong but that these misconceptions lead to further problems when implementing PBL. “I do projects all the time.” “I don’t have time to do a PBL project and all the scaffolding needed and lessons.” “I have to focus on standardized test prep and don’t have time for PBL.” “Students will copy each other’s products.” Obviously, there are many more concerns and misunderstanding teachers may still have about PBL. Andrew Miller serves on the national faculty for the Buck Institute for Education and ASCD.
How to Foster Collaboration and Team Spirit Teaching Strategies Flickr: woodleywonderworks By Thom Markham Once they get to the working world, most students, in almost any job, will collaborate as a member of a team. And every student needs to be prepared for that environment — partly for employment opportunity, but mainly because the deeply embedded mental model of learning and creating as an individual process is obsolete. But collaboration doesn’t necessarily come naturally to students. Second, import and adapt the high-performance principles common in the work world to teams in the classroom. Examine individual strengths within collaborative context. Thom Markham is a psychologist, school redesign consultant, and the author of the Project Based Learning Design and Coaching Guide: Expert tools for inquiry and innovation for K-12 educators. Related Explore: collaboration
What Project-Based Learning Is — and What It Isn’t Screenshot/High Tech High The term “project-based learning” gets tossed around a lot in discussions about how to connect students to what they’re learning. Teachers might add projects meant to illustrate what students have learned, but may not realize what they’re doing is actually called “project-oriented learning.” And it’s quite different from project-based learning, according to eighth grade Humanities teacher Azul Terronez. Terronez, who teaches at High Tech Middle, a public charter school in San Diego, Calif says that when an educator teaches a unit of study, then assigns a project, that is not project-based learning because the discovery didn’t arise from the project itself. “If you inspire them to care about it and draw parallels with their world, then they care and remember.” For Terronez, the goal is to always connect classroom learning to its applications in the outside world. When Terronez assigns a writing project, it’s rarely just for a grade. Related
What You Need to Be an Innovative Educator Innovation isn't a matter of will. Like most things worth creating, critical ingredients pre-exist the product. In the case of innovation in education, many of those necessary ingredients are simpler and more accessible than they might seem -- which is, of course, good news to an industry already up to its nostrils in oh my gosh for the kids we must have this for the kids yesterday for the kids admonishments. Whether you're innovating a curriculum, an app, a social media platform for learning, an existing instructional strategy, or something else entirely, innovation in education is a significant catalyst for change in education. If our data is correct, you're probably a teacher. And if you're a teacher, you're probably interested in innovation in the classroom, so let's start there -- with project-based learning, for example. Project-based learning is an example of innovation, but probably not the way you'd expect. PBL promotes innovation in education by making room for it. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
PBLU.org | Making Projects Click Practical PBL: The Ongoing Challenges of Assessment In recent years, most students in my project-based AP Government classes have indicated, in both class discussions and anonymously on surveys, that they prefer project-based learning to a more traditional classroom experience. They find PBL more fun and believe that it leads to deeper learning. However, two types of students often resist this model. Students of the first type generally do not enjoy school at all, and are looking for the path of least resistance. Because a PBL classroom is student-centered and calls on students to produce, less-motivated students will find it more difficult to "hide" and be left alone. The second type of student has already been very successful in traditional classrooms and is deterred by the challenges of this new model. Both types of students benefit from the option of choosing their role in project cycles to increase motivation. Fair Assessment of Teamwork 1) Individual Skill Areas 2) Role-Based Assessment 3) "Weighted" Scoring
The 8 Elements of PBL: A Model Project | As most of you know, the uber gods of PBL are BIE. I was first introduced to the BIE PBL ‘model’ from mate Dean Groom who handed me over what I still refer to as my ‘PBL Bible’ – a ring-binder full of the BIE Freebies that help teachers plan effective projects and keep students on track as they move through the different phases of each project. The cool thing is that you can use as much or as little as you want … PBL is a very personal process that (like all good teaching) should be tailored to the expertise and needs of the teacher and students. However, there are 8 Elements of Project Based Learning that can be called the ‘essential elements’ of PBL … keeping an eye on these and ‘testing’ your project design based on them can help you determine if what you’re creating isn’t just a ‘project’. I really like this statement from BIE contrasting PBL and traditional ‘projects’: The Emo Project Here is the project outline that I gave my students: Does the project teach significant content?
Project-Based Learning Professional Development Guide An overview of the Edutopia professional development guide for teaching how to use project-based learning in the classroom. Edutopia.org's Project-Based Learning professional development guide can be used for a two- to three-hour session, or expanded for a one- to two-day workshop, and is divided into two parts. Part one is a guided process, designed to give participants a brief introduction to project-based learning (PBL), and answers the questions "Why is PBL important?" Part two assigns readings and activities for experiential PBL. Students Follow the Butterflies' Migration: Teacher Frances Koontz shows students a symbolic butterfly sent from children in Mexico. The Resources for PBL page includes a PowerPoint presentation (including presenter notes), which can be shown directly from the website or downloaded for use as a stand-alone slide show, and sample session schedules. Continue to the next section of the guide, Why Is PBL Important?
Free Resources and Tools for "Authentic" Assessment New York's School of the Future shares their assessment plans and rubrics, classroom projects, schedules, web links, and other resources to help you implement "authentic" assessment today. The current faculty and administrators have worked closely on a host of innovations in assessment and curriculum planning over several years. The keys, they say, are trust, transparency, and collaboration -- and providing the professional development and training teachers need to succeed. Credit: Tom LeGoff Note: The School of the Future is part of a network of New York schools that develops and uses its own assessment techniques, referred to as DYOs. Ideas for moving curriculum into a circular pattern and tracking performance to expose students to a wide variety of topics over and over again as the material gets more challenging Lesson planning guides, date-driven decision making tools, discussion protocols, and teacher observation forms What do you think of Schools that Work?
Criteria for Effective Assessment in Project-Based Learning One of the greatest potentials for PBL is that it calls for authentic assessment. In a well-designed PBL project, the culminating product is presented publicly for a real audience. PBL is also standards-based pedagogy. In addition, teachers need to make sure they are continually assessing throughout a PBL project to ensure their students are getting the content knowledge and skills that they need to complete the project. When designing, use R.A.F.T. as a way to ensure an Authentic Culminating Product R.A.F.T is great teaching strategy that many teachers use in activity-based lessons and assignments. This strategy is a great technique to use when figure out the culminating product for PBL. Target Select Power Standards However, PBL's intent is not to cover, but to get in depth authentic assessments that truly show a student has mastered a few given standards. "When you go window shopping, you often spend a few hours walking down the street or the halls of the mall window shopping.
This is an example of Bruner's notion of "problem finding"-- encourage learners to discover problems, and that will give them the opportunity to solve the problems. by tomparmelee Apr 24