Our “Hardships Faced by Early American Settlers” planless PBL wrapped up this week. We began the week with a final push for information. I surveyed the students to determine where they still needed assistance--some students were struggling to locate enough information on their topic and others were struggling to come up with an interactive final product. Each group then met with me to discuss their topics and how they will integrate what they’ve learned about the Early Americans’ hardships. I’d love to say every student in my class learned a tremendous amount on their topic; however, evidently some students may have needed more focused research questions or more instruction on how to find information because they weren’t able to tell me very much. I’m hoping they learned more and will be able to tell me more when we share our products next Monday.
What I’ve learned this week:
- Be flexible! Unfortunately, this has been another week of unexpected hiccups, but we overcame the obstacles, and my students adjusted with aplomb. (Vocab word!) Instead of being able to go in to the library on Thursday and Friday, we needed to back up the first day to Wednesday, which meant one less day of planning/research with a day of technology instruction for their interactive component and resource list. We also discovered that two days in the MakerSpace was just not enough time. Instead of requiring the final product to be due by the end of class on Friday, I’ve allowed the students to complete the work at home to share with the rest of the class on Monday.
- Going “planless” truly requires a plan. The students don’t have to know you have a plan, but if you don’t have an end goal in mind and a timeline to follow, even the teacher will flounder in the water. While going planless allows students to choose their own topics to research and products to create, many still need structure to help them maintain focus and some need guidance to find those topics and decide on their products. Every day, I needed to go in with an idea of what was going to be accomplished, providing the structure, and I needed to hold my students accountable for meeting those goals.
My CP English I students dove deeper into their “Learning from the Past” project this week. Interviews were due Monday; only half were done. A few more were done by Tuesday, but five students still didn’t have them done, so I called home (only to discover one student had told his mom the interview was due almost an entire week after it’s true due date!). Communication with parents, especially during a unit such as this, is crucial. I believe that is my best piece of advice--get parents involved from the beginning. Next time I begin this project, I plan to contact all the parents ahead of time to make them aware of the assignment’s due dates. In order to motivate my students who were dragging their feet, I explained the consequence for not having the interview done would be a zero in the gradebook each day the interview was incomplete, with no chance of earning back those points. I truly dislike doing that because I want to give my students numerous opportunities to succeed, and a zero limits that. I’m considering giving them an opportunity to earn those points back by adding optional tasks to the final product.
Of my fifteen students, twelve currently have the initial interviews completed and typed, but those three have been absent numerous days during the unit. We moved forward to research on Thursday using www.thepeoplehistory.com and Friday using books I’d pulled from the library because we would not be able to get in due to testing. I know The People History isn’t 100% academic, but it will open the door for a good discussion on what makes a solid academic source; plus, the information was clearly organized, concise, and available for all of my students’ years. Nothing else I found did that. While researching, we played music from the years they were researching, much to the chagrin of my students. They were surprised when they knew a song from the 80s or early 90s and enjoyed hearing the music their parents, cousins, grandparents, and teachers listened to as freshman. Students enjoyed learning about typewriters and shoulder pads and the everlasting popularity of Whitney Houston (I seemed to find her songs in almost every year we were researching). We talked about plagiarism and how to avoid it, how to find information about our years in the books we are using, how to decide on topics to research and break those topics down into subtopics, and what to write down about those topics and subtopics. I modeled these behaviors for them, walked them through it, and then left them to work through it themselves while dancing around (this music is from my own youth, after all) and helping them when they hit a road block.
Was everyone successful? No. Some concerns I need to address as we move forward--the student who doesn’t want to write anything down, the student who wants to sleep instead of work, the students who want to talk about everything they find instead of writing it down, and the student who wants me to find everything for him. We’ll get past those by looking at what we accomplished on Friday and setting realistic daily research goals on Monday. I’m hoping to complete the research, both internet- and book-based, by the end of class on Wednesday.
After the initial interview hiccups, my students have grown excited about this process and learning about the experiences of their family and community members. I can’t wait to see their final products in a few weeks! I believe they will once again rise to the occasion.
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