Kimberly Trott’s response to Ken Robinson’s challenge for me
personally in my classroom.
PBL is how I have always envisioned the classroom but was
not actually sure how to put it all together. After reading about PBL today,
the Essential Project Design Element Checklist really put a framework together
for me to use to piece the unit together.
In my classroom now, you will typically find students
working on numerous assignments and being very self-directed. What is missing though is sustained inquiry
in which students generate questions, the real-world impact (which may be a
little difficult for ancient history), time for reflection, lack of revision
potential, and the presentation of the project to people beyond the
classroom.
PBL has actually opened my eyes and made me know realize that
it is ok to do some of the things I have always wanted to incorporate into my
classroom and be ok with doing it and not feel like I was wasting class time on
silly things like authenticity, student choice, reflection, and revisions. I have always been open to student interest
but this lets me realize parameters are ok within student choice and that
revision is ok in order for the student to see growth.
The biggest change will
be with the public project. We do many
projects in the classroom but not with the public in mind, nor with an audience,
or a real world problem as the focus.
Next year I plan on discussing, sharing, and implementing
the Design Elements within the first couple of chapters. By the fourth chapter, I hope to implement an
entire unit on ancient Greece or ancient Rome.
I hope that time will permit at least one more unit to be a full PBl,
along with portions of the practice in other chapters.
The greatest challenge will be in organizing the flow of the
content and keeping students on task in order to meet time requirements. Typically time management issues are the most
difficult to manage.
Ancient history is a challenge. Maybe students could organize an anient history fair for the community or the school. I agree that time constraints for teaching the curriculum is an issue, especially for revisions and the like.
ReplyDeleteHi Kim,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate how you broke the blog assignment up into two parts - the first one being your response to Sir Ken Robinson's ideas expressed in his Ted Talk and the second one your connections with project based learning and ideas for application.
You identified organization of content and student time management as areas you wanted to target for growth. As you begin work on your unit plan today, keep these two areas in mind as you work to create your driving question, your culminating product(s), your need to knows, and most of all, the scaffolding and support your students will need to be successful.
Sincerely,
Dawn