Melissa Terry Blog Post 5

One of the reasons I was so grateful for this class this semester is that it allowed me to get back in the classroom in a teaching role.  I am so glad I got to have this opportunity.  So often, teachers make things look easy when I am in observing and I forget how much planning and thought goes into creating lessons that are engaging but also organized.  I was reminded of this multiple times during my PBL unit. 

One area that I did not plan enough for was the area of social skills and interaction among the students.  In the future I will make sure to have discussions about those expectations and create an anchor chart of those behaviors that I want to see.  Students struggled with working together and being able to collaborate.  I had several that ended up working alone because it was so difficult and stressful to them to be in a group.  I should have been a better facilitator of that process and I will plan to do so in the future.

Another area that I will focus on in upcoming units is designing ways for students to do safe research.  When students were looking for information about flooding, it was really difficult to find articles that they were able to read and videos that they were able to watch that were on a nine year old’s level.  I had created a symbaloo that had some sites on it, but I really need many more.  I also needed to have safe search engines listed there as well.  I was able to scramble and help students find information, but it was difficult for some of their topics.

I really enjoyed this unit and being in the teaching role again and look forward to implementing another one next semester.

Blog Post #5

I was sick on the day of the last class.  Frankly, I have been sick a lot this semester.  I think that I am facing that thing that none of us want to face - getting older.  I don't bounce back as easily as I used to.  When I put in long hours--sometimes really long hours--I find myself suffering for it.  The point is that I have a hard time just letting go.  I want my PBL work to be the best that it can be.  I want my students to get out of it what I/we want them to get out of it.  I worry too much about it and work too hard on it and it wears me out!

Funny thing is... I get worn out, work through recovering and go back and do the same thing all over again.  Here I am in the last day of my PBL unit and I see myself doing too  much again.

I used to think that I knew a lot about Project Based Learning (and I guess I did know a lot about the kind of projects that I used to do) but I often feel that I am only barely grasping the concepts in this format.  It's great.  I can see the benefits.  I am seeing more every day.  But every time I think that I have something down I keep finding myself confronting unanticipated problems or questions.  This really has me out of my comfort zone but I take comfort in that discomfort because it keeps me sympathetic to my students whom I am asking to work out of theirs.

Blog Post 5 - Brittany Daly

What I used to think, but now I know….

During the summer, I was really ambitious… as I often am during the summer when I have all the time in the world to plan and dream about the upcoming year. I was very excited for this project, and I did not anticipate all of the challenges that would arise. The biggest of those challenges was definitely time, and I know that everybody else probably felt constrained by time as well. 

My project started off fairly well. I enjoyed incorporating the various protocols we learned and practiced during our summer course. Students were interested in their research, and they were working fairly well together. Then, our daily schedule started to get interrupted by field days, guest speakers, garden events, etc. I felt like my project got put on the back burner. Before I knew it, it was time to go to Barrier Island. We got back, and it was almost time for testing. That was something I definitely didn’t plan for during the summer. I was starting to feel the pressure because I knew that I needed to move on to the next science unit so we could finish it before Christmas break. At that point in time, students had finished their research on ocean shorelines and movements. They had designed and constructed their shorelines, and they had created an erosion simulation. However, they had not yet gotten to devise a plan to prevent erosion. This was the major engineering design plan that I had weaved into my unit, but I just did not have enough time to implement it!

I used to think that STEM had to involve an engineering design activity, but now I know that’s not always the case. Ever since our school became STEM focused, I have felt like I need to include an engineering design project in every unit I teach. However, I know now that I can meet STEM standards in other ways. I love engineering projects. I think they can encourage creativity and collaboration; however, I have decided not to incorporate an engineering project unless it is manageable and meaningful (thinking back, I don’t think mine would have been incredibly meaningful).

Overall, I know that my students have grown as a result of this unit. In analyzing their shoreline designs, I saw much more detailed plans than I had during our previous project. They also did well on the final assessment of the science content knowledge (scores were mainly As and Bs). We are in the middle of our 1920s PBL unit right now, and my students are doing a great job with their research so far. I am looking forward to continuing my implementation of PBL this year. 

Blogpost #5 - Shanna Pittman

Blogpost #5 - Shanna Pittman

What I Used to Think but Now I Know

     Prior to taking this class I thought I had a pretty good command of using the PBL approach because I was already teaching in integrated units and had begun to change those units, transforming them into the Inquiry-Based approach to learning. This class would be a piece of cake and was the logical next step. That turned out to be WRONG! Project Based Learning is so much more than teaching integrated and Inquiry Based units and there are key elements such as, sustained inquiry, protocols, student voice and choice, and so on that I thought, "Oh no, how can kindergartners do this?". 

     I planned my unit this summer (remembering the class that had just been promoted to first-grade) and approached it with a great deal of trepidation. After meeting my new class this year and realizing that my voting unit would take place at the beginning of the year, I was really worried that what I planned during the summer would flop. I worried that the content was too abstract and that students would not be interested. I couldn't have been more wrong! My students surprised me in their excitement about voting and how they learned and remembered the content of the unit. They worked hard and talk about our neighborhoods even now.

     There were several changes and modifications that had to be made as I progressed through the unit. This was no surprise as I continually modify and adjust to suit the needs of kindergartners. The biggest change I had to make was my culminating activity. This was a change I had to make because we could not delay electing a student council member. In the end, however, the culminating activity was even more exciting and involved more members of our school community than the original plan. We worked hand in hand with the cafeteria manager and staff, as well as our student council coordinator. 

      I plan to continue teaching this particular PBL unit in the years to come. There are a few modifications I would make. I think the time-line for implementation should be shorter. I would shorten it to 2 weeks instead of 3 weeks. When implemented, students did not need as much time for the neighborhood meetings as I had anticipated. I would also give students more choice in their arrangement of neighborhoods. Instead of having to stay at the table in which they always sit, I would allow them to choose their neighbors. After all, we choose our communities as adults. I would also give them the freedom to "move" to different communities if they so chose.

     After implementing my first PBL, I am excited about what I have planned for the Spring! My new unit is science and I am collaborating with my grade level colleagues to plan and implement an Arctic Animals unit. I am not as nervous about implementing this unit as I was the first and look forward to spreading my wings a little more!

What I used to think but now I know

Basically, I thought I had a pretty firm grasp on PBL. I was wrong; it’s super-complicated. I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just that every time I think I have a curriculum and individual projects worked out, I wind up finding that they need more work as I implement them. I reflect on that and try to refine the assignments and then implement them again, and go through the same process. It’s like I can never get an assignment perfect. I guess that’s telling about me personally, as I always tell my kids that there’s always room for improvement, but for once I’d like to sit back and say, “yep, I’m finally done tweaking that one.”

PBL is messy. I think that’s one of the things that a lot of teachers (especially those who haven’t studied PBL or have never been around it) don’t get. What is organic learning and problem solving looks unstructured to uninitiated eye. Allowing student choice and facilitating learning, not just disseminating it, feels very open-ended, and at times even a little chaotic. Trying to teach good time-management and self-regulation skills while trying to teach complicated technical and artistic concepts simultaneously is difficult to say the least. It’s not difficult in a bad way, it’s just exhausting at times, especially the whole aspect of never being quite finished with an assignment or curriculum.

The biggest thing I’ve learned with the website assignment is that I have to find the right balance of being open-ended yet still having enough guidelines that they don’t overwhelmed. I also still haven’t found a way to solidly integrate the website into the curriculum in that some of the kids still don’t quite get it. I think the key to that is maybe through the critiques and/or delivery of their assignments.

Creating a website to show off your work is such a personal thing in that the best ones are always by the students who are the most intrinsically motivated. In terms of collaboration, other than critique, it’s a pretty personal assignment. I guess if they were creating a website for a client, that would be different, but then we venture more into the realm of web design and less into the scope of what my program covers (in 12 years, I’ve been asked by clients to build a website + photos once, maybe twice).

I also learned that to use their websites as a way to mark growth, I need to somehow record the changes in their websites over the course of the semester since the product by natures is, in theory, ever-evolving.

In terms of growth after looking at the first versions and looking at later version, they for the most part to implement the concept of “less is more” in their decisions on which photos to include on their websites, which is a good thing.

Examples of good student websites:

Emily

Abby

Hannah

I definitely am going to further refine the project in terms of trying to better layout what I want them to do, and I’m going to try to better monitor the sites so that I can more easily measure growth. I am also going to try to figure out a way to be incorporate it into the overall curriculum, because even though it’s not as bad as it used to be, it still feels like something that’s just been tacked on. 

-Austin Baker

Blog Post 5: What I Used to Think, but Now I Know

What I Used to Think / But Now I Know - Blog Post 5

As part of my pre-assessment,students got four sticky notes and wrote down their answer to each of the four statements: What do I know about tornados? What do I know about hurricanes? What do I know about tornados? How can you stay safe during events of severe weather? The students answers ranged from being spot on to predictions made based on what prior knowledge they possessed. I found this helpful, as I kept the poster up throughout the PBL unit. I thought that I would use this as a tool to help the students see what they’ve learned throughout, but I did not reference it. I believe the students just saw it as part of the bulletin board and didn’t look at it again. For my next PBL, I want to do something similar, but I want it to be interactive. I want the students to be able to update their sticky note, or their thoughts, based on what they have learned throughout the course of the project. What they think at the beginning is great, but I want the students to see how their thinking and ideas have changed over the course of the PBL. At the conclusion of my PBL, my students took a weather test and completed their PBL broadcast videos or video product. The average on the weather test was an 85. The students did well on their projects. Their broadcast videos turned out great and they were so excited to share their videos with their classmates. The information the students included in their broadcast scripts was all accurate as it was based on their research notes and was read over by both their peers and myself. The students completed their group and self evaluations, which also involved a summative component. On the self evaluation, I asked the students the same four questions that I asked them at the beginning. Most students were able to provide more detailed answers, while others put a simple response. For example, one student wrote, “Tornados form by warm and cold winds.” This student clearly learned how tornados form. Another student wrote, “Hurricanes get weaker when they get on land.”’ This student learned that hurricanes gain strength over water, but lose their power over land. Some simpler responses include, “Thunderstorms have thunder, lightning, and rain.” While this is correct, I am confident that this student knew this prior to the project. In regards to safety, many students wrote that you should move to a basement or stay indoors. When I referenced the yellow sticky notes about safety the students completed before the project, that was the most common response.

One thing that I realized while reflecting was that I never once stood up in front of the class and provided instruction to them on each of the three types of severe weather storms. I was rather proud of this at first, but after reading some of the students’ responses, it made me doubt myself. On the self evaluation, I included a section which asked students to list what questions they still had about severe weather. One student wrote, ‘How do tornadoes form?’ Even though this student completed a video broadcast which had to include this component, because it was a group project, his group divided up the storms; so he did not focus on tornados, but on thunderstorms. I thought that all of the students would focus on learning about all of the storms, but know now that some students simply focused on one storm, which was whatever storm they were going to report on in their video broadcast. For next time, I will make sure that I do teach a short lesson on the content, just to ensure that all of the students do understand the basics which I am asking them to learn.

When planning this PBL in the summer, I thought that my students would be able to complete the unit in two weeks, and boy was I wrong. I know now that it is going to take a while longer, if I want it to be done well and if I want my students to really learn it. For my next PBL, I will plan on at least three weeks, if not more. I hope that by making it cross-disciplinary I will be able to devote the time I need to it. As I focused on primarily science on my first PBL, when I didn’t get to science one day, that meant we didn’t get to PBL. With the cross-disciplinary approach, I hope that my students will be able to focus on this project everyday for an allotted time period, or better yet, have it carry across the entire day.

Genius Hour - S Cook

Genius Hour Teacher Observation:

Students watched the Genius Hour overview video and instantly got excited. The opportunity to use their inquiry skills for a project of their choosing was new to them. I found though, that when students heard their friends’ driving questions, they were easily persuaded to change theirs. This caused repetitiveness and insincerity in responses, taking away from the overall experience. To make this a more authentic experience for them, I will conference with students one on one from the beginning, not sharing driving questions with the class. This will allow students the chance to come up with a project that is free from peer influence and more unique to them.

We do GH on Tuesdays when my Horizons students are gone. So far, only 1 of my 2 classes has worked on GH projects. This is mainly due to the maturity level of the majority of the class. As I conference with students during this time, my students need to be able to problem solve or troubleshoot the small issues without my assistance. This is possible with Block 2 as they are a more independent group. They are able to work for an hour without distracting one another, even with my focus checks every 20 minutes.

I love GH because my students who never want to participate in anything get to shine. They may not be interested in the colonization of America, but they love sports, or traveling, or Pokemon. My most quiet student may not create a video, but her PowerPoint speaks loudly her interest in helping the environment.

As far as presentations go, I didn’t inquire how they would present until they had researched for a couple of weeks. As each project and student are different, I tried to allow them time to see how they were most comfortable presenting what they had found. Again, students who don’t know how to utilize their technology followed behind those who do and a long list of video presentations were created. This will be another thing that will be chosen in a student-teacher conference.

As we have had testing and our PBL unit to focus on recently, students have not had the chance to present yet. Their presentations are currently scheduled for December 13^th. 

Darstein - Blog Post #5

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