186: Character Learning Targets

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The rubric categories for their habits of mind rubrics read like character learning targets.

 

Accessing information:
  • Uses a strategic approach to access information
  • Accesses a variety of information sources
  • Searches for a variety of perspectives
  • Uses information retrieval systems and technology
  • Asks appropriate questions about information access and validity
  • Seeks assistance when needed
Selecting information:
  • Searches key sources efficiently
  • Focuses on key sources
  • Selects key ideas from sources
  • Records information efficiently
  • Organizes and labels selected information
  • Clarifies information as needed
Processing information:
  • Draws connections between ideas.
  • Identifies and labels key information and ideas.
  • Organizes data and ideas.
  • Labels and categorizes notes.
  • Interprets information.
  • Summarizes information.
Composing a presentation:
  • Creates a convincing, authoritative arguments.
  • Exhibits creativity in composition.
  • Puts information in own words.
  • Develops main ideas and organizing concepts.
  • Provides sufficient evidence to support claims.
  • Provides examples and concrete details.
Making a presentation:
  • Uses visuals clearly and effectively.
  • Communicates and stresses main points.
  • Body posture projects confidence and authority.
  • Makes consistent eye contact
  • Enunciates clearly with appropriate volume
  • Makes minimal pauses and avoids filter words
Individual Task Management:
  • Solicits and uses feedback
  • Sets appropriate and realistic goals
  • Works independently with minimal supervision
  • Perseveres appropriately
  • Carries out tasks carefully and diligently
  • Meets deadlines
 Individual Time Management
  • Uses time effectively
  • Estimates time realistically
  • Establishes a schedule for completing work
  • Allocates time among tasks strategically
  • Stays on schedule
  • Completes tasks on a timely bases
Group Task and Time Management
  • Monitors group progress
  • Sets appropriate and realistic goals
  • Develops a plan for completing group work
  • Keeps track of materials
  • Maintains group focus on what’s important
  • Allocates time effectively
Group Process
  • Group members facilitate each other’s participation.
  • All group members participate in project work.
  • Work is distributed and completed.
  • Group coordinates well with other groups.
  • Group uses members’ strengths effectively.
  • Group members resolve conflicts successfully.

 

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Character learning targets. describe the skills and behaviors students need to learn and produce more effectively in projects.  Deliberately specifying, scaffolding and assessing specific character learning targets makes it more likely for ALL students to develop skills related to these goals.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Analyze products and rubrics in upcoming projects.  Determine the key skills and behaviors students will need to demonstrate to effectively produce these products.
  • Select a set of character learning targets that
    • describe key learning skills and behaviors
    • set is small enough to set aside time to scaffold and assess all of them
  • Research and design assessments and scaffolding for character learning targets
  • Communicate academic and character learning targets early in the project
Early Implementation Steps
  • Scaffold and assess character learning targets throughout the project
  • Use student self reflections to make students more aware of how specific activities are letting them practice character learning targets
  • Use feedback from student reflection to fine tune scaffolding for character  learning targets
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Incorporate effective scaffolding of key character learning targets  into routines
  • Use Assessments data base to design a variety of assessments for specific character learning targets

 

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185: Pros & Cons of Various Assessments

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Presentations
  • Assess content knowledge and skills
  • Pros
    • Authentic audiences can create authentic contexts for assessments
    • Allows for integration of complex skills
  • Cons
    • Difficult to setup, especially with large classes
Written Products
  • Assess content knowledge and skills
  • Pros
    • Students work over extended periods of time on revisions
    • Allows for personal craftsmanship, expression, and pride
  • Cons
    • Difficult to assess individual contributions in a group project
    • Not all learning outcomes are readily assessed by this product
Tests
  • Assess content knowledge
  • Pros
    • Allows for standardized administration to all students
    • Good individual assessments
  • Cons
    • Difficult to assess skills
Self Reports
  • Assess habits of mind
  • Pros
    • Assess student attitudes, reflections and thinking processes
    • Students can realize impacts of project work
  • Cons
    • Hard to develop reliable assessment criteria

 

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Knowing the purposes, advantages and disadvantages of various assessments can help teachers select the right assessment to assess the right concept, habit, or skill.  Applying this type of analysis to a wider collection of assessments can make teachers more effective and efficient at selecting the right assessments for projects.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Evaluate bundle of upcoming standards.  Unpack standards and write set of academic long term and supporting learning targets.
  • Determine which habits of mind and workplace competencies students need to successfully learn content and develop products and uses these selected skills to write character  learning targets.
  • Use purposes, pros and cons of learning assessments to select the right type of assessment for each academic and character  learning target.
  • Create rubric that assesses key academic and character learning targets.
  • Gather exemplars that go with rubric criteria
Early Implementation Steps
  • Implement assessments throughout the product to assess and guide student understanding and skills as they develop throughout the project
  • Set aside project checkpoints to meet with students in formal conferences to generate timely reflection and feedback on major works in progress.  Set aside time for students to use feedback to improve products.  For more details on what this could look like, see this article: Writing workshop
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Use analysis of student work to improve assessments (especially rubrics).
  • Use Assessments Data base to discover and implement new assessment strategies other than traditional quizzes and tests
  • Analyze purposes, pros and cons of favorite assessments other than the ones listed in this article.

 

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184: Plan the Assessment

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  1. Align Products with Outcomes
    • Identify culminating products for a project that provide opportunities to apply skills and understandings from targeted standards
    • Use multiple products and multiple checkpoints to provide formative feedback that students use to improve their understandings and products
    • Use artifacts – evidence of student thinking – to assess targeted habits of mind and skills
    • Unpack standards and use unpacked standards to write product rubrics
    • Questions to answer with assessments
      • How well do students know the content?
      • What are students’ skill levels?
      • How well do students apply knowledge while preparing products?
    • Work backwards to make sure collection of assessments assesses all academic and character learning targets
    • Plan out culminating products –
      • these should involve transfer of knowledge and enduring understandings
      • involve students in peer and self assessments of culminating products
    • Plan out multiple products due at checkpoints so that students can get early and timely feedback
      • examples: outlines, plans, blueprints, storyboards, report drafts, websites, final drafts, etc.
    • Plan out artifacts that students will use to display their thinking as it evolves
      • examples: notes, journal entries, emails, interviews, reflections, etc
  2. Know What to Assess
    • Targeted standards, habits of mind, and 21st century skills can be further unpacked and rewritten as a set of academic and character learning targets.
    • Learning targets can be long term (takes several days) and supporting (one day focus)
    • Learning targets align with standards and other learning goals, they are specific and written in student friendly language.
    • Learning targets can be used to convey learning goals to students.
  3. Use Rubrics
    • Use rubrics to make project expectations explicit and transparent
    • Use models to help convey meanings of rubric criteria. See this article: Models, critiques & descriptive feedback
    • Analytic rubrics divide up criteria into several categories
    • Holistic rubrics combine all rubric criteria into one score
    • Design rubrics based on reflections and analyses of student work
    • Focus criteria on central features of performance, not the features that are necessarily the easiest to see and count
    • Use specific descriptive language to distinguish between criteria at different levels
    • Use student friendly language that students can use to self-assess and peer-asses products
    • When descriptive language fails to convey expectations clearly, use examples.
    • 3 common features of rubrics: elements, scales and criteria.
      • Elements are the names of the categories that group rubric criteria
      • Scales are the words that describe levels of performance.  Example: emerging, proficient, advanced
      • Criteria – rubrics descriptors of specific expectations
        • observable and/or measurable
        • focus criteria on critical understandings and skills
        • if possible use student work to develop criteria
        • use Bloom’s Taxonomy to write criteria at different levels
        • link scoring criteria to specific standards
        • use student-friendly language
        • maintain a high standard for exemplary work
        • judge the product, not the process to create the product – avoid having to base grades on guesses

 

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Standards-based project-based learning uses a collection of formative and summative assessments to check if students are learning knowledge and skills related to standards, habits of mind, and workplace competencies.  Teachers need to design a balanced portfolio of assessments that will generate feedback for all targeted knowledge and skills.  Students need timely feedback to clear up misconceptions, develop understandings and skills and improve products.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Evaluate bundle of upcoming standards.  Unpack standards and write set of academic long term and supporting learning targets.
  • Determine which habits of mind and workplace competencies students need to successfully learn content and develop products and uses these selected skills to write character  learning targets.
  • Create a portfolio of assessments that can assess all academic and character learning targets.
  • Create rubric that assesses key academic and character learning targets.
  • Gather exemplars that go with rubric criteria
Early Implementation Steps
  • Implement assessments throughout the product to assess and guide student understanding and skills as they develop throughout the project
  • Set aside project checkpoints to meet with students in formal conferences to generate timely reflection and feedback on major works in progress.  Set aside time for students to use feedback to improve products.  For more details on what this could look like, see this article: Writing workshop
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Use analysis of student work to improve assessments (especially rubrics).
  • Use Assessments Data base to discover and implement new assessment strategies other than traditional quizzes and tests

 

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183: Crafting the Driving Question

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Driving questions are provocative
  • engages student throughout the duration of a project
  • example: Do music videos paint an accurate picture of America?
Driving questions are open-ended
  • no easy answers
  • requires higher level thinking
  • require students to integrate, synthesize and critically evaluate info
Driving Questions go to the heart of a discipline or topic
  • can focus on central controversies of the discipline
  • can require discipline-specific processes to resolve
  • example: How safe is our water?
    • biology / chemistry / physiology project
Driving questions are challenging
  • opportunities to try out unfamiliar behaviors
  • confront difficult issues
  • example: When are people justified in revolting against an established government?
    • project on conflict and revolution in Latin America
Driving questions can arise from real-world dilemmas that students find interesting
  • example: How could we build a new community center using only materials that are native to the state?
    • project on physical and chemical properties
Driving questions are consistent with curricular standards
  • lead students to master knowledge and skills in project standards
Refining the driving question
  • Broaden the question:
    • Ex: Was Truman’s decision to drop the bomb justified? -> Can the use of nuclear weapons be justified?
  • Add predictions to question:
    • Ex: How have robotics and automation changed our society in the past century? -> How might robotics and automation change our town and its businesses in the next century?
  • Add expert guidelines and opportunities to examine central themes:
    • Ex: What happened to the ancestral Pueblo people? Create an exhibit using words and pictures. -> Why do civilizations such as the ancestral Pueblo, Inca, or Aztec civilizations disappear?  Put together a presentation suitable for an archeology convention that supports your case.
  • Go local
    • Ex: What is global warming? -> Should we be worried about global warming in our town
  • Add investigations of change
    • Ex: What have been the the most popular novels among teenagers in the last 30 years? -> How has reading changed for teenagers over the last 30 years?
  • Include a problem that needs solving
    • Ex: What is radiation fog and how can it be dangerous? -> How can we reduce traffic accidents associated with radiation fog?
For more discussion on driving questions, see this article: Essential questions.

 

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Driving questions motivate students to apply their new knowledge and skills to tackle a difficult problem.  They are lighthouses that inspire and unite activities and products in a project.  A good driving question can be used as a pre-assessment, formative assessment and summative assessment.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Analyze upcoming bundle of standards
  • Identify authentic and interesting themes that go with bundle of standards
  • Craft a driving question that highlights important issue(s) in the chosen project theme
  • Examine driving question using revising methods (see list above) and see if any of these can be used to improve the question
Early Implementation Steps
  • Display the driving question (online in project hub and physical in readily visible part of classroom)
  • Use driving question to trigger knows and need-to-knows
  • Use driving question to frame products and scaffolding activities
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Ask for feedback on driving question and use that feedback to refine the question
  • Teach students how to create related questions from driving question and use these as the center for their projects
  • Use driving question as pre-assessment and priming the brain activity near the start of a project
  • Maintain a concept map wall that goes with driving question that is updated throughout the project

 

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182: Six A’s Criteria for Designing Projects

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Original Source of 6A’s: Real Learning, Real Work by Adria Steinberg

 

Authenticity:
  • How will professionals solve this problem?
  • How is the project relevant to students’s lives?
  • What are authentic audiences for the project?
Academic Rigor:
  • What learning standards are addressed in the project?
  • What central concepts are scaffolded and assessed?
  • What habits of habit are scaffolded and assessed?
  • What is the central problem addressed by the project?
Applied Learning:
  • How will project products get students to apply new knowledge and skills to complex problems?
  • What workplace competencies will students practice in the project?
  • What self- and project management skills will students use to succeed in the project?
Active Exploration:
  • What field-based opportunities are integrated into the project?
  • What sources of information will students leverage in the project?
Adult Connections:
  • Will students get support from experts residing outside the classroom?
  • Will students get to work alongside experts at a field site during project?
  • Will outside experts convey real world standards for students’ project work?
Assessment Practices:
  • What are the criteria for measuring desired learning outcomes?
  • Are students involved in creating or reviewing project assessment criteria?
  • What self-assessment approaches will be used?
    • examples: journals, peer conferences, teacher-mentor conferences, rubrics, periodic progress checks
  • What types of work will students generate to demonstrate mastery of learning outcomes?
  • Does culminating presentation allow students to apply learned skills?

 

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The 6A’s criteria can be used to evaluate and  improve PBL project design.  Projects that meet the 6A’s criteria are engaging, rigorous, relevant, inquiry-based, inspiring and academically sound.  For more project design criteria, see this article: Backwards design template & standards.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Use 6A’s reflection questions to create and refine design of projects
  • Research strategies and opportunities to enhance 6A’s strengths of projects and overcome or eliminate gaps of projects
Early Implementation Steps
  • Implement projects that satisfy 6A’s criteria
  • Use formative feedback to fine tune projects in progress and to coach students to improve their understandings and products
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Use student feedback to improve manifestation of 6A’s criteria in projects
  • Develop design process routines and templates that make it easier to create projects and evaluate them using the 6A’s rubric
  • Develop community partnerships that will enhance Adult Connections in projects
  • Learn how to use and scaffold technology tools that will improve Active Exploration and Authenticity of projects

 

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181: Habits of Mind

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Persisting
  • stick to a task until it is completed
  • don’t give up easily
  • analyze problems and plan approaches to solve them
  • use a big tool box to solve problems
  • use self awareness to continue (switch up) effective (ineffective) problem solving processes
Managing Impulsivity
  • thinking before acting
  • being deliberate
  • develop plan of action before getting started
  • clarify and understand instructions
  • withhold judgement in order to develop understanding
Listening to Others with Understanding and Empathy
  • active listening skills
  • think through other’s perspectives
  • restrain own judgements, opinions and prejudices in order to be open to other’s ideas
  • monitoring one’s though while actively listening to another’s words
Thinking Flexibly
  • use intuition to solve problems
  • productive pauses in problem solving
  • tolerate confusion and ambiguity in a problem
  • use variety of tools to solve problems
Striving for Accuracy and Precision
  • value accuracy, precision and craftsmanship
  • double check / proofread products
  • review instructions, criteria and constraints
  • study models of great work
  • confirm product meets criteria
Questioning and Posing Problems
  • ask questions to address need-to-knows
  • probe for info and explanations
  • ask a range of questions
Applying Past Knowledge to New Situations
  • learn from experience
  • look to past for guidance in solving new problems
  • use processes to face new challenges
  • abstract meanings from experiences
  • transfer knowledge and skills to novel situations
Gathering Data through All Senses
  • uses all senses to gather information
Creating, Imagining and Innovating
  • create novel, original, clever or ingenuous products, solution and techniques
  • problem solving using many angles and approaches
  • use analogies to understand and play out different roles
Responding with Wonderment and Awe
  • enjoy problem solving and learning
  • seek out challenges
  • seek out and create new enigmas
Finding Humor
  • laugh at themselves
  • provoke higher order thinking: finding novel relationships, using imagery and making analogies
Thinking Interdependently
  • collaboratively problem solve
  • understanding need for and value of collaborators
Learning Continuously
  • confidence + curiosity -> find new and better methods
  • always striving for new learning, growth and improvement
  • see adversity and other experiences as opportunities to learn
These habits of mind have strong connections to the 6 Facets of Understanding.

 

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The following habits of mind describe the skill sets that people can practice to become excellent problem solvers.  Teachers can scaffold and assess these skills in order to develop students’ independence and to prepare them for lifelong learning and careers.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Evaluate knowledge and skills of the course
  • Make lists that specify how students will apply habits of mind to be successful in your course
  • Create character learning targets based on content versions of the habits of mind
  • Prepare scaffolding and assessments that align to character learning targets based on the habits of mind
Early Implementation Steps
  • Implement scaffolding and assessments that align to character learning targets based on the habits of mind
  • Use formative assessment feedback to refine activities and to guide students to revise their understandings and products
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Collaborate with other teachers to develop vertical sequencing of instruction related to habits of mind
  • Develop routines that empower students to practice habits of mind

 

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180: Knowledge Age & enGauge 21st Century Skills

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Knowledge Age Skills
  • Creativity
    • new knowledge creation
    • new solutions to old problems
    • best fit design solutions
    • artful storytelling
  • Critical Thinking & Doing
    • problem solving – especially ill-defined problems
    • research methods
    • analysis
    • understanding of specific content knowledge
    • project management
  • Collaboration
    • cooperation
    • compromise
    • consensus
    • community-buildling
  • Cross-Culture Understanding
    • across various ethic, knowledge & organizational cultures
  • Communication
    • crafting messages
    • using media effectively
    • choosing right medium and genre for the message
  • Career and Learning Self-Reliance
    • Managing change
    • Growth mindset
  • Computing
    • basic computer literacy
    • selecting right tool for given tasks
 
  • Digital age literacy
    • basic scientific, mathematical and technological literacies
    • visual and information literacies
    • cultural literacy and global awareness
  • Inventive Thinking
    • adaptability
    • ability to manage complexity
    • curiosity, creativity and risk taking
    • higher-order thinking
    • sound reasoning
  • Effective Communication
    • teaming, collaboration and interpersonal skills
    • personal and social responsibility
    • interactive communication
  • High Productivity
    • Ability to prioritize, plan and manage for results
    • Effective use of real world tools
    • Produce relevant, high-quality products

 

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Teachers can use the Knowledge Age and enGauge 21st Century skills to target, scaffold and assess skills that will help students learn better and will empower students to practice skills that will prepare them for lifelong learning and careers.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Evaluate knowledge and skills of the course
  • Make lists that specify how students will apply Knowledge Age & 21st Century skills to be successful in your course
  • Create character learning targets based on content versions of the Knowledge Age & 21st Century skills
  • Prepare scaffolding and assessments that align to character learning targets based on the Knowledge Age & 21st Century skills
Early Implementation Steps
  • Implement scaffolding and assessments that align to character learning targets based on the Knowledge Age & 21st Century skills
  • Use formative assessment feedback to refine activities and to guide students to revise their understandings and products
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Collaborate with other teachers to develop vertical sequencing of instruction related to Knowledge Age & 21st Century skills
  • Develop routines that empower students to practice Knowledge Age & 21st Century skills

 

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179: SCANS Skills & Competencies

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Original Resource:
5 Workplace Competencies:
  1. Resources
    • knows how to allocate time, money, materials, space and staff
  2. Interpersonal Skills
    • work on teams
    • teach others
    • serve customers
    • negotiate and work well with diverse teams
  3. Information
    • acquire, evaluate, organize, interpret and communicate data
    • use technology tools
  4. Systems
    • understand social, organization and technological systems
    • monitor and correct performances
    • design and improve systems
  5. Technology
    • maintain and troubleshoot equipment
    • select the right technology tool for the right task
3 Foundational Skills:
  1. Basic skills
    • reading, writing, mathematics, speaking and listening
  2. Thinking skills
    • ability to learn, reason, think creatively, make decision and solve problems
  3. Personal qualities
    • individual responsibility, self esteem, self-management, sociability and integrity
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The SCAN skills were designed by the Departments of Labor and Education to help educators prepare students for the workplace.  Designing scaffolding and assessments around the SCAN skills will help students better learn content and practices skills that prepare them for lifelong learning and careers.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Evaluate knowledge and skills of the course
  • Make lists that specify how students will apply SCAN skills to succeed in your course
  • Create character learning targets based on content versions of the SCAN skills
  • Prepare scaffolding and assessments that align to character learning targets based on the SCAN skills
Early Implementation Steps
  • Implement scaffolding and assessments that align to character learning targets based on the SCAN skills
  • Use formative assessment feedback to refine activities and to guide students to revise their understandings and products
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Collaborate with other teachers to develop vertical sequencing of instruction related to SCAN skills
  • Develop routines that empower students to practice SCAN skills

 

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178: Mapping Your Community

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Community Mapping
  • Students working in teams ask and answer questions about their community.  See below.
Community Mapping Questions:
  • What are the cultures in the community?  How many different cultures exist? Describe them.
  • What opportunities exist for learning and teaching?
  • What are the local enterprises that promote economic growth?
  • What are the local community organizations?
  • What citizen actions are taking place around critical issues?
  • What are the problem areas in the community such as noise, pollution, substandard housing, graffiti, erosion or trash?
  • What local political issues impact the community?
  • What local talents exist in the community?
  • What are the local stories?
  • Who are the most important people in the community?
  • Who makes decisions?
  • Who is the most respected, wisest, wealthiest, or most loved?
  • How do these people connect to teaching and learning opportunities?
Interviewing Community Members Questions:
  • What is important to them?
  • What are their greatest needs?
  • What environmental issues are important to them?
  • Who are the important people involved in those environmental issues?
  • What are the important relationships and partnerships?
  • How would a person who wants to help with the issue get involved?
  • What is missing in what we are doing?
Community Mapping Reflection Questions
  • What patterns or unexpected relations between features or systems did you observe?
  • What opportunities are there for teaching and learning?
  • What opportunities and resources are there to learn more about the problem / issue?
  • What opportunities and resources are there to find solutions to the problem?
  • Who else do we need to include to make our work most beneficial to the community?
  • How will you apply your new awareness of the problem upon returning to your program?

 

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Involving students in mapping the community can expose varied and unexpected learning opportunities that can frame future projects.  These ideas can be engaging to students because of their close relationships to their everyday lives outside of school. Student community mapping can be amplified by sets of well-designed questions aimed at getting students to dig deep and notice interesting patterns in their community.  See above for examples.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Decide when in the year you would like to involve students in community mapping.  A good time might be at the start of the year.  This could provide enough lead time to use discoveries from community mapping to frame future projects.
  • Revise questions above to generate specific questions that will uncover learning opportunities in the community that relate to your content and to upcoming topics.
Early Implementation Steps
  • Assign community mapping questions to students working in teams.
  • Require students to interview 1 to 2 community members to gather more information. (primary research)
  • Also require students to conduct secondary research to gain insight into some community mapping questions
  • Have students present their findings and future project ideas and their importance and potential impact
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Invite local community members to the classroom to describe how they work and their impact on the community
  • Use student discoveries to build new partnerships and to frame new projects that connect to community issues

 

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177: Begin with the End in Mind

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  1. Develop a Project Idea: 7 suggestions for finding project ideas: (For more ideas, go here)
    • Work backward from a topic in the news, conversation, curiosity item, etc
    • Use your standards look at past assessments that use your standards
    • Find projects and ideas on the Web
    • Map your community – use students to scope out community opportunities
    • Match what people do in their daily work can search for real world applications that go with curriculum topics
    • Tie the project to local and national events – tie projects to current events and discoveries
    • Focus on community service – research local non-profits
  2. Decide on the Scope of the Project
    • Factors that affect project scopes
      • student readiness levels
      • school schedule
      • teacher level of comfort and expertise
      • subject
    • Role of adult experts from the community
      • mentor students through many possible solutions to problems
      • share knowledge and skills
      • show relevance of knowledge and skills
    • The Audience for the Project
      • Externalize the enemy
        • Involving audience members from outside the classroom raises stakes of presentations
        • The more authentic the audience, the higher the stakes and motivation
    • Student Autonomy
      • How much do you want students to be involved in project design?
        • Low involvement – teacher selects topic and learning outcomes
        • Middle involvement – teacher solicits student input and negotiates topic and learning outcomes
        • High involvement – students select topic and learning outcomes
      • How much do you want students to be affect scaffolding design?
        • Low involvement – teacher designs products & activities & timelines
        • Middle involvement – teacher solicits student input
        • High involvement – students design products, activities & timelines
  3. Select Standards
    • What topics would you be embarrassed about if students couldn’t discuss them intelligently by the end of a project?
    • Only include enough standards that you can adequately scaffold and assess
    • Break down standards into related, specific student-friendly learning targets
    • Also include district or school mandated initiative – examples: school-wide learning outcomes: written communication, oral communication, agency, collaboration, knowledge & thinking
  4. Incorporate Simultaneous Outcomes
    • Scaffold and assess 21st century skills such as the SCANS skills
    • Scaffold and assess useful habits of mind – for example study skills, note taking skills, etc.
  5. Work from Project Design Criteria
    • Design Criteria Questions:  For more criteria go here 
      • Meet standards?
      • Engage students?
      • Focus on essential understandings?
      • Encourage higher-level thinking?
      • Teach literacy and related fundamental skills?
      • Allow all students to succeed?
      • Use clear, precise assessments?
      • Require the sensible use of technology?
      • Address authentic issues?
    • Project vs Activity-Based Teaching Strategies: Features that are unique to PBL projects
      • students investigate overall challenging question
      • scaffolding activities occur in context of overall challenge posed by driving question
      • single activities are insufficient to address the entire challenge
      • resolving overall challenge requires application of concepts and justification for these applications
  6. Create the Optimal Learning Environment
    • Involve partnerships with resources outside the classroom
    • Alter the look and feel of classroom to make it look more like the workplace or make it more conducive to group work and discussions
    • Allow students to see the whole before practicing the parts.  Seeing the whole will enable students to better organize the parts in their new schema.
    • Model how to transfer content and skills to real world applications
    • Make schoolwork more like real work.  Give students opportunities to practices processes and ways of thinking used by the pros.

 

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Beginning with the end in mind helps teachers to design projects that meet the needs of their students, the rigor of the curriculum and the demands of school-wide and district-wide initiatives.  Beginning with the end in mind involves deciding the target standards, the targeted levels of student autonomy, and the connections to real world tools and real world experts.  It is important to check if projects are well-designed prior to committed the large amount of time needed to complete their design and to facilitate them.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Develop a project idea that aligns to an upcoming bundle of standards.
  • Decide how student input will influence project goals, topics, learning outcomes, time lines and activities.
  • Recruit community partners to serve as supporting experts and audience members
  • Use the Project Design reflection questions above (or the template and standards here) to evaluate and refine your project design
Early Implementation Steps
  • Implement project design
  • Use student input to refine activities, timelines and products
  • Use frequent formative feedback to help students improve their learning and products at timely moments
  • Scaffold and assess content learning targets
  • Invite parents to presentations as panelists
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Scaffold and assess 21st century skills and character learning targets
  • Cede expertise of content to partner professionals who assist with instruction
  • Invite experts to presentations as panelists
  • Once your students are very familiar with PBL and have demonstrated good use of autonomy, involve students in selection of project topics and design of project rubrics

 

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