How should I try to Incorporate PBL in a Traditional School Setting?
Use your curriculum as a start!
To have your students design something from scratch taps into their ability to create, innovate, and invent. Project-based Learning is one way to do this! Project Based Learning is an approach that challenges students to learn through engagement in a real problem. In preschool, it begins by learning from a student’s interest, a teacher was interviewed and stated, “After noticing children were building ramps for trucks in the block center, I decided to set up this display in the corner of the classroom to encourage more exploration with ramps.” Karen Cox, cofounder of perkinders.com. Karen was very observant; she took notes while altering her curriculum. She also used students’ interests, and their inquiry to engage them in a lesson on Force and Movement. Her next step would be to start a project based off of this concept. How can we build a ramp that will make the ball roll the furthest? By the end of this lesson, the students will understand friction from the materials used, understand that changing the angle of an inclined plane can affect an object, and know that speed and distance are ways to measure how an object moves. She can add in videos, books, graphs and while having students predict. Students can build their ramps and present their content in front of their peers, parents, and community. She will need to provide sentence stems as seen below:
Providing sentence stems:
We used _______ to build our ramp.
This graph shows ________
Our visual show our ball rolling about _______ft.
We tested our theory out _________ times.
In conclusion ______________
Tools that may help to keep your groups on task are listed below:
Web 2.0: Cool Tools for Schools-This is a collection of educational Web 2.0 applications that are organized by categories such as writing, research, presentations, storage, audio, converters, mapping, graphing and more.
Diigo- social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage, and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them. (My library, my network, my group)
Google Documents- brings your documents to life with smart editing and styling tools to help you easily format text and paragraphs.
Edmondo-teachers, students, and parents are connecting to collaborate on assignments, discover new resources, and more!
bie.org recommends:
PBL- K-5 Things to consider when searching for inquiries
PBL- 6-12 Things to consider when searching for inquiries
-understand biodiversity-design and conduct experiments-interpret data-use graphs to illustrate probability-communicate effectively with given audience-understand economic impacts
-Want to be independent – yet be child-like-are critical toward society-are ready to refine reasoning skills-begin to understand abstract concepts-develop hero-worships-can be self-conscious about new task
Use your curriculum as a start! Take the Theme and use it to your advantage, take the end of the unit to complete your projects. Invite parents, community members, have students explain it to their peers like a science fair. Start small and begin your projects at the beginning of the unit.
Plan! Start at the end when planning! What do you want the students to learn? What standards you want to cover? What does the rubric look like? Tie it to a student interest in your classroom. “John continued to check books in the library about construction so I expanded this unit.” Yes make it about them. Tell a story about a child their age. Plans as a grade level team, it’s easier this way.
Question! Create groups while introducing a driving question? This includes research on your part to help student along the way. Have students make a list of what they need to know to accomplish this task, this may include a video, discussion, a speaker, or even a field trip.
Challenge! The assessment will be the groups knowledge and skills, this helps with motivation!
Support! Though the theme, you can develop the students subject matter. Bring in people, skype friends in field, documentary on subjects; remember small pieces of information too much at one time can be overwhelming.
Debrief! This includes checkpoints that support learning, and clarify misconceptions. Teachers must make sure key steps are stated and written down for future discussion. Ie. vocabulary, concepts, visuals, labels, and art. Make sure students are responding to these questions kind of like a KWL board.
Assess! Measure progress observation trackers, student surveys, an or group evaluations.
Choice and Voice! Have students decide or you provide options of how they will present content. Media, tool kit, public service announcement, web page, procedures.
Speaking! Along with their tool they will also be presenting content with their peers to their community, peers, and or parents.
Feedback! Since you have already created the rubrics, you should be golden, but you want feedback from all people, parents, as well. Make sure you have feedback forms for people to fill out. Peer editing forms are relevant as well at this point.
Public Presentation! This is the culminating challenge can you speak in front of people? Peers, experts, and the community know you and your work. The first one will be a challenge, but as you move on toward the end of the year, things will get better, projects will improve and more of the school will support you!
Go Teachers! I thought this was helpful as well; here are the questions to ask when starting a PBL The Six A's of Designing Projects by Adria Steinberg, Real Learning, Real Work (1997)Authenticity
Does the project emanate from a problem that has meaning to the student?
Is it a problem or question that might actually be tackled by an adult at work or in the community?
Do students create or produce something that has personal and/or social value, beyond the school setting?
Academic Rigor
Does the project lead students to acquire and apply knowledge central to one or more discipline or content areas?
Does it challenge students to use methods of inquiry central to one or more disciplines (e.g., to think like a scientist)?
Do students develop higher-order thinking skills and habits of mind? (e.g., searching for evidence, taking different perspectives)?
Applied Learning
Does the learning take place in the context of a semi-structured problem, grounded in life and work in the world beyond school?
Does the project lead students to acquire and use competencies expected in high-performance work organizations (e.g., teamwork, appropriate use of technology, problem-solving, and communication)?
Does the work require students to develop organizational and self-management skills?
Active Exploration
Do students spend significant amounts of time doing field-based work?
Does the project require students to engage in real investigations, using a variety of methods, media, and sources?
Are students expected to communicate what they are learning through presentation and/or performance?
Adult Relationships
Do students meet and observe adults with relevant expertise and experience?
Do students have an opportunity to work closely with at least one adult?
Do adults collaborate on the design and assessment of student work?
Assessment
Do students reflect regularly on their learning using clear project criteria that they have helped to set?
Do adults from outside the classroom help students develop a sense of real-world standards for this type of work?
Will there be opportunities for regular assessment of student work through a range of methods, including exhibitions?
Below is a video on PBL, I thought was helpful!
What other lessons have you learned that will help someone start Project Based Learning?
Great planning up front helps to plan for pitfalls, mistakes, and student redirection.
Make sure that technology tools do not take over learning.
Look for tools that are intuitive for your students, or with resources available that help students learn the tools very quickly.
Give students a voice and choice in finding technology tools.