Reflecting on the Semester

PBL requires practice. And time. And energy. And planning. And patience. It’s hard work, but it’s doable. And sometimes, even when the students don’t realize they’ve learned something, you as the teacher realize they have. Even when they don’t successfully complete a task, such as the torn paper art challenge earlier this semester or the booklets they were supposed to make for their interviewee, they learned something.

This entire year has been stressful and strange and required flexibility from beginning to end for reasons both in and out of the classroom. I can honestly say that not a single unit was completed without issues or to the degree that I would have liked; however, I have found successes and areas of need as I reflect on what we did accomplish:

1. Group projects can, and must, be done in the CP classroom. I often shy away from group work and activities in the CP classroom because the students tend to be off task all the time (unless I’m standing directly next to them), one student completes all the work, and/or the students just don’t get along. During our most recent unit, “The Invisibility Project,” I assigned students to different groups based on their skills and interests I’d learned through a survey earlier in the semester. I wanted to make sure each group had a designer, each group had a leader, and each group had an organizer. I also wanted to make sure certain students were working in separate groups. The result was four groups of 3-4 students. Surprisingly, the smaller groups were more successful creating informative websites, even though they had to do the same amount of work as the groups of four; I have a feeling this was because one less student made it easier to agree on what to do. All four groups created a website, to varying degrees of completion, ultimately working together to complete the final touches after completing individual portions of the website on their own. I spent most of my time working with the two groups of four in an effort to help them overcome their differences and work well together. As the project progressed, the students’ minimal group project opportunities became more apparent. I understand; as I said, I’m hesitant to do group work in the CP classroom. However, I began the unit creating contracts establishing who would take notes, who would present to the class, how to contact each other when someone missed, and how the final product would be graded--one group grade as opposed to individual grades based on a peer evaluation. I held them to what they wrote in their contracts, and hopefully they learned to make those decisions more carefully as they began to regret their grading decision towards the end of the unit and realized some students hadn’t been pulling their weight as much as they would have liked. We discussed these decisions on multiple occasions and why it’s important to think over them carefully; however, I did stress that “group grades” is real world--very rarely will a group assignment be judged for individual participation. Students need to see the real world ramifications for their behaviors in low-risk situations, and I can’t think of a more applicable situation in my classroom than a group project. I should not shy away from group tasks in my classroom just because of lower success on the final product.
2. The final product is not the end-all-be-all...the process is. I’m certain I’ve said this before, and I know I’m not the only one to say this--the process is more important than the final product. Yes, the final product does showcase what the students have learned. Yes, pushing the students to have a successful final product demonstrates to the students the soft skill of finishing what one has started. However, sometimes a student isn’t to that point just yet; sometimes a student needs to see the small successes of smaller tasks before realizing he can accomplish a larger task. This is why I didn’t stress too much when some of my students didn’t complete all of the steps to fully complete the “Learning from the Past” unit. By the time we’d reached the end, they were done and didn’t want to go any further. Along the way, though, they had learned how to interview someone, how to write that interview into a summary, how to research using both online and print resources, and how to copy and paste from one Google doc to another to blend different tasks. I call that success because some of these students fought me every step of the way. One day they will be motivated to complete the final product, but I’m okay with them learning how to do it in order to be successful when that day comes.
3. Sometimes it’s just time to move on. I am still a student of PBL. Even after 15 years of teaching, I’m still a student of creating units for my classroom. So many times I will create what looks to be a great unit...on paper. Add students and everything hits the fan! Haha! Something I expect them to love--creating a website for classmates, researching a topic they choose, interviewing a family member--doesn’t pique their interest. Instead, I’m left with a class full of students who will do just as much as they want to in order to get by with a decent grade. I’ve learned this semester, as I’ve mentioned a few times before, that sometimes it’s okay not to completely finish the project because it’s the process, not the product, that’s most important. Of the three primary PBL units I completed with my CP students--a Getting to Know You class website, the Learning from the Past booklets, and the Invisibility Project websites--about 60% of the projects were completed to the end, with the booklets being the least completed. Two of fourteen students completed the booklets entirely; four more students almost completed it, but they never gave me a cover; however, the remaining students just were not interested in getting the assignment done. I contacted parents, I asked them to come during CAVS, I gave them extra time in class. There comes a point, though, that it’s evident nothing else will be done, and it’s time to move on. I stopped offering time in class, and moved the entire class on to a new unit; they still could come finish the assignment on their own time, but I wasn’t going to drag out the project just for 100% completion.
4. I wonder if completion of a project can be an option but not a requirement… Bear with me… Not all students care about getting As and Bs. Not all students care about completing projects. What if I worked through the process with them during class, teaching them how to complete the project, but they need to do the final product on their own. I’d offer assistance outside of class in some way, accommodating those students who really do want to finish the project; however, we wouldn’t be taking up valuable class time belaboring a task that some students aren’t interested in completing because they are okay with Cs. This isn’t to say that I wouldn’t encourage them to do more than what they complete in class; I’d grade the assignment as is, give them the rubric, and then give them the opportunity to bring up the grade if they would like. Some students will take me up on the offer, as was evident with the booklets this semester; others will be content with where they stand. My plan was to do just that with the Invisibility Project websites; however, circumstances outside of the classroom kept me from being around that week, and by the time I returned, we were so far removed from the project that there really was no point. We moved on. I graded the final product, and I’ve heard nothing from the students about wanting a higher grade.

I may not have taught my students how to successfully complete every single project, but I do know they learned a few things during the course of these units: 1) no two students will work the same way, and we must learn to work with the differences rather than force others to conform to our learning and working styles; 2) deadlines mean the work is due at that time, and if you want to receive full credit for the individual task, the whole task must be done then and not a day later; 3) even if you don’t finish the task on time, the task still needs to be completed because it’s only part of a larger assignment; 4) before signing a contract, make sure you understand and agree to all of it as you can’t change your mind after the fact.

I look forward to continuing to learn and grow alongside my students as we engage in more PBL in the years to come.

March 12--(In)Visibility Project--First Week Progress

March 12--(In)Visibility Project

A few weeks ago, my professor visited my classroom to co-teach a collaboration mini-PBL and guide my students through the creation of a contract. We were still in the middle of our Learning from the Past PBL, which required little interaction with other students at the project level. They enjoyed sharing their findings with each other, but they didn’t need to work together to create a final product. I knew that was coming, and I wanted to prepare them for that with a few different activities. The Torn Paper Art challenge was what I’d hoped would be one of a few different group challenges during the next few weeks leading up to the (In)Visibility Project, but I discovered my students needed more time in class to complete the Learning from the Past booklets, and collaboration mini-lessons moved to the back burner.

Fast-forward to March 6th. Time to move on. We’ve spent almost every day in class working on the booklets, and I feel like we’re spinning our wheels going nowhere. I’m becoming frustrated. That’s a reflection for a different blog post; I digress. My students are tired of working by themselves and want to work with other students, which really is a good bit of PBL--working with other students to accomplish a common goal.


TEAM CONTRACTS

The (In)Visibility Project will give them the opportunity to collaborate with other students, research a majority-voted topic (student choice), and create technology-based product for for an authentic audience (their fellow classmates with an extension to the entire school community). We began discussing those aspects of the project from the very beginning, and for the most part, they seem to be joining me on the journey so far.

We revisited the team contract concept again this past Thursday. This time, the contract would be sticking with them much longer than 45 minutes, and they could quickly find themselves kicked out of a group for not following through with the expectations laid out by the group. I liked the original contract my students completed during the mini-PBL (page 3 of this lesson plan), I wanted something heftier and more in-depth that allowed my students to fully grasp the gravity of signing the contract and the expectations their groupmates and I had for them during this process. I really liked the New Tech contracts I saw at J.L. Mann, but I couldn’t find any examples of those online (probably copyrighted), so I sought other examples online and found a college project contract to tweak for my students.

We spent almost the entire class period Thursday working on the group contracts with varied success. We popcorned a few good answers now and then; I made some suggestions now and then to guide them towards some expectations that would hopefully lead to success. Mostly, they worked diligently and successfully to create a team contract they could agree upon. Were the contracts perfect? No, but it was their first time with such an in-depth contract and second time creating a contract at all. Did they seem to appreciate the contract process? For the most part, yes. Some of them balked at providing their contact information. Others had no clue how to contribute because they seemed to have limited group work experience. Could the process have gone better? Yes. We were continuously refocusing attention away from a student who really didn’t want to be there that day (long story that is hopefully turning into a happy ending), and we didn’t get to where I wanted us to be (story of this class, it seems like). Was it better than the first time? Yes! I noticed very few un-answered questions when I reviewed the contract, and I worked with that particular group to fix those issues before they signed the contract. They appear to grasp the importance of the contracts, and I expect the importance will continue to be realized as the roles they selected are utilized in coming tasks.

One decision every group made was to have no peer evaluation at the conclusion of the unit; all students would receive the same grade on the assignment, no matter what. I fully explained to them that this meant if one student didn’t pull his weight, all students would be penalized. Even after meeting with every group individually and discussing this, they all chose no peer evaluation. Perhaps it is because of my experience to always have so much of the project to do that I would never choose no peer evaluation. I’m hoping they don’t regret this.


PROJECT PROPOSALS--COACHING OBSERVATION

• Project Proposal Lesson Outline
• Project Proposal Student Document

Now that teams have signed their group contracts and selected their topics, they need to focus their research and determine initial research tasks. In order to accomplish this, as well as give the students the opportunity to begin practicing peer feedback. I have discovered I am somewhat unrealistic with the amount of time I expect a task to take. Our initial “Breaking Down the Topic” brainstorming, discussion, and sharing took almost 40 minutes, and the students needed to be re-instructed on multiple occasions to help them accomplish what I wanted them to do. Looking back, it’s possible these issues could stem from confusing instructions, distracted students (they are facing each other, as opposed to straight forward), or student apathy (which was the case for at least two of the students, especially by the end of the class period).

I hoped “Considering the Audience” would allow us to pick up the pace some, but they struggled with grasping how the issues of bullying, social media, school safety, and depression could impact groups differently.

By the end of the class period, the students, for the most part, completed their proposals. One group stopped working on it, but I believe that was because I was going too fast for them, and they became frustrated. We barely had time for the daily journals, though, and we definitely didn’t have time to present the proposals for feedback. I believe that will need to happen at the beginning of class tomorrow before we begin learning how to find the answers to our research questions.

One thing I really like about the students working in groups: Instead of monitoring the progress of 14 different students in this class, I am monitoring the progress of 4 different groups. At times, my students will be working on different tasks, but they will be able to ask their peers for assistance, and I will be able to work with those students who are really struggling. While the assistance isn’t necessarily one-on-one, it’s more focused than the whole-class instruction and less time-consuming than individual instruction. I found myself able to sit down and talk to all the students about their research questions multiple times, and I know that would not have been the case had the students been completing individual assignments. My hope is that they are gaining the same, if not more, knowledge about research from this group project. Only time will tell...hopefully I can gauge that timing correctly.

Learning from the Past Wrap-Up #1

March 12

I’m trying not to be discouraged. I’m trying not to back down. I’m hoping to teach my students responsibility. I’m afraid it’s not working.

The last day I gave students to work on their Learning from the Past booklets in class was March 2. At that point, the students had been working on the project for four weeks with numerous opportunities for assistance and feedback during class. I asked my students to submit their Learning from the Past booklets by March 7 to receive full credit; they are required to come see me, giving me the opportunity to go over the formatting of the booklet. Our school has a small 25-minute study hall built into the normal school day for just that purpose--extra assistance with a teacher. Each day after the 7th results in a deduction of 5 points. So as not to shock anyone when report cards came out, I entered 0s in when no one submitted booklets by March 7th. I entered 0s for 12 of 13 students. Only one student came to me on the 7th to review his booklet; he wasn’t finished yet. Today is the 12th. I’ve met with 5 of 13 students. None have submitted books yet as they needed to go in and finish certain parts or tweak what they had. Two are close, though.

Am I expecting too much? Should I back down and be easier on them? I don’t believe I required to much of these students or gave them work too hard:

• Interview
• Interview summary
• Research
• 3 research paragraphs
• 5 side-by-side comparisons
• Works Cited page
• Acknowledgment page
• Cover sheet

Each of those tasks were given anywhere from one to four full class periods except for the last two tasks, which were to be completed when they had the chance. I gave whole-class instruction, small group instruction, and one-on-one instruction; I’m not sure I could have explained it any clearer beyond doing it for them. I’d hoped the public audience--giving the booklets to the person they interviewed--would motivate the students to complete the work, but it doesn’t seem the case.

We’ve moved on to the next PBL--(In)Visibility Project--which is a group PBL. Hopefully this results in work that is more complete and better demonstrates what I know these students are capable of creating. Only time will tell, though.

What Do You Do With a Problem? Torn Art Collaboration/Conflict Resolution Activity

What Do You Do With a Problem? Torn Art Collaboration/Conflict Resolution Activity

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

Week of February 16 Planless PBL Update

Week of February 16 Planless PBL Update

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. 

Was I successful? Not 100%. A few of my students still are not meeting my expectations despite speaking with them on numerous occasions redirecting them and refocusing them. I believe I gave them a false impression of low expectations early on, and they’ve grasped on to that hoping I will back down. I’m hoping they will surprise me, though.


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.

Week of February 9--starting the planless PBL and other updates

Week of February 9--starting the planless PBL and other updates

Grades, rain, rehearsals, science fair projects, and lots and lots of PBL. This week has been extremely busy, and I haven’t had a free moment to truly sit down and reflect upon the beginning of my daft plan to ask my 9th grade honors students to create their own PBL. They turned in their first major essays last Friday, and I needed to get those graded before today to send home on their interim reports. This was also the end of my first PBL with my CP English I class, so I spent a good deal of time looking over, tweaking, and grading those websites. My daughter also began her first week of rehearsals for our school district’s production of Wizard of Oz and submitted her project for the science fair. Any spare moment I had quickly disappeared this week. But I can’t go a week without reflecting because I want to ensure things go better in the future.

Don’t get me wrong. This week’s PBL lessons went well. As I mentioned, my CP students finished their website pages, and we published them for administration and other classmates to see. The students wrote personal narratives, a short opinion essay, and an I Am poem. They created hand-drawn Wordles and recorded an interview with a classmate. Then they loaded all of that and some personal pictures into a new Google Site I created for the class. I made the site ahead of time and added individual pages for each of them and me (to model the process along the way). I didn’t want to overwhelm them too much with the technical side, although Google is so user-friendly, most of them picked up the how-tos in a hot minute. One student who isn’t usually a talker or socializer quickly finished his, complete with backgrounds or each section, and then offered pointers to the other students. The final product may not be perfect, but that’s not what’s important to me. My students gained these important skills during this project:

• Basic technology skills--Students worked in Google to create a project folder, type documents, copy and paste material into a Google Site, upload videos and images to the website, and format the webpage as they desired. Students also recorded and submitted videos of their interviews using the recording feature in our school district’s learning management system.
• Basic word processing skills--Students typed and shared their documents, changing the font and size as they desired.
• Communication and interpersonal skills--Students interviewed each other to practice their interviewing skills, learning how to ask more questions when they don’t receive enough information from a question.

I also taught them how to give feedback and participate in writing conferences. I have to step back and list these skills they learned because I sometimes lose focus after a project is completed. I look at the end product and wonder if I didn’t teach them enough. The formatting isn’t perfect or the grammar and capitalization errors are noticeable (to me) or one of the required elements of the website is missing. What doesn’t show are the small victories--the student I feared wouldn’t even participate in the classmate interviews willingly completed the assignment multiple times due to technical difficulties outside of his control; most of the students who were absent during the process made up the work and completed every part of the website; I only tacked on two extra days to complete the unit instead of an entire week, as I feared I would. WIN!

We’ve now moved on to our second PBL unit—Learning from the Past—which requires students to record an interview with a friend or family member at least twice their age about their freshman year in high school and research that year. The interview and research becomes a booklet we print and bind for both the student and interviewee to keep. I’ve completed a slightly more tedious version of this unit before with varied success, and I’m hoping by cutting out some of the less meaningful tasks, I will see more completion of the booklets. My original hope was to have the final product completed by Valentine’s Day; that obviously isn’t happening. I introduced the project briefly on Wednesday after we looked at the website. We then jumped in on Thursday with the hook, previews of books created in the past (with the understanding this would be different) and partner brainstorming of interview questions. I typed and printed the questions for them to use during the interview. I could tell some were reluctant to complete this assignment. (“Ms. Lux, ain’t nobody gonna sit down me and talk to me about themselves for 45 minutes.” I told them they’d be surprised, and I hope I’m right.) Their only experience with interviews was with each other, and those lasted less than five minutes, so I decided we needed to watch some interviews to learn about interview behavior, questions, and follow-up questions to address this particular Need-to-Know. We watched excerpts from two interviews—with Louis Zamperini and Katherine Johnson—and noticed the posture, hand gestures, facial expressions, comments, and eye contact of the interviewers. My students also discovered an interviewer is going to use prior knowledge and knowledge learned during the interview to shape later questions. When they left class Friday, eight students appeared excited, four students seemed reluctant, and one student showed no reaction. Students should arrive on Monday with completed interviews. I plan to call home during lunch and after school to the parents of the students who haven’t completed the interviews. We really can’t move forward until those are done.

My English II Honors class’s planless PBL hasn’t quite gone as expected, which is strange to say because I didn’t have much of a plan to begin with. I knew I wanted them to research the hardships of early American settlers and colonists. I knew I wanted them to have the option to work individually or in groups of up to four students. I knew I wanted them to use primary sources to conduct the research. I knew I wanted them to create a product that would teach other 9th graders about their topics. Beyond that, the project was open-ended. Perhaps that was a little too many parameters, or perhaps it was too few. Some of my students have been successful. Others have struggled.

We began the unit on Monday, exploring the boundaries of our country through time and discussing the course’s essential questions: 1) What makes American literature American? 2) What is the relationship between literature and place? and How does literature shape or reflect society? I divided students into groups, gave them some large paper with the questions, and asked them to engage in the consensus protocol. After they drew their conclusions about each question as groups, we discussed them as a whole class. With a fifteen minutes left in class, I broached the idea of our project and asked for some feedback and suggestions from them in the form of an exit slip. Their feedback allowed me to address their concerns as I structured the unit a bit more. Many asked about how the groups would form (I let them choose), if the grade would be as a group (it would not), if they could work alone (not a problem with me), and if they could get extra time (my initial response is no). We began picking topics on Tuesday after I showed them their online note-taking document (a chart with columns for sources, summaries, and usable quotes). Most students found a group (of friends) and decided on a topic by the end of class on Tuesday, but that’s as far as the smooth sailing went.

Students began looking for new topics on Wednesday as they struggled to find primary sources on their topics. I guided them to sources and/or brainstormed new topics with them on Wednesday and Thursday and thought we were good until I looked at their individual documents. Many were still struggling to find information, and I’d hoped they would be able to meet with classmates outside their groups for a quick critical friends protocol during class on Friday. That would have to wait. We (I?) need to step back and examine this process again:

• Behavior—for the most part, not an issue. I’ve addressed two phone issues during the week and refocused two groups on a few separate occasions. They are on task and working. It’s not always silent in my room, but they are often talking about what they are reading. 
• Need to Knows—They know what constitutes a primary source, so no issue there. Do they know how to find a primary source on their topic? Maybe not. Perhaps I need to conduct a quick mini-lesson on that on Monday. Do they know what kind of information to look for? Maybe not. I think a mini-lesson on focused research is also in store. 
• Final product—Are my open-ended parameters too much for them? Or should I focus them in to one type of product? Perhaps a game? A website? This is something I need to discuss with them. 

I’m not as intimidated by this process as I used to be, and I’m not as overwhelmed doing two separate PBLs as I anticipated. That may change, but I’m excited to see what my students produce. I hope you’ll continue to follow this journey with me!

Blogs (hopefully) to come next weeks:

• Review of Buck Institute’s “Out of the Gate” PBL resource website
• Reflection on the concept of personalized learning
• Weekly PBL update

Until next time!