My lesson for today: Sometimes the intended outcome isn’t what comes to fruition, but the realized outcome is far superior.
The third semester of the PBL Endorsement consists, partially, of a series of coaching sessions with our professor, Dawn Mitchell, that could result in co-teaching on or both of two half-class-period sessions. My original plan was for Dawn to help co-teach a feedback and collaboration session with my CP students because I expected them to be at a point with their Learning from the Past final products to share them with their classmates to receive feedback. Timing doesn’t always go the way I expect, and my students are nowhere near ready to share. (They haven’t even begun to synthesize the information yet!) When Dawn came for our planning session on Friday, I shared with her the bad news. I’d already pushed the second coaching session to a later date; I didn’t want to do that to the first session. I wanted to move forward because I wanted some help and wanted her input on how things were going in my classroom in regards to PBL.
Over the course of our conversation, we kept coming back around to my students’ need for collaborative experiences to help them succeed in upcoming PBLs. Note...upcoming PBLs. Not the current PBL. This one they are doing on their own with interactions from an outside source. Almost every PBL from here to the end of the semester will require some form of collaboration. I have 15 students in my CP class (I know I’m blessed. I’m very thankful for this; however, I sometimes want more for reasons I will explain later.); from small group and partner activities, in addition to daily interactions, I have learned my students struggle to work successfully with students outside of their own comfort zone (and sometimes within their own comfort zone) and have a hard time resolving conflict.
Back to the conversation with Dawn--we kept coming back around to my students’ need for collaborative experiences. She recommended we focus on that in a short, isolated PBL-like activity. I recalled an article I read recently (which, for the life of me, I can’t find now...comment below if you know to which article I’m referring) which tasked students with creating an image from torn paper to represent a scene from a book about an ocean. Students had to collaborate because they were given only one color to contribute to the picture; they could not touch any other colors. Dawn recommended Kobi Yamada’s What Would You Do With a Problem? to use for the task as it focused on facing problems head-on and making something positive, which was exactly what we were asking the students to do. I loved it, and today’s lesson was born… We incorporated group contracts, time constraints, technology interaction. Students were going to be placed in real-world situations (working with a team, with contracts, with deadlines) to create a product (torn paper art) to share with the public (their classmates, us, and displayed in the hallway) and reflect on using Padlet. All this was intended to be completed in 45 minutes.
Let me repeat that. 45 minutes. I was supposed to introduce the task, my professor was going to lead them through the concept of group contracts, I was going to read the book and give them the task instructions, they were going to complete the task, we were going to debrief verbally, and then they were going to debrief using technology in 45 minutes. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. How could this be successful in any way?
So what do you do with a problem? If you go with my reactions I just mentioned, you have two ways people handle problems--by laughing or crying. Our students also would add that they get angry, shut down, run the other way, ignore it. With this activity, they had a problem they had to face and overcome, and I ask my question again: How could this be successful in any way?
It wasn’t. Well, not in the way I expected it to be. The activity started out well--some students were responding, most of the students weren’t acting up, all of the students were paying attention. Win! We discussed the types of problems we face and how we handle them, although we didn’t go as deep as I would have loved to. I only had two to three minutes before we began working on the contract if we wanted to stay on schedule. Dawn then spoke with them about the purpose of contracts and asked them to work as a group to create a contract highlighting their expectations for participation, how to handle conflict, who would talk, etc. Being the first time they had probably ever created a contract, they struggled. As we watched them struggle, we decided to abbreviate the contract and ask them to focus on participation and conflict. One group established a leader who would guide the group to success, another group discovered nobody wanted to talk but knew they would need to in order to succeed, and the third group had two dominant personalities that wanted to be vocal the whole time. Overall, the contract process took eleven minutes. I would have liked for the students to have completed the whole contract, but they gained some initial perspective and experience with the contract, so I will take that as another win. After reminding them of their task, I read Yamada’s book refraining from showing them the pictures. I wanted them to focus on listening for images and the message to help them with the coming task.
Finally, it’s time to create a picture...in twelve minutes. I distributed the materials and stood back to let them get started. These groups could not have been more different! One group got right to work, tearing their own colors as they discussed what they were going to create. The young man who said he was going to lead had the idea, and they ran with it and successfully created an image of a broom sweeping away “problems” (complete with problem written on all the torn pieces of paper). SUCCESS! The other two groups weren’t as successful in completing the project. The second group quickly established an idea--a student sitting at a desk frustrated over a problem--but they couldn’t get anywhere because they wanted to use primarily the colors from only one student, and he became frustrated because he thought he was going to have to do all the work. I decided this required a little intervention to help them overcome the conflict and stepped in asking them questions about what was frustrating (“I’m doing all the work; why can’t they help me”) and being misunderstood (“His paper is what we need down first, so we need him to start tearing it”). The students obviously brought prior bad experiences to the activity and that was shaping their interactions with each other, but we were able to talk about the differences and solve some of the conflict. While they didn’t make their art, I believe had they been given more time, they would have achieved success on that end. The third group couldn’t decide what to do, but they also weren’t talking to each other very much--three of the four students are typically quiet students. One student became the leader by default because he was the most vocal of the group, and he tried pulling ideas from the other students with varying success--one student opened up and provided input and ideas, another started working, but the last student shut down and turned away any time he was directly addressed. They recognized their struggles revolved around their tendency to be introverted in group settings, so they came to the understanding that sometimes they have to come out of their shell for the success of the group.
I stuck to the time limit and stopped them at 12 minutes. They weren’t done, and a number of the more grade-conscientious students were worried about this, but our discussion focused on the process and the ideas and not completely on the end product. We didn’t even have as much time to complete the reflection Padlet as we would have liked, but our discussion was so much more beneficial to me.
Isn’t that what PBL is about? We want our students to learn the how-tos and life skills instead of focusing solely on the “assessment” at the end or the content-area standards. What did they learn along the way? My students can now talk about resolving conflicts in small groups, a little bit, so that when we work on our first group-based PBL in a few weeks, they will have common experiences--”oh yeah, sometimes we misunderstand each other and need to ask questions about the process before blowing up” and “sometimes I need to speak up if we are going to successfully finish what Mrs. Lux asks us to do.” So in the end, did I have three torn paper art pieces to display? No, but the best laid plans rarely go as expected, and shifting my perspective can help me understand the needs of my students and goals of PBL.
I’m excited to see what these students can do, as frustrating as it can be at times to prod them along on this journey. They are almost finished with their Learning from the Past books and ready to move in to their first group-based PBL--the (In)Visibility Project. Let’s see what they’ve learned!
Link to the Lesson
Over the course of our conversation, we kept coming back around to my students’ need for collaborative experiences to help them succeed in upcoming PBLs. Note...upcoming PBLs. Not the current PBL. This one they are doing on their own with interactions from an outside source. Almost every PBL from here to the end of the semester will require some form of collaboration. I have 15 students in my CP class (I know I’m blessed. I’m very thankful for this; however, I sometimes want more for reasons I will explain later.); from small group and partner activities, in addition to daily interactions, I have learned my students struggle to work successfully with students outside of their own comfort zone (and sometimes within their own comfort zone) and have a hard time resolving conflict.
Back to the conversation with Dawn--we kept coming back around to my students’ need for collaborative experiences. She recommended we focus on that in a short, isolated PBL-like activity. I recalled an article I read recently (which, for the life of me, I can’t find now...comment below if you know to which article I’m referring) which tasked students with creating an image from torn paper to represent a scene from a book about an ocean. Students had to collaborate because they were given only one color to contribute to the picture; they could not touch any other colors. Dawn recommended Kobi Yamada’s What Would You Do With a Problem? to use for the task as it focused on facing problems head-on and making something positive, which was exactly what we were asking the students to do. I loved it, and today’s lesson was born… We incorporated group contracts, time constraints, technology interaction. Students were going to be placed in real-world situations (working with a team, with contracts, with deadlines) to create a product (torn paper art) to share with the public (their classmates, us, and displayed in the hallway) and reflect on using Padlet. All this was intended to be completed in 45 minutes.
Let me repeat that. 45 minutes. I was supposed to introduce the task, my professor was going to lead them through the concept of group contracts, I was going to read the book and give them the task instructions, they were going to complete the task, we were going to debrief verbally, and then they were going to debrief using technology in 45 minutes. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. How could this be successful in any way?
So what do you do with a problem? If you go with my reactions I just mentioned, you have two ways people handle problems--by laughing or crying. Our students also would add that they get angry, shut down, run the other way, ignore it. With this activity, they had a problem they had to face and overcome, and I ask my question again: How could this be successful in any way?
It wasn’t. Well, not in the way I expected it to be. The activity started out well--some students were responding, most of the students weren’t acting up, all of the students were paying attention. Win! We discussed the types of problems we face and how we handle them, although we didn’t go as deep as I would have loved to. I only had two to three minutes before we began working on the contract if we wanted to stay on schedule. Dawn then spoke with them about the purpose of contracts and asked them to work as a group to create a contract highlighting their expectations for participation, how to handle conflict, who would talk, etc. Being the first time they had probably ever created a contract, they struggled. As we watched them struggle, we decided to abbreviate the contract and ask them to focus on participation and conflict. One group established a leader who would guide the group to success, another group discovered nobody wanted to talk but knew they would need to in order to succeed, and the third group had two dominant personalities that wanted to be vocal the whole time. Overall, the contract process took eleven minutes. I would have liked for the students to have completed the whole contract, but they gained some initial perspective and experience with the contract, so I will take that as another win. After reminding them of their task, I read Yamada’s book refraining from showing them the pictures. I wanted them to focus on listening for images and the message to help them with the coming task.
Finally, it’s time to create a picture...in twelve minutes. I distributed the materials and stood back to let them get started. These groups could not have been more different! One group got right to work, tearing their own colors as they discussed what they were going to create. The young man who said he was going to lead had the idea, and they ran with it and successfully created an image of a broom sweeping away “problems” (complete with problem written on all the torn pieces of paper). SUCCESS! The other two groups weren’t as successful in completing the project. The second group quickly established an idea--a student sitting at a desk frustrated over a problem--but they couldn’t get anywhere because they wanted to use primarily the colors from only one student, and he became frustrated because he thought he was going to have to do all the work. I decided this required a little intervention to help them overcome the conflict and stepped in asking them questions about what was frustrating (“I’m doing all the work; why can’t they help me”) and being misunderstood (“His paper is what we need down first, so we need him to start tearing it”). The students obviously brought prior bad experiences to the activity and that was shaping their interactions with each other, but we were able to talk about the differences and solve some of the conflict. While they didn’t make their art, I believe had they been given more time, they would have achieved success on that end. The third group couldn’t decide what to do, but they also weren’t talking to each other very much--three of the four students are typically quiet students. One student became the leader by default because he was the most vocal of the group, and he tried pulling ideas from the other students with varying success--one student opened up and provided input and ideas, another started working, but the last student shut down and turned away any time he was directly addressed. They recognized their struggles revolved around their tendency to be introverted in group settings, so they came to the understanding that sometimes they have to come out of their shell for the success of the group.
I stuck to the time limit and stopped them at 12 minutes. They weren’t done, and a number of the more grade-conscientious students were worried about this, but our discussion focused on the process and the ideas and not completely on the end product. We didn’t even have as much time to complete the reflection Padlet as we would have liked, but our discussion was so much more beneficial to me.
Isn’t that what PBL is about? We want our students to learn the how-tos and life skills instead of focusing solely on the “assessment” at the end or the content-area standards. What did they learn along the way? My students can now talk about resolving conflicts in small groups, a little bit, so that when we work on our first group-based PBL in a few weeks, they will have common experiences--”oh yeah, sometimes we misunderstand each other and need to ask questions about the process before blowing up” and “sometimes I need to speak up if we are going to successfully finish what Mrs. Lux asks us to do.” So in the end, did I have three torn paper art pieces to display? No, but the best laid plans rarely go as expected, and shifting my perspective can help me understand the needs of my students and goals of PBL.
I’m excited to see what these students can do, as frustrating as it can be at times to prod them along on this journey. They are almost finished with their Learning from the Past books and ready to move in to their first group-based PBL--the (In)Visibility Project. Let’s see what they’ve learned!
Link to the Lesson
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