Ten Things I've Learned in Going Project-Based. It's a few days before Christmas and I expect a challenge. Students will be checked-out or hyper. However, to my surprise, they are fully engaged in a project that combines reading, writing, global awareness and critical thinking. I've mentioned before that this year has been challenging. However, I am realizing that my students excel when I approach a subject with a project-based framework. In past years, I started with a full project-based approach. This year, I started out a little more slowly. Here are some things I've learned over the last few years as I've transitioned toward a more project-based approach: Students need to be a part of the planning process. Blogs as Showcase Portfolios.
I am a huge advocate of blogs as ongoing, reflective portfolios of student work. After using them with students for the last six years in a variety of formats in three different schools, in my opinion, they are the perfect container for sharing, organizing and reflecting on student learning. For starters, they are so amazingly easy to use. I’ve used blogs with students as young as third grade and it really only takes one lesson for them to understand the basics. Once they get the hang of posting, organizing their work in categories is a breeze and adding links and media are natural next steps. Plus, the inherent organizational structure (categories and tags), if used properly, makes it extremely easy and quick to find anything.
The hardest part is ensuring that students remember to organize their posts. So I was very happy that YIS had an existing blogging portal, The Learning Hub, (set up by Colin and Brian last year) when I arrived last August. Showcase Portfolio Include: Image Credits. Using ePortfolios as a reflective teaching tool - Case study. Can Your Daughter Do This? Super-Awesome Sylvia's Super-Simple Arduino | Gadget Lab. Time to Break the Ice « The Art of Forgetting. Tomorrow is the first day of school. As Shakespeare has so eloquently put it there will be “the whining schoolboy with his satchel/and shining morning face, creeping like snail/unwillingly to school.” (Not much has changed in 450 years.) I have had a few students and teachers tell me they aren’t ready to go back quite yet. The way I see it you can’t stop the first day from coming so you might as well embrace it. And embrace it I will. The first day can be a bit awkward.
So in honor of educators everywhere looking to start the year off right, here are some interesting and unique ice breakers you can use in class this week (or in the weeks to come if you’re not starting school quite yet): Octopus Pyramid BuildBuilds: Communication Skills, TeamworkSupplies: String, Rubber Bands, 10 Solo cups per groupThe How: To play, you’ll need to make ‘the octopus’ first. cut six to eight strand of string that are about 6″ each and tie them to a rubber band in a circle. Like this: Like Loading... Why English teachers should care about project-based learning: multiliteracies, assessment for learning and digital technologies. |
There is impetus for pedagogical change in the English classroom. Bull and Anstey (2010, p.6) observed that, ‘literacy teaching and learning should respond to the rapid changes in literacy arising from increasing globalization, technology and social diversity.’ This transforming social, cultural and technological landscape necessarily brings with it a new set of opportunities and challenges for secondary English teachers.
Three such challenges include the purposeful integration of digital technologies into the classroom, the use of assessment for learning practices and the emergence of new literacies. The reshaping of traditional teacher-centred pedagogy to a more student-centred, inquiry-based pedagogy may assist Australian secondary English classroom with meeting these new challenges. One alternative pedagogy that may provide teachers with a scaffold to integrate digital technologies, assessment for learning practices and multiliteracies into the English classroom is PBL.
Figure 1. Pbln.imsa.edu/resources/PBL_Matters.pdf. Don’t do inquiry. No, I’m not trying reverse psychology here. I really don’t want you to do inquiry in your classroom. Seriously. 10. Inquiry is too loud and too messy 9. You’ll get no argument from me here. 8. Then again, they just might… Billy’s in the back of the room on the brink of drowning in his own drool puddle. 7.
Neither is America. 6. Drill and kill, worksheets, videos on Friday, giving the same lecture every year, textbooks, pacing guides, etc. are all much easier to do. 5. You’ve got me there! 4. Maybe that says more about college than it does about kids and how they learn? 3. Nope. 2. Can you lose something you never really had in the first place? 1. Neither is work… I must not be doing it right, then. Do inquiry because you want to love teaching. Don’t do it because somebody with a blog said to. Note: this was previously published on my other blog – Wisdom Begins with Wonder Like this: Like Loading... 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. Oftentimes when I consult and coach teachers in PBL, they ask about the assessment of standards.
With the pressures of high stakes testing and traditional assessments, teachers and administrators need to make sure they accurately design projects that target the standards they need students to know and be able to do. 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. Target Select Power Standards We know that learning is not segmented. PBL. 10 Things in School That Should Be Obsolete. Flickr: Corey Leopold By Greg Stack So much about how and where kids learn has changed over the years, but the physical structure of schools has not. Looking around most school facilities — even those that aren’t old and crumbling — it’s obvious that so much of it is obsolete today, and yet still in wide use. 1.
COMPUTER LABS. Students are connected to the Internet everywhere except in school. Regardless of their income bracket, most kids carry around a world of information in their pockets on their mobile devices, and yet we force them to power down and disconnect, and we confine them in obsolete computer labs. At Northern Beaches Christian School students learn everywhere. 2. 3. 4. 5. Corridors at Machias Elementary are used for informal learning 6. 7. 8. Learner Centered Classroom at Riverview Elementary School. 9. 10. Greg Stack is an architect for NAC Architecture and specializes in developing best practices for the planning and design of educational environments.
Wilderness Survival PBL Trailer. Project Based Learning: Explained. Piano stairs - TheFunTheory.com - Rolighetsteorin.se. Guitar Lesson #1. Help with bowdrill set. What is PBL? To help teachers do PBL well, we created a comprehensive, research-based model for PBL — a "gold standard" to help teachers, schools, and organizations to measure, calibrate, and improve their practice. In Gold Standard PBL, projects are focused on student learning goals and include Essential Project Design Elements:
Project Based Learning. Inquiry Based Learning. What’s the Best Way to Practice Project Based Learning? By Peter Skillen Project Based Learning can mean different things to different people, and can be practiced in a variety of ways. For educators who want to dive in, the good news is that a rich trove of resources are available. In order to create your own definition and practice, here are some parameters to consider. This diagram, enhanced by the critical eye of Brenda Sherry, can help you figure out what’s important to you and your students. We like to think with the frame of continua rather than dichotomies simply because things are rarely on or off, black or white, ones or zeroes. You could likely add other dimensions to consider as you build your own understandings and beliefs.
Who is in control? Who is asking the question to be investigated in the project? If the projects are collaborative in nature, you may wish to consider the amount of interdependence that students have with one another. Is the content a rich, deep problem space or is it a more narrowly focused content area? Skills for Project Based learning. Minding your Ps for Better DQs. 7th Graders Publish Their Own Textbook. Mac Life wrote an article titled Super 7th Graders Publish Their Own eBook to the iBookstore. It explains the project in more detail. "Each student has to choose an organisms they wanted to study and were required to submit their topic for approval. Afterward, students had to write informative – but entertaining! – articles about their organism.
" Andrea collected work from 69 students and entered it into iBooks Author. iBooks Author is free but only works on Macs running 10.7 Lion or higher. I'm not sure how Andrea did it, but I would have students layout their pages in their own iBooks Author files, collect their files, and copy and paste the pages into a master book. iBooks Author is a fantastically powerful tool. There are some disadvantages to using iBooks author for crafting your own learning materials. Check out what Andrea and her students say about writing their book. Www.inquiryhub.org. Introducing the Inquiry Hub.
Hello & welcome! ...
What Is PBL Really? Do you want to engage your students in Project Based Learning (PBL)? Maybe you are asking yourself what is PBL really? Am I doing it right? Well, first of all, the most important thing to understand is that PBL is a construct made up by human beings and so there are lots of variations! And you are entitled to construct your own version, too, within some parameters. My suggestion is to study many of the great resources that are available to you and then create your own working definition and effective PBL practice.
Some Parameters to Consider I have created this diagram, enhanced by the critical eye of Brenda Sherry, which may be useful as you consider what is important to you and to your students. We like to think with the frame of continua rather than dichotomies simply because things are rarely on or off, black or white, ones or zeroes! You could likely add other dimensions to consider as you build your own understandings and beliefs! Trust Who is in control? Questioning Collaboration. Whole-School Project Builds Pride. In rural Howe, Oklahoma, home to about 700 people, the school has long been the heart of the community. Students from pre-K through high school all congregate on the same campus. Now, thanks to the creative efforts of high school students and their teachers, the campus will be getting a facelift that should make local pride shine even brighter.
Project Lion Pride was a schoolwide immersion in project-based learning that engaged every student and teacher at Howe High during 10 weeks this spring. Although most students were new to PBL, they stepped up to the challenge of answering this highly relevant driving question: How can we make our school better? On the line was an offer of $1,000 to implement the top idea presented to a panel of judges. Behind the scenes, the entire staff of 13 teachers invested months of preparation to make the project a success. Howe Public Schools is already a 1:1 laptop district that integrates technology effectively. . #1. . #2. . #3. . #4. . #5.