Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Sarah Garner; Blog Post 1
I truly enjoyed our visit to Emerald High School. This very impoverished school has not limited itself because of it, but has found ways to engage and improve the students' education. They have done this by incorporating PBL. Many stories from the teachers included higher student engagement. Right now in my classes I am struggling with students completing their work. Just in my fourth block, I have 41 zeros because students just do not turn in their work. Through the stories from the teachers of Emerald, I believe that PBL projects will increase that motivation to turn work in. I also enjoyed seeing the students undergo creating their own work contract. During my PBL unit first semester, I felt that one of the partners did all the work and they other partner got the grade. I feel that incorporating the work contract into my next unit will reduce that from happening again. I really loved how they used the personality test to group the students. Most of the time we group students together based on some good characteristics, but mostly the bad. I want to use the personality test to group students in my next PBL in order to group the students using all positive characteristics. The school seems very passionate about project based learning, and they are seeing the results from their students. I hope that my school will create a similar culture in the future.
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I, too, was encouraged by our visit to Emerald High School and really liked the True Colors Personality Test (I found a full PDF with explanations of the different personalities, by the way) and plan to use it next week before we begin our next unit. Let's get together to brainstorm work contracts some time soon.
ReplyDeleteHi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI am glad that the visit to Emerald was helpful to you and seeing other high school teachers implement pbl provided you with additional strategies but also the support that we are all in this work together.
You shared how seeing Robert's implementation of flexible work contracts was helpful and that you want to try this strategy with your class in order to help combat one person doing all the work for the group or students not attempting or turning in their work. I know our coaching cycle is coming up so let me know if developing flexible learning contracts is something you'd like support with.
Sincerely,
Dawn