196: Making Historical Thinking a Reality

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Features of Traditional Method of Teaching History:
  • History textbook is the core instrument
  • Teaching / learning processes:
    • reading textbook
    • lectures, movies
    • memorization, fact retention
    • unanalyzed consumption of facts provided by an expert
    • providing evidence of mastery = regurgitating textbook
    • learning linear narrative of history provided by experts
    • assessments:
      • textbook questions
      • true / false statements
      • crossword puzzles
      • tests based on textbook
    • aim to present history as an engaging subject – not necessarily as a dynamic subject
Features of Historical Thinking Method of Teaching History:
  • Examines different types of sources
  • Teaching / Learning processes
    • debate
    • investigation
    • analyzing evidence
    • interpreting evidence
  • Aim to present history as a useful, living subject
Inspiration from Other Subjects:
  • In Math, students learn:
    • concepts and how to apply them
    • how to “show their work”
    • tools and habits of mind and how to use them
  • In Science, students learn:
    • scientific method and how to document it in lab reports
    • how to draw conclusions based on observations and data
    • how to use tools used by scientists
  • In English, students learn:
    • learn literacy devices and how to analyze them in books and utilize them in writing
    • how to question the text
    • connect author’s biography with their work
    • place stories within their historical context so they can be understood as products of their time and place
  • Application to history teaching:
    • What’s missing from traditional history teaching:
      • explicit teaching on how history knowledge is created (instead focus on making known facts engaging
      • process is cut out to create more room to cover a lot of content in a superficial way
Content vs Process:
  • Striking a balance:
    • Too much process – might become hands on, but not minds on
    • Too much content – may bore students with too many facts
  • History standards encode too much content and not a lot of process
  • Content can not be an end in itself because content that is not used is easily forgotten.
  • Historical laboratory (Phil Nicolosi & Nike Walsh)
    • students confront information (experiment)
    • students draw conclusions (analyze data)
    • students defend their hypotheses (lab write-ups)
Connections to Past Research
  • Foci of History Ed Research:
    • how historians create and represent historical knowledge
    • whether or not students can replicate processes of historians in a classroom
  • Misconceptions of History Education
    • it’s about learning / teaching a lot of historical trivia
    • need to learn a lot of background knowledge before one can know enough to investigate historical driving questions
  • The Importance of Questions
    • driving questions frame the learning
    • teacher needs to explicitly teach process skills related to historical thinking
    • purpose of essential questions
      • engage students by presenting history as a mystery or controversy
      • provide a purpose for learning new information = gathering evidence to investigate the question
      • draw students into exploring the past
Formulating and Articulating Questions
  • Thinking like a Historian: Rethinking History Instruction focus historical categories around 5 categories:
    1. Cause and effect
    2. Change and continuity
    3. Turning points
    4. Using the points
    5. Through their eyes
  • Using these 5 categories allows for spiraling and building of a common language for examining the past
  • Other categories:
    • multiple perspectives
    • historical contingency
    • empathy
    • influence / significance / impact
    • contrasting interpretations of the past
    • intent / motivation
  • 7 criteria for effective historical driving questions:
    1. Does the question represent an important issue to historical and contemporary issues?
    2. Is the question debatable?
    3. Does the question represent a reasonable amount of content?
    4. Will the question sustain the interest of students?
    5. Is the question appropriate to available materials?
    6. Is the question challenging for your students?
    7. What organizing concepts will be emphasized?
How Historians Work:
  • Historians ask questions – see above
  • Historians gather a variety of sources and ask questions of those sources:
    • investigate sources to formulate tenable interpretations about events, personalities and ideas about the past (hypotheses)
    • be aware variety and pitfalls of primary sources
    • interrogate the sources
    • use sources to answer historical questions
    • compare, contrast and apply sources to questions
    • Questions students can ask of sources:
      • Text:
        • What information is provided by the source?
      • Context:
        • What was going on during the time period?
        • What background info helps explain the information found in the source?
      • Subtext:
        • What is between the lines?
          • Author: Who wrote the piece and what do we know about that person?
          • Audience: For whom was the source created?
          • Reason: Why was this source produced when it was?
  • Historians develop, defend and revise interpretations: 
    • history is about multiple interpretations – no one right answer
      • who, what, when, where – can be non-debatable
      • why, how and impact – debatable
    • judgement – building and evaluating interpretations grounded in evidence
    • interpretations are living – change as context, eyes, and evidence change
    • debate and interpret historical evidence
    • develop, define and revise evidence-based historical interpretations
For a model for how to conduct a historical investigation with students, go to this article:  Facilitating a historical investigation.

 

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Teaching a curriculum in ways that balance content and process is key to teaching students in ways that are memorable and transferable.  The 7 criteria for driving questions can be used to improve historical driving questions and driving questions in other subjects.   The questions students can ask of texts can be used or adapted for courses other than history to help students examine the contents, contexts, and subtexts in the sources.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Analyze standards to identify enduring understandings, key skills and supporting knowledge.  Develop learning targets based on this analysis.
  • Develop a driving question for the project.  Use the 7 criteria for driving questions about to evaluate and improve driving question.
  • Find primary sources that students can use to investigate the driving questions.
  • Adapt questions students can use to analyze sources (see above)
Early Implementation Steps
  • Launch project with driving question
  • Coach students to investigate driving questions using a variety of sources.  Use source analysis questions to help students examine sources closely.
  • Guide students as they formulate and test their hypotheses.
  • Guide and challenge students as they formulate conclusions based on evidence.
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Research and scaffold how to read and write genres that are important to  historians.  Explicitly teach these skills to students.

 

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195: PBL Tips on Managing the Process

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At project start, make sure students are on the right track:
  • Help students brainstorm next steps (such as research plans) prior to beginning those processes
  • Hold early private meetings with teams while the rest work on other assignments (ex: background reading assignment) to vet and give feedback on their next steps and research questions
  • Require deliverables with early work sessions to make sure students are making progress and gaining momentum
  • Provide milestones, benchmarks and templates to support students in managing projects
Tailor grouping strategies to project needs:
  • Vary out grouping methods: student choice, teacher choice, random draw, etc
  • Aim for heterogeneous groups that team up students who are advanced with students who struggle
  • Grouping friends together works well with projects that require a lot of work outside class time
  • If a project requires a lot of different skills, may aim to form teams that include students who have those skills as a whole when combined in teams
  • Mixed method – students choose pairs and then teacher chooses which pairs to combine into teams of 4
  • Make grouping appear random even when it is actually very deliberate
  • Expert -> jigsaw teams – expert teams become very verses in 1 topic and then jigsaw teams are formed to include one of each type of expert
  • Use knowledge of students to create balanced teams
  • Sometimes when students choose their own teams end up with several strong teams and several unfocused teams
  • Could make students apply to be on teams
  • Have students conduct a team inventory of their skills and compare that to the skills needed to complete the project – if there is a mismatch they can lobby to switch team members to better align their team’s skills to the project
  • Fake Autonomy – group all students into 3-4 colors.  Students who should not work together share the same color.  Ask students to form teams that include one student of each color
  • Can have students submit 1st and 2nd choice for partners and try to honor their requires while forming balanced teams
  • Can have students rank their interests from a list of topics and form teams based on common interests
Plan how to accommodate the needs of diverse students
  • Plan in remediation time for students who don’t get it the first couple times
  • Have students develop a portfolio that crosses projects so they can access resources throughout the year
  • Use knowledge of students to provide different types / levels of support to different students
  • Students can get help from teachers, other students, the library, the internet, etc.
  • Try to allow for time for students to work with their friends or work on a topic they are interested in
  • For more on differentiating for various needs, see this article: Clustering student needs for more efficient planning
Intervene with students who are not carrying their own weight:
  • Sometimes let teams go through the firing process and then the student needs to work alone.  Or that students can produce a body of work and apply for a rehire from another team.
  • For teams that complain about team members not working, facilitate a meeting to renegotiate and tighten timelines.  Add more details to timelines including action item descriptions, action item owners, and specific deadlines.
  • Inform parents when their child is missing checkpoints and brainstorm together how to improve students’ project and self management skills.
  • Have individuals and teams reflect on group processes so they can become more aware and communicate to each other and the teacher about their group concerns and problems.
  • Brainstorm with teams who are stuck or off task on ways to become more motivated and focused.
Keep track of each group’s progress
  • Move a lot! Use the proximity effect (location matters more than content) to coach students working in teams
  • Set clear benchmarks and deadlines and have quick touch-in meetings to check on teams’ progress and answer questions and concerns
  • Let students complete a project planning form and then have a review meeting around that form.
  • Use checklists or 3×5 cards to record group observations
  • Instruct teams to maintain group folders that include all their logs and product artifacts.
Make sure groups keep track of their own progress
  • Instruct groups to meet and record who attended the meeting, what was accomplished, the meeting agenda, data, location
Keep public records of group progress:
  • Maintain a public accountability chart that shoes what benchmarks teams have completed – make this a graphic display that everyone can see
  • Allow time at the start and end of work days to set and track team goals
The Internet is only one information resources.  Students often need help to use it efficiently
  • Use school librarian as a project partner
  • Provide students with a starter list of helpful websites
  • Teach students how to analyze the content of websites and evaluate whether or not they possess the prerequisite knowledge to understanding the web content
  • Teach students how to evaluate the validity and quality of web sources
Technology can be a powerful tool; it can also crash and burn.
  • Trial and troubleshoot tech before using it in a project
  • Identify people who can help you troubleshoot technology
Don’t use tech blindly.  Select tech that enhances student learning
  • Select tech that addresses the meat of the project effectively
  • Before using a tool ask: What can be accomplished by this tool?  Can we do this using simpler tools?
  • Allow time to train students how to use selected technology.
  • Use tech only when it is appropriate and enhances student learning.
Don’t be afraid to make mistake
  • When mistakes are made, model how to fail forward by brainstorming solutions with students
Don’t be afraid of making mid project corrections
  • When students are missing essential info, let students know how / when class will get together to fill in the gap
  • Rethink timelines if you realize that students can’t meet the original timeline or are ready and willing to do more
  • When problems arise, hold a class meeting to debrief the situation and brainstorm and select solutions
  • Renegotiate expectations with teams that run into unexpected obstacles – focus new expectations on what’s critical to learn
Debrief project with your class and ask for project feedback
  • 2 questions:
    • What is of lasting value to the learner as a result of completing this project?
    • What is of lasting value to the community as a result of completing this project?
  • Show students models of good reflection before they start generating reflective comments.
  • Ask students
    • what didn’t work and why and possible alternatives?
    • what the fell they did well in the project?
    • what they feel didn’t go well?
    • what grade do they deserve and why?
    • are you proud of your end product?
    • how could end product be better?
  • Could gather feedback on overall project and specific end products on sticky notes
  • Keep student and teacher notes on project improvements in a secure place
  • Processing time is well worthwhile – set aside time for it
Reflecting on the Driving Question
  • Reflect on the driving question to review content and hopefully make long lasting learning connections

 

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Effective (poor) project management can make (break) a project.  Students need support developing skills related to self- and project-management.  Setting aside time to scaffold these skills and using templates to reinforce / guides these skills will make students more effective at learning within PBL projects.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Analyze standards and create related list of academic learning targets.
  • Create project products and expectations.  Create an inventory of skills students need to have to be successful in the project.
  • Create character learning targets that are skills in the inventory that students may not have yet.
  • Design scaffolding and templates for character learning targets.
  • Select and troubleshoot technology that advances learning
Early Implementation Steps
  • Set aside time in projects to scaffold character learning targets.
  • Provide feedback on templates that scaffold project and self management process in touch-in meetings
  • Provide opportunities for students to set and track their goals throughout the project
  • Facilitate a post-project reflection discussion to gather feedback on what worked and alternatives to problems
  • Use variety of grouping methods that enhance project goals
  • Select and use technology that advances student learning; scaffold the tech
  • Intervene / support teams / individual students who are struggling
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Ask upperclassmen to coach / mentor students in project management skills
  • Ask experienced students to design their own project planning forms
  • Use tech to update group accountability charts in real time
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194: PBL Tips on Mapping the Project

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Use a mix of instructional strategies based on outcomes you want to achieve:
  • Need to provide instructional resources, kids can’t research everything on their own and shouldn’t have to
  • Decide type of instructional strategy based on learning goals.  For tips on what strategies go with learning outcome types, see this article: Three teacher roles
  • Use direct instruction for basic supportive information
  • Scaffold supporting skills students need to developing products (example: how to research efficiently)
  • PBL is good at teaching habits of mind and central concepts; not as good at teaching algorithms and basic facts
  • Start with the project so that instruction answers project need-to-wknos
Leave wiggle room in project calendars:
  • Set aside a couple days to push back final presentations just in case project expands beyond original intended time frame
Take time and use project templates to design projects:
  • The more people involved in project design, the more time it takes to design the project
  • Record thinking that goes into project design in notebooks and templates
  • Don’t preplan everything, leave room for students to influence the plan
  • Allow enough room for students to struggle and fail forward
  • Design learning experiences that allow students to take on more responsibility for learning the content and applying content outside school
  • For more information on templates, see these articles: Backwards design template & standards and Understanding by design planning forms
Think carefully about when to schedule projects
  • Project should not replace end of grading period exams
  • Teachers should communicate and try not to schedule too many project deadlines on the same day
Use multiple means to communicate the nature and goals of project to parents
  • Can invite parents into school-year project planning meetings to ask for their input and to explain learning goals
  • Hold parent kickoff meetings for parents that introduce project and ask parents for specific resources and support
  • Post projects on school website
  • Invite parents to school Open Houses and present upcoming projects
  • Send project calendars home with major deadlines
  • Share projects on school-wide blog posts and newsletters
  • Invite parents to serve as panelists and resident experts
  • Show evidence of student learning in projects to parents
  • Explain to parents how you design projects to meet standards and to achieve both breadth and depth over time
Use parents and students to find business and community resources for projects
  • Involve parents in serving as community liaisons for possible field sites and experts
  • Parents and students can communicate what school is like to businesses
  • Potential partners need to visit the school and learn more about its vision and strategies
  • Leverage different strengths that different people have to offer
  • Meet expert partners face-to-face to prepare them to make the most of their time with the students.
  • Train students to interact well with community members.
  • Train students how to secure funding for future projects.
  • For more ideas related to this, see this article: Mapping your community
Don’t bring in experts in until students need their expertise to progress.
  • Let students be frustrated before expert comes in to play hero
Cross-curricular projects involved multiple teacher require extensive communication and coordination:
  • Supports for cross-curricular planning: common planning time, structure reflection on project design and student work, teacher research groups, summer planning time, shared office space
  • Helps to share the same students with collaborative teacher
  • Hold meetings to plan schedules, end products, standards, checkpoints, and assessment strategy
  • Use student work to start conversations about future projects
Project will take longer – or be over sooner – than you expect.
  • Use observations of students to make adjustments to deadlines
  • Plan project calendar and prepare for 20% overrun due to unexpected contingencies

 

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Skillful mapping of project prior to launch is key to successfully implement strong projects.  Involving students and parents in recruiting partner experts and organizations can lead to more authentic projects and project activities.  Building in flexibility into project calendars can allow teachers to make adjustments to scaffolding that better support student learning and development of projects.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Analyze standards and create academic learning targets
  • Plan products and determine supporting 21st century skills and habits of mind that support product development.  Create character learning targets
  • Develop systems for sharing projects with parents – newsletter? blog? etc
  • Plan a rough project calendar – allow up to 20% wiggle room in extending the project just in case
Early Implementation Steps
  • Follow project calendar when it makes sense; make revisions to project calendar that improve student learning
  • Use learning modes that match different types of learning targets.  For tips on that, read Three teacher roles
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Invite and prep industry experts to teach lessons that match student need-to-knows
  • Time expert visits and field trips to fit just-in-time teaching moments
  • Recruit parents and students to secure community partner organizations and experts

 

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193: PBL Tips on Planning Assessments

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Design projects that align with standards.
  • Align projects to standards, not textbooks.
  • Keep standards accessible to teachers and students.
  • Plan assessments based on standards at the start of the project.
  • Projects go deep.  Focus project on essential standards and important topics.
  • Consider standards and SCANS skills and Habits of Mind while designing projects
  • Prioritize standards that students need to understand for projects
Include students in project and assessment designs:
To read more about involving students in assessment and rubric design, see these articles: Teaching students how to generate questions, Models, critique & descriptive feedback, and Engaging students with data
  • Plan a rough outline of project and involve students in filling in the details of that outline
  • Processes for involving students in project design
    • communicate learning targets that project must cover
    • brainstorm how to approach learning targets? supporting skills?
    • brainstorm roles needed for project
    • make contractual agreements related to learning and collaboration
    • ask how will we know if the project is a success -> rubrics.  For more ideas on how to involve students in rubric writing, see this article: Models, critique & descriptive feedback
    • as year progresses, invite students into more decisions on project design
    • use student expert groups to investigate how well project topics could address  learning targets
Set clear expectations for students:
  • Make rubrics available early in the project
  • Involve students in creating and refining rubrics
  • Make sure students can explain rubric criteria in their own words
  • Have discussions around the criteria that make expectations more transparent
  • Set high expectations (higher order thinking) with rubrics
  • For more on rubric design, see: Rubric design & implementation
Use models to show examples of excellent work
  • Use previous student work or real professional samples to show students model work
  • Use models to trigger new ideas for products
  • For more on the use of model, see: Models, critique & descriptive feedback
Determine a fair method for weighing individual and group grades:
  • Favor individual grades over group grades
    • 75% individual, 25% group
    • use individual assessments for the individual grade
  • Could weigh group and work equally (50% individual, 50% group) to encourage students to create high quality group products
  • For more on fair grading practices, see Effective grading and reporting and Grading smarter, not harder

 

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Assessment design is key to designing standards-based projects.  Assessments should be designed before / early in the project in order to develop a clear picture of what evidence students need to create to show mastery of learning targets aligned to standards.  Once a clear, layered picture of student evidence of understanding is determined, it is easier to design scaffolding that supports student learning of learning targets.  Involving students in designing assessments can create buy-in in assessment practices.  Using models to help students understand and develop assessment criteria can increase motivation and quality of products.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Analyze standards and develop product ideas that relate to key concepts in standards.
  • Brainstorm what SCANS skills and Habits of Mind would best support student success in learning the standards
  • Develop academic and character learning targets that align with standards, SCANS skills, and Habits of Mind
  • Develop assessments that make students generate evidence of mastery of  academic and character learning targets
  • Gather models of products
Early Implementation Steps
  • .Facilitate discussions about assessment that involve students in the collections of assessments that will be used to assess project’s academic and character learning targets
  • Facilitate discussions that revolve around models of products and generate rubric criteria based on noticing what works in the models
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Involve students in progressively more elements of project design as the group progresses: learning activity ideas -> rubric design -> project context
  • Have students create their own assessments that they can produce to demonstrate mastery of learning targets

 

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192: PBL Tips on Beginning on the End in Mind

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Ways to start the year:
  • Seniors paired with juniors on a mini-project that has seniors teaching juniors how to work effectively within projects
  • Start with mini-units that teach students collaboration and self-monitoring skills prior to launching first project with students unfamiliar with PBL
  • Don’t expect the world out of first project.  Treat it like an ice breaker.
 
Pre-assess students’ skills and knowledge so you can tailor projects to their needs:
  • Pre-assess students’ abilities and interests prior to project launch
  • Prepare activities for students who are bound to move faster than other students
  • Use knowledge of students to bridge project relevance to their prior knowledge and interests
  • Be open to multiple formats of products for students to express their content knowledge, especially for students who struggle
Getting started? Either teachers or students:
  • Start small. Don’t try to tackle everything at once.
  • Start with small projects and analyze how they work in order to learn lessons that can be applied to future projects
  • Aim to design and implement one project really well
  • Don’t integrate projects on first project – get experience with logistics first before expanding scope and complexity of logistics by integrating in another teacher / content
  • Start by tweaking a student-centered assignment you’ve already done.  For more entry points, read this article: Project design: multiple entry points
Plan projects that take place outside the classroom:
  • Look for opportunities to tie curriculum to current events and sites outside the classroom
Get kids excited about a new project:
  • Prior to launch, leak details of project to get students to start thinking about it
  • Make project launches into “events” – example: for a school-wide project had a school-wide assembly where staff members put on a funny project-related skits
Establish a culture that stresses students self-management and self-direction
  • Maintain a dialogue with students about learning goals – what kind of person do you want to be? what’s required for college? what curriculum is needed to prepare for desired careers / college majors/
  • Teach research and learning skills
  • Teach students how to manage their time
  • Make the focus about the thinking, not just about the content
  • Reframe teacher role from stage on the stage to guide on the side
    • bring problems to students to solve instead of brining solutions
    • make project design part of the curriculum
    • create opportunities for students to make decisions about their learning
  • Transition from teacher-directed to student-directed
    • start with students depending on students at the start of the year
    • end year with teachers depending on students
  • Learn how to answer questions with more questions, not answers
Create a physical environment that will facilitate project work:
  • Create spaces for materials and project storage
  • Create spaces for group work and workshop work
Craft the driving question:
  • Use driving questions as a launchpad to related student-created specific project questions.  Vet these questions before students commit a lot of work time to them.
  • Do NOT answer the essential question for the students.
  • Design driving questions that elicit multiple responses, can be viewed from multiple perspectives, and engage diverse group of students
  • Refer to driving question often during the project
Following these tips can help teachers design projects that prepare students new to project-based learning (PBL) for the challenges unique to PBL.  Pre-assessing students can lead to project designs that account for a broad range of student interests, learning modes, and readiness levels.  Developing projects and scaffolding activities that scaffold students’ self management and project management skills can help students be more successful.  Creating spaces that accommodate PBL work can help students store products in a way that is orderly and inviting.  Crafting and implement activities focused around engaging and provocative driving questions can stimulate higher-order thinking throughout the project.

 

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Preparation Steps
Early Implementation Steps
  • Implement projects framed by driving questions
  • Refer to driving questions throughout the project
  • Fill briefcases with resources that provide learning opportunities for students at a broad range of readiness levels
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Be open to changing rubrics and product formats in response to student feedback as long as their suggestions do not steer too far from learning targets
  • After you and your students are experienced with PBL logistics, collaborate with other teachers to design and implement projects that integrate courses or school-wide courses
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191: 3 PBL Student Briefs

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The following briefs can be used to help students self-manage their project tasks:
Student Planning Brief
  • The overall challenge that defines this project is …
  • I / we intend to investigate:
  • I need to complete the following activities:
    • What will I / we do?
    • How will I / we do it?
    • Date due
  • I / we need the following resources and support:
  • At the end of the project, I / we will demonstrate learning by:
    • What?
    • How?
    • Who and where?
 
Student Product Brief
  • What product do I / we want to construct?
  • What research do I / we need to conduct?
  • What are my / our responsibilities for this product?
  • I / we expect to learn the following from working on this product:
  • I / we will demonstrate what we’ve learned by:
  • I / we wil complete the product by:
 
Student Presentation Brief
  • What will the audience learn from my presentation?
  • What part am I responsible for?
  • My plan to make a successful presentation:
  • I expect to learn the following from making this presentation:
  • Specific skills I plan to work on are:
  • I need the following technology / equipment for my presentation:
  • I need the following visuals for my presentation:

 

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The student briefs in this article help students plan out their tasks related to project, products, and presentations.  They also help students reflect on the learning goals related to these tasks.  Using one or more of these briefs can help teachers provide feedback to students on their project / product / presentation plans, check that their learning goals match the intended learning targets, and address students problems and concerns in a timely manner

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Set character learning targets for students that specific describe effective behaviors related to good project management
  • Select and adapt the design brief that most closely supports your selected  learning targets.
  • Develop an exemplar version of the student brief you plan to implement
Early Implementation Steps
  • Model how to use student brief using think aloud protocol and exemplar.
  • Set aside class time for students to complete the briefs and for teachers to provide face-to-face feedback on the briefs.
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Incorporate selected student brief into classroom routines
  • Use student feedback to refine student brief prompts and formatting
  • Analyze trends in student briefs to identify students’ strengths and gaps.  Design scaffolding related to gaps.
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190: Group Observation Checklist

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The following checklist can be used as a teacher-completed formative assessment or as a team group reflection:

 

Group Observation Checklist:
  • When starting a new task, group members:
    • Agree on agenda or plan
    • Begin work promptly
    • Get out project materials
    • Figure things out without teacher assistance
    • Share responsibilities
  • When conducting research, group members:
    • Consult primary resources
    • Take notes
    • Have relevant conversations
    • Evaluate the significance of new information
    • Stay on task
  • When discussing project work, group members:
    • Ask clarifying questions
    • Give each other a chance to speak
    • Make decisions efficiently
    • Record decisions and plans
    • Share essential information
    • Stay on task
For all these items, teacher or students can check off whether the following people contributed to the team criteria:
  • All members
  • Most members
  • Some members
  • Few members
  • Not applicable
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The criteria in the Group Observation Checklists are behaviors that can be communicated, scaffolded and assessed as character learning targets.  The criteria formatted as a checklist can be used to gather and share formative feedback data on collaboration.  Analyzing the checklists over all teams can reveal collaboration gaps that need extra support and scaffolding.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Decide which Group Observation Checklist criteria you want to scaffold, observe and assess
  • Create handout or Google form based on selected checklist criteria
  • Research and develop scaffolding that relates to selected checklist criteria
Early Implementation Steps
  • Communicate character learning targets
  • Facilitate modeling/learning activities to scaffold character learning targets
  • Use assessment form/handout to gather and share formative feedback on collaboration processes
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Evaluate all team’s checklist data to identify trends that describe teams’ strengths and gaps
  • Communicate trends to the class and brainstorm with students how to overcome pervasive gaps in collaboration processes
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189: 3 Helpful Student PBL Reflections

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The following prompts can be used to create reflection thinking sheets that get students to reflect upon their collaboration and learning processes.

 

Group-Contribution Self-Assessment (1 per individual student)
  • I have contributed to the group progress in the following way:
  • In this group, it is hard for me to:
  • I can change this by:
  • I need to do the following to make our group more effective
Group Learning Log (1 per student team)
  • We had the following goals:
  • We accomplished:
  • Our next steps are:
  • Our most important concerns / problems / questions are;
  • We learned
End of Project Self-Assesment (1 per individual student)
  • I completed the following tasks during the project:
  • As a result I learned the following:
    • About the subject matter:
    • About working in a group:
    • About conducting an investigation:
    • About presenting to an audience:
    • About ____________:
  • I learned that my strengths are:
  • I learned that I need to work on:
  • I would make the following changes if I were to do the project again:
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Self reflection is important to learning in PBL projects because it makes students more self-aware of the skills they are learning while completing projects.  Some of the reflection prompts also get students to reflect on current problems and possible solutions to these.  Regular reflections can help students more self-aware and more in control of their learning, investigation, and collaborative processes.  Teachers can process reflections to improve upcoming activities and projects and to provide individual and team support to students in need.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Create handouts (electronic or hard copies) of reflection sheets
  • (Optional) Create Google forms to gather handout data
  • Create storage system (file or physical) for reflection sheets
  • Decide how frequently you want students to reflect on their work
Early Implementation Steps
  • Model how to complete reflection sheet by thinking aloud and by using a model reflection sheet
  • Allow regular times for students to complete reflection sheets
  • Analyze reflection data and use it to fine tune upcoming activities and supports
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Use trends in students concerns and problems to design new scaffolding in related 21st century skills
  • Share trends from analyzing reflection data and discuss how these can impact teaching and learning
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188: Manage the Process

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Anticipating Your Role:  Critical tasks include:
  • Orient students into project at the beginning and throughout the project
    • Remind students of project goals and expectations (using Driving Question)
    • Track and coach students to progress through projects
    • Communicate next steps
    • Remind students of the time and effort needed to be successful
  • Form students into appropriate groups for appropriate tasks
    • Teach students collaboration skills needed to collaborate effectively
  • Organize project on a daily basis by narrowing scope of inquiry and suggesting ways to approach problems
    • Setting and enforcing deadlines
    • Providing timely formative feedback to students that they can use to improve understandings and products
  • Clarify learning goals and high priority tasks
  • Monitor and regular student behavior
    • Train students how to work effectively with less supervision
    • Help students manage projects with deadlines, daily log sheets, etc
  • Manage the work flow
    • Facilitate “just in time” instruction
    • Monitor student progress on products
  • Evaluate the success of the project
    • Help students realize what they have learned (and not) during project
Key Steps
  1. Share Project Goals with Students
    • Share project goals and how they relate to students’ lives “now” and in the future
    • Use student feedback to improve project vision
  2. Use Problem-Solving Tools
    • Know and Need-to-Know List
      • Aim to be very inclusive
      • Complete list of related students students understand (Knows)
      • Complete list of investigations needed to complete project (Need-to-Knows)
    • Learning Logs
      • Daily journal that describe students learning, processes and frustrations
    • Planning, investigation and product briefs
      • Graphic organizers that focus students on key information and processes
  3. Use Checkpoints and Milestones
    • Ask group leaders to give informal briefings on team progress
    • Use quick writes to assess students understandings and questions
    • Interview randomly selected students
    • Survey students
    • Schedule regular reflection sessions
    • Review checklists of project process steps
    • Examine team work logs
    • Observe teams to monitor their progress
    • Conduct debriefing sessions after activities
    • Things to notice:
      • problems in carrying out activities
      • team accomplishments
      • motivation and participation of students
      • problems and successes of specific activities
      • unexpected accomplishments
      • student needs for instructional support
  4. Plan for Evaluation and Reflection
    • Guide students to analyze what they learned and how they learned it
    • Guide students to reflect on how they can apply what they know to new contexts
    • Questions to ask during project debriefs:
      • What did we learn in this project?
      • Did we collaborate effectively?
      • What skills did we learn?
      • What skills did we get to practice?
      • What was the quality of our work?
      • How can we improve?
    • Share results of debrief with students
    • Formats for project debriefs
      • whole class debriefing session
        • use prescribed debrief questions and a student facilitator
      • fishbowl discussion
        • half the class discusses in center of room
        • other half observes and takes notes and occasionally takes turns being in the inner discussion circle
      • surveys
        • don’t forget to summarize survey data and share results with students
      • self evaluations
      • for more ideas, see this article: Alternate question response formats and Teaching students how to generate questions
    • Celebrate
      • help students to acknowledge what they accomplished
      • includes parents and other project stakeholders

 

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Teachers need to skillfully wear many hats while successfully facilitating a project.  In addition to teaching content, teachers need to model, teach, and guide students in project management skills, collaboration skills and problem solving skills.  The roles and tasks described in the articles describes some of the key things teachers need to do to successfully implement a standards-based project.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Create a checklist of teacher tasks that go with key roles: coach, instructor, project manager, collaboration coach, problem solving coach, etc.  See list above for ideas.
  • Plot project facilitator tasks on project calendar
Early Implementation Steps
  • Implement scaffolding and assessment activities in project calendar
  • Regularly get students to become aware of project goals and their progress toward these
  • Regularly let students reflect on what they learning in the project, how they are learning, and what more they need to learn to make progress
  • Regularly provide formative feedback that students can use to improve their understandings, skills, and products
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Create a master list of tasks that go with the many hats of an excellent project facilitator.  Make them into a laminated checklist board that can be referred to throughout the progress to make sure key tasks are implemented
  • Build in key tasks that student reflections have proven to be effective into routines

 

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187: Map the Project

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  1. Organize Tasks and Activities:
    • Divide up project products into key sub-tasks
    • Categorize sub-tasks into things students know how to do and don’t know how to do
    • Set aside time to scaffold tasks students don’t know how to do
  2. Decide How to Launch the Project
    • Examples of entry events: class discussion, field trip, article, guest lecturer, activity, video
    • Entry documents
      • outlines scenario and related problem
      • specifies students’ roles and audience
      • defines key tasks and deliverables
      • describes expectations
  3. Gather resources
    • Resources to gather:
      • Websites
      • Project forms
      • Equipment
      • Panelists and experts
      • Books
      • Materials to make products
    • (If needed) Allocate time to scaffold how to use resources
    • Be wary with technology.  Make sure it enhances not distracts away from learning objectives.
    • Select resources that:
      • increase efficiency of project tasks
      • increase information available to students
      • allow students to analyze information more thoroughly, meaningfully or realistically
  4. Draw a “storyboard”
    • Sketch out main activities in a scoreboard or on a calendar
    • Storyboard or project calendar should include
      • project launch
      • academic scaffolding and assessments
      • preparation time for products
      • due dates for drafts or rehearsals
      • due dates for projects
      • exams
      • homework assignments
      • reflection and review

 

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Developing a preliminary project plan is critical to successfully implementing and facilitating a project.  Project calendars need to be created in advance to ensure that all skills that are assessed have time set aside for related scaffolding activities.  Having a preliminary plan in place frees up teacher time and resources during the project run to make adjustments that improve the project and make it accessible to ALL students regardless of interest and readiness levels.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Unpack standards and habits of mind associated with products in an upcoming project.
  • Create a list of activities and assessments needed to adequately prepare students to create great products and to learn and apply academic learning outcomes.
  • Create a preliminary project calendar that includes key scaffolding activities and assessments
  • Plan project launch and presentation.
Early Implementation Steps
  • Implement activities and tasks on project calendar.
  • Use formative assessments to make needed adjustments to the project calendar.
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Recruit outside experts and audience members to support students at project launch, during the project middle, and on presentation day.
  • Use student project reflections to refine future iterations of projects and improve strategies in future projects.
  • Use the Assessments data base to create a varied portfolio of assessments that measure the progress and mastery of academic and character learning targets

 

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