SIGNIFICANT CONTENT: PBL chatter from the trenches; What works and what doesn't

SIGNIFICANT CONTENT: PBL chatter from the trenches; What works and what doesn't

Jump in, pick an element, and get started!  Those were the concluding words of advice given to a group of UNI students as I chatted with them via Google Hangout last Friday. First of all, props need to be given to the UNI professors who are giving their pre-service students an opportunity to reach out to teachers in the trenches to see how PBL plays out in the actual classroom! I absolutely loved chatting with these students and also thoroughly enjoy sharing this pedagogy with my student teachers, colleagues, and other educators in the state at Edcamps, AEA sessions, and conferences! The hands down winner of frequently asked questions throughout each of those settings is hands down, "Where do I start?" I would say start small, but give it a go!

Before you jump in head first, however, how would you answer these questions: Are your standards clarified? Do you know 'what' you are supposed to teach? Do you have vertical and horizontal alignment? Have you really READ and studied what your standards mean?  As you may have predicted, the first element of Project Based Learning to purposefully implement into your classroom should be significant content. Many debates have been centered around, 'Do I start with the project idea and then connect with standards or vice-versa?' In my opinion, start with your standards; but, keep it simple. Maybe just one content standard and an outside standard such as literacy and/or 21st Century skills; a total of, maximum, three standards for a project based learning opp lasting in the neighborhood of a week. 

Okay, what works. Standards have been referred to as daunting, boring, too general, even too specific, they limit learning, and promote teaching to the almighty test. Let's start debunking these attitudes by first creating I Can statements which put these often wordy and technical standards into student friendly terms. Some people refer to them as learning targets or student objectives; no matter what you call them, just get 'em created! Next, create a mindset that allows you to begin to see these standards as jumping off points; just start brainstorming ways to teach the standards in a way in which you never have! If ideas are what you need, check out #tlap (teach like a pirate),  #sstlap (social studies teach like a pirate),  and #nbtchat (no box thinking); each of these (and MANY others) are great Twitter chats to begin thinking about reaching the standards of the Core in a way that encourages learning through inquiry rather than simple indoctrination of content.  If you are using group work, technology, or close reading activities; be sure to claim it as you may well be meeting three additional standards! Grab a colleague, whether it be from your content area, or even better, out of your area of expertise, have a chat about your idea and really bring your PBL to another level!

Make yourself a chart like this to get started: 

Standard                                                                          I can Statement                                  Formative Assessment

1. copy/paste from IA Core                                        1. Student friendly term                      1. How are you going to assess        

website                                                                                                                                          the skill as well as the content? 

Example from my month+ long PBL titled, "War, What is it Good For?"-- 

1. Standard D2.Civ.3.9-12. Analyze  1. I can analyze primary 1. Link: Google Doc for Students

the impact of primary documents  documents of war time and

such as constitutions, laws, treaties,  make conclusions regarding

and international agreements on the   recurring themes among the

maintenance of national and   relationships with with US and

international order. other countries

Because of the manner in which the standards are written in the Iowa Core (or C3 Framework in my case), I believe they can only be met by implementing a student centered learning environment such as PBL. Toss the 'sit and get' mentality out the window and challenge your students to meet these standards through an active inquiry process!

Now, from the trenches; time to chat about what doesn't work. My biggest failures with PBL this year regarding standards is overwhelming the students with, dare I say, too much front-loading. After hooking the students with your entry event and disclosing the driving question, use proficiency scales to provide your students with the significant content learning opps as needed regarding low level information in levels one and two. However, be careful when moving onto level three (the beginning of the I can statements inquiry process) with telling them they will be learning this content at a high level by conquering nine standards over the next month. Let it be a bit of a mystery; let them uncover the standards without them really knowing per se. Students went from wondering what we were up to after the entry event to being completely overwhelmed and tuned out after unveiling the standards. While I always have the daily I can statements (derived from the significant content) posted on the board; next year I will unpack these standards with a little less formality. I like the idea at the end of a week having the students spend time reflecting on what they discovered, analyzed, or evaluated regarding the I can statement(s). They should also reflect on the formative activities that added to their content knowledge/skill set and conclude with a reflection regarding how this week's work brought them closer to answering the driving question. Let them, with your guidance and facilitation, uncover the mystery of the I can statements as needed; let the subsequent I can's be the exciting 'Next Challenge!' 

In sum, you will spend so much time thinking of ways to get your students hooked into the driving question, don't ruin it by bogging them down with a lengthy list of standards in which they must uncover prior to ending the unit! So, Goal One: Ask yourself and your colleagues if they have their standards ready to go for 2014-15. If you don't, ask your administrators if you can have some time to get these finalized, and then brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm!  Make the significant content come to life for your students!! 

Standards are the 'What,' and Project Based Learning is the 'How.' As stated at PBL World, PBL is not another thing on your plate, in fact, it IS the plate; every initiative and every standard can be supported by PBL! Start Small and Go Big!! 

Death of Education is the Birth of Learning...

"I hate the Iowa Core." I hate this C3 Framework thing." "I learn best from worksheets." "What is so wrong with just reading from the book?" "I passed all my quizzes, what else do you want from me?" "Tell me what good this is going to do for me to pass the ACT or even for life for that matter." "I'm not even learning because you aren't teaching me anything."

So, the Death of Education is the Birth of Learning. What does this mean to me and what do I want from it? By definition, education means the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction especially at the university or school level. Broke down further, systematic: done according to a fixed plan or system; and instruction: detailed information telling how something should be done, operated, or assembled. By these Google definitions, I don't want education in my classroom. I do not want it to be systematic, I do not not want it to be a fixed plan, nor do I want to tell my students how something should be done. Education by these definitions needs to go away.

A quote that has remained with me since the beginning of the school year is, "If you understand everything you're doing, you are not learning." That was in my daughter's fortune cookie,

and it encompasses everything I want my classroom to be. Birth of learning begins with the teacher spending her time building a classroom where confusion reigns, questions are supreme, inquiry and processing are more important than facts, failure is an option, learning is authentic, content standards are met, skills are developed, students collaborate, and the walls of the school are just for structural purposes. I want my students, to put it in plain and simple terms... THINK. Think creatively and think critically. I want them to discover things I never knew and quite frankly, never knew enough to even wonder about. Learning. This is learning to me.

As most of us educators, certainly all of my PLN on Twitter, have come to realize; students have long learned the game of education and have slowly lost the excitement and overall zest for learning.  I also think we could all agree that once they leave the walls of their elementary classrooms, many of us middle school and high school teachers slowly drill and kill low level facts and meaningless information into their brains. The system becomes a set of hoops in which they need to jump through all under the guise of, "We are preparing them for their future." At Iowa's 1:1 Institute Leadership Conference, Patrick Larkin mentioned vision statements and school goals; if we really analyze our schools' mission statements and assessed how each teacher in the building actually was contributing to it; how would we rank? Are we preparing them for a future of unknowns by taking away their desire to learn? Taking away their creativity and zest for learning by telling what they need to know, how they will learn it, and when they will test on it; is this preparing them for their future?

To be completely honest, my students have given me reasons to smack my head against the wall, made me go home wondering why I even try to teach, made me question why I spend so many hours worried about them instead of my own children, and have literally pushed me to the brink of throwing my hands in the air and just calling it quits. In the same breath, however, I can barely wait to tell you these students are also the ones who challenge me intellectually, who carry stimulating conversations, are able to push me to become a better teacher through needed research and study in order to reach them; and have also given me a plethora of reasons as to why I am a teacher. I can honestly say, however, the specific examples in which I am currently thinking about in both positive and negative scenarios have nothing to do with the true definition of education. The frustrations and successes in which I am experiencing are all surrounded by the idea of pushing my students to be learners.

To return to the quotes at the beginning of the blog, these students range from high functioning to students receiving special education services; I strongly believe we are doing a disservice to them all. The push back from students is understandable; they have been immersed in an educational setting that is decades behind our business counterparts for the past ten plus years; this is a mind-shift for them as well. And it is hard. It is hard to think in the manner in which I am pushing them; it is hard to analyze, evaluate, and to be producers of knowledge. It is so much easier to be told and to be mere consumers.  I think we are all in need of making complete shifts in our teaching pedagogy in order to truly prepare our students for their future.  In order to make this happen, we need to get rid of the 'education' mindset and bring the 'learning' back to the focus. Yes, I can declare, I hope for the death of education and for the birth of learning.

What I want my students to know....

Today, one question sparked a conversation in which I, honestly, wasn't prepared to answer. Actually, if I am completely honest, I thought I had already successfully addressed the question weeks ago. Wrongo. I realize now that even though I 'think' I am being super careful in explaining the purpose of what we are doing in class and when I ask, "Do you have any questions?" and no one responds, many students still don't see it. Soooooo.... this blog is addressed to my juniors and seniors so that they can see the method to my madness! I will do my best to not be defensive; instead, I hope to simply clarify the expectations of what I hope they will take from my classroom.

First and foremost, I want my students to know that I care. I really, really do. I care about their learning. I care about their world. I care about what they do outside of school. I care about what they want to learn about. I care about their time and how much of it I am asking them to give my class. I care about their opinions. My commitment to research this summer, my long nights prepping for the week, and my time away from my family all demonstrate just how much I truly care. Having said that, however, it takes a lot more than just 'caring' to be a successful teacher. And this is where today went downhill.

As we launched a second day of researching their need to know questions, I was given push back I wasn't expecting. I found myself giving push back right back and began to blame the students for being 'lazy' and not taking the initiative to want to learn more and discover information. And then in front of 20 seniors, it hit me. It was my fault. I hadn't piqued their interest. I had failed them with the entry event; I did not grab their attention, and they certainly did not care what tomorrow was going to bring. Then, in typical fashion, I find reasons as why it reeeaaalllly wasn't MY fault per se as we had a crazy couple of first weeks to school. Early outs because of heat gave us 20 minute class periods for about a week and half.  Nothing was really accomplished, and it felt so scattered that I wasn't even sure which way was up; can't imagine how confused they must have felt. So, no more excuses. No more placing the blame. My students are not seeing the purpose, and that is my fault.

The overall idea of  project based learning is to provide students with an opportunity to learn significant content (directly from the Iowa Core) while also promoting communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking skills. I want my students to know SO much more than just the content from a text book. I want them to be able to analyze, to raise awareness, to start conversations, to find answers to their own questions, to make a difference, to push for change, or to push for the status quo, and just simply - take action. Do something to prove they were on this planet. I want to teach them skills that they can use in the real world; skills that they can apply to various situations in the 'real world.'

I am not interested in whether or not they can give me the date of the Battle of the Bulge, but rather, what can they use from the event, Battle of the Bulge, for a bigger purpose. What information can be used from our major time periods in history to help us answer our driving question, "Must U.S. citizens be accepting and tolerant in order for our country to be productive?" is our current focus. In American Government, we are learning about I Can Statements that will help us answer, "As a US citizen, what is expected of me and what can I expect from the government?" I want my students to realize the significant content from the Iowa Core in which I wrote in the form of I Can Statements.  By researching the Need to Know Questions about the actual I Can Statement, I am hopeful they will gain information in which we can actually DO something.

It literally took days to complete a serious analysis of my non negotiable N2K ?s for the students to figure out under which I Can statement it would most closely be associated with. Now, it requires much thought to actually do the research in such a way that the I can statement requires. It is so much easier to sit and get information and be a passive learner. However, I just can't settle for that; I want my students to DO. I want to give them the foundation of knowledge and then for them to dive in and to think about what they are doing and to do this learning in the context of the real world.

So what do I want? I want students to think using higher order thinking like analyzing, synthesizing, and creating something new. I want students to gain an understanding of the critical concepts; I want to remove any extra 'nice to know' bits of information and allow the time to explore concepts and skills needed to apply to situations, issues and problems in the real world. I want students to want to learn. To Want to make a difference. To WANT to be a better, more effective citizen using the skills we are developing within the class each day. I want them to build skills that they will be able to transfer from situation to situation. I want them to be better, more educated people.

Ah, the inquiry process; this is the time where real learning is supposed to happen. Imagine my sinking feeling, when today a student says, "I really don't think I am learning anything." Sigh. This situation is my fault. Not his. I failed. Not him. BUT, as I told the students -- Fail means first attempt in learning -- so, here goes... 2nd attempt at getting the students hooked into the driving question......

I am thinking for the next couple of days, I need to reinvest time to get my students back and interested in the learning process.  Let's each pick ONE I can statement that they REALLY want to know about; create some need to know questions and INQUIRE. What can we find out about ____? Is the goal for the rest of the week.

The Steps of PBL:
1. Entry Event -- Activity in which I should be able to grasp the attention of the class and to really begin the inquiry process.
2. Analyze the I Can Statements (from the Iowa Core) and create Need to Know ?s
3. The Need to Know Questions should be matched up to the I Can statements and be used to begin the research process
4. INQUIRY process!
5. Share out to the group - individual meetings - group meetings
6. INQUIRY
7. Prepare presentation

What do you guys think??  Help me help you understand this better.

2013-2014 Is Off and Running!

The start of this year has definitely been a blur as we have been battling heat; the first days of the school year have flown by! My 7th and 8th graders as well as the juniors and seniors started the year with a focus on  learning the meaning behind the four C's: Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking. As I will actually assess their growth of these skills, we first established a baseline of their own perceptions of their skills; we will measure their future perceptions as well as their demonstrations of each as we continue our studies. We also spent time uncovering our learning styles and writing resumes in which they will use to create groups in which to collaborate with during the learning process.  They have been patient as we set expectations, as they learn my teaching style, and as I learn their learning styles, and  of course, their personalities!

Just this week we are beginning studying content... Finally! Because I follow the BIE's Project Based Learning Model, the students are actively engaged in the learning process; this is an adjustment for some. We also incorporate a lot of technology as the students each get a laptop and log in each and every day; this also is an adjustment for some students! Although we will have plenty of hands on learning opportunities, the course is set up on www.starmontss.weebly.com, and for junior American history and senior American government, we will also use the learning platform called Moodle. As many students are beginning to take online courses, it is paramount they begin to become familiar with this platform. Each class has begun their Entry Event of the respective units and will soon uncover their assigned Driving Question. Once we determine what we Need to Know in order to further discover the Driving Question, the students will embark on the inquiry process with my guidance and feedback from not only me, but from their critical friends (classsmates).  We will further discuss the framework for giving feedback as we get closer to this aspect of the learning process. Our end goal of each unit is to create something new with our new understandings of the content; I hope to challenge the students to stimulate conversations, question set beliefs, and most importantly make connections with our understandings to applications in the real world.

My goal for the year is to push the students into an area of thinking and reading in which they may not have experienced; this often comes with discomfort and uneasiness. As I have assured the students, my classroom is a safe place in which to fail. FAIL for me stands for "First Attempt In Learning." I want them to be comfortable to share their opinions, try things they never have and to open up to new experiences and ideas. Social Studies is a subject that is alive everyday in our society; I am challenging my students to realize these connections and attempt to make a difference in our community, state, country, and heck, our world. They have amazing ideas if given the chance to reflect on their knowledge, and I can't wait to uncover what they have in store for me!

Teacher - Student Conversation: Read. NO. Yes. No. Bribery? Okay.

Reading to learn independently? Are you crazy? When I asked 7th grade, 8th grade, Junior, and Senior classes regarding the amount of time they spend reading expository textbooks and the reasons they do or do not complete the reading assignments, I received a lot of honest answers. The most striking answer was, "Why would I read it if the teacher (me included) is just going to tell me what I need to know?" Hmmm. Talk about an ah-ha moment that should have occurred a LONG time ago. I mean, I know they weren't reading, but, well, their loss, right? During the first semester I asked the students to read and expected them to do so; however, during the mini lectures, I would tell them exactly what I wanted them to pull from the text book. To no one's surprise, they didn't read; conversations were limited to a handful of students, and we would move on. Was I facing a purely motivational issue or were there ability issues I needed to address as well? Irregardless, I was inadvertently giving the students reasons NOT to read. Sigh. Things needed to change.

Prior to expecting my students to read, summarize, and take notes while reading expository texts independently, I needed to demonstrate the methods in which they may find success. I decided to go back to the basics; teach the students how to think about their reading. We have been working with the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy for a couple of years, and the students have heard me talking about recall... up to analyze.... and continue to create; but Webb's Depths of Knowledge takes this thinking to another level. I had just recently attended a Common Core Institute in Des Moines and decided it was time to make a full faith effort to include Literacy "I Can Statements" and to make the first critical shift in literacy as recommend by the Common Core Institute.

The first shift was "Literacy instruction in Content Areas," so... all of my classes went back to the basics. Webb's DOK has four levels and make connections with Revised Bloom's. Level I of Webb's, DOK is recall (correlates with Bloom's Remember Level); within this level, students recall elements and details and perform routine procedures. Level II of Webb's DOK is Skill/Concept (correlates with Bloom's Understanding); within this level, students identify and summarize the major events, organize, represent, and interpret data. The third level of Webb's will require the students to support ideas with details and examples; they will also identify research questions, design investigations for a  problem, or apply a concept in other contexts (correlates to Bloom's Application). The top DOK level is extended thinking (Bloom's Analyze, Evaluate, and Create); students will create a project that requires specifying a problem, designing and conducting an experiment, analyzing data and reporting results. They also analyze and synthesize information from multiple sources as well as describe and illustrate how common themes are found across texts.  This instruction took several days, and I'm spending even more time teaching the 7th graders (their minds are still open and haven't mastered the wrong ways to learn, yet! :) When Webb's DOK is used with Bloom's Taxonomy and when the students implement this thinking processes... presto-magico... Success!

The 2nd major shift in teaching was "Academic Vocabulary." Vocabulary - yep, you are going to first study your vocabulary for the unit and NOT just content vocab, look for academic words you may not know. I asked the students to skim through the reading (As the 'S' in SQ3R would require) and locate unknown key terms and phrases in addition to the vocabulary. Next, is the reading. Read one paragraph at a time and stop to use the strategy WIN from the Journey's reading program - W: Who/What the paragraph is about, I: what information is given, and N: number of words (10) or less, summarize the paragraph. Okay, we are on a roll now. Study and mastery a level low level vocabulary quiz is our first formative assessment. 80% ? Awesome; if not, the students needed to make time to see me to determine whether their 'non-mastery' of the vocabulary was motivation issue or ability issue. Beware... a retention quiz will be given several days later to see if the students actually learned the material or just crammed it all in just before the quiz!

Okay, the next shift I introduced into my classroom was "Increase Reading of Informational Text." Right now, in each class, students are being expected AND being held accountable for reading their text. Together as a class, we discover the purpose for reading, we create DOK leveled questions for the chapter to prepare for our reading, and then do the impossible... READ. Read to learn. At this point, S, Q, and the first R of SQ3R are accomplished and we have gone from Level I (vocab recall) to Level II (summarize major events/organize, represent, and interpret data) of Webb's DOK. After reading and taking notes, the fourth shift I am making is "Text-Based Answers." During this time, the students need to look closer at the reading and draw evidence to prove their conclusions about the leveled questions we created are correct. We now have completed the 2nd 'R' in SQ3R (recite), and if they studied the questions and continue to look over the material, the 3rd 'R' (review) would also be completed! Increase reading of text? Heck yeah! Yes, I understand the students are not near as excited about the reading assignments as I am, but, I guess I'm hopeful that it is helping at minimum a handful of kiddos that didn't know how to read/take notes.

I asked the students to give my ideas a chance. Okay, I bribed them. I bribed them with 25 points to do the vocabulary. I bribed them with 50 points to take notes independently over the entire chapter. They didn't get zeros if they chose not to do the vocab and notes in written format; some students are able to just simply read and absorb the material. They have this unit to prove their strategy works; for some, it seems to be going okay.... others, not so much.

The fact that this process of doing vocabulary, creating leveled questions, taking notes, thinking about their learning, and ultimately taking responsibility for their learning will take time was presented to the students. BUT, in the end, they will become more strategic readers and actually learn the material. Think about it. They skim and study vocab - 1st contact with the information, go back and take notes - 2nd contact, discussion with me and how this knowledge can be applied to situations today - 3rd+ contact, actual application / analysis / evaluation / creation in a project based lesson - 4th+ contact with the material. Webb's DOK 3rd and 4th levels are the toughest of all as this requires lots of thinking, but we are exploring these with PBL. Win. Win. Win.

Ultimately, I want to incorporate all 6 shifts; however, "Writing: Evidence-based and from Sources" as well as "Grade Level Text Complexity" will come in time. For now, the four shifts we are starting will be sufficient in sprucing up my curriculum in order to bring literacy into the world of social studies.

1st Semester FLEW by!

As the first semester ends with an incredible snow storm, I find myself reflecting on the learning that went on since August!

Throughout the year, the students were challenged to read and take notes over the text, discover the main idea and key phrases central to the topic. Vocabulary quizzes were systematically given to ensure mastery and understanding of the terms, and retention quizzes were periodically given to ensure the understanding was long term. Throughout the reading assignments and the vocabulary quizzes, the students were also immersed in Project Based Lessons ranging from the 2012 Election to the Fiscal Cliff and how a bill becomes a law. It was my hope that the students would begin to apply the low level vocabulary terms and be able to draw their own conclusions about real life situations regarding our government.

The seniors have covered over half of the ICC standards and benchmarks and demonstrated their understandings of each during finals week. They were challenged to convey what they know to be true about the standards and then to reference their text or other supporting expository readings to provide evidence for their conclusions. The students used Google Drive and then shared their document with me so I can not only assess their understanding, but will be able to keep for documentation of students having learned the core curriculum.

Juniors in American History are also winding down their 1st semester by discussing their standards from the Iowa Core. Throughout the year, the students were asked to learn low level facts and terms, just as the seniors, and were challenged to apply these understandings using higher order thinking skills. Our most recent Driving Question was, "How Do We Perfect Our Union?" From this topic, the juniors created their own essential questions, spent a considerable amount of time researching and compiling pictures to illustrate the answer to their question. We then created a large map of the US and cut sections of the states out in which the students affixed their collages of pictures. A picture of the completed project will soon be posted as that will much more clearly explain the project! The juniors were awesome and the project (hopefully) brought topics from the Civil War to life!

I am excited to continue pressing forward in the Iowa Core and creating (with the assistance of the students) Project Based Lessons for semester 2!

Hey JUNIORS!! #1 Letter to Editor

Okay, Junior American History, Here is your Question for the Week.... "In YOUR life, what would cause you to rise up and actually form an organization with the full-fledged goal of breaking away from the authority?"  Can't wait to see your BLOG response!!!  Have fun with it and remember NOT to publish/post until you believe it to be the best work -- no one should post before Thursday! (unless lots of work outside of class was done!)