Like many of you, I took biology in 9th grade. Never having taken another biology or anatomy course in my educational career, I am ashamed to say that there is much that I have forgotten. One detail that pops into my mind every once in a while is that a mitochondria is the powerhouse of a cell. I am not sure exactly what that means, or how the mitochondria works, or how something as small as a cell has so many smaller parts to it, but I am pretty sure that I am correct about that fact.
Why do I remember that fact? Is it because my biology teacher was amazing? Perhaps. Is it because I remembered some mnemonic such as "mighty mitochondria"? Could be. Is it because Julie Mitochondria was the name of the girl that I secretly had a crush on throughout high school? Unlikely.
No, the real reason that I remember this random fact is that at some point I stayed up late studying for a biology test, memorizing all of the parts of the cell and their functions just well enough so that I would be able to regurgitate that information the next day on the test, and probably again six months later on the final.
Fast forward to today. Like most other teachers, I still give tests from time to time. Being a reasonably good teacher, I try to pack my tests with questions that will test not only my students' ability to memorize, but also their ability to think, to process the material and use it to answer a question that is somewhat different than the exact way that we learned the material in class. However, I inevitably find students who are capable of providing answers that touch on the correct information, that come oh-so-close to actually demonstrating real understanding, but who nevertheless produce a response that shows that they are still collecting information points without truly comprehending what connects them into one larger system. In my earlier example, I can explain the function of the mitochondria and the nucleus and the ribosomes, but I cannot quite explain (in my own words, of course), how a cell functions.
To my mind, this is ultimately the most important contribution of Project Based Learning (PBL) to the business of teaching. My biology teacher (note - she was a wonderful teacher; I'm just picking on the subject since it is an area that I completely avoided, regrettably so, for the rest of my academic career) wanted me to understand cells, so she tried to build my understanding from the bottom up, hoping that by understanding each part, I would understand the whole. Project Based Learning, by contrast, starts from the end and works backwards. A driving question for that cell unit would be something along the lines of "What are cells and how do their discrete parts work together to sustain life?" A culminating project that asked me to consider various diseases that afflict cells and how they do so would drive me to understand each part and what a deficiency in that part would mean for my overall health. There is no way that writing down a few key words in the right place would get me "partial credit" for an assignment such as that.
When reconfiguring existing units to be PBL units, my longest stretches of creative thinking focus on exactly this point - what am I really trying to teach in this unit? As a teacher of religious and legal texts, the answer is not always so obvious since the texts (Torah, Talmud) are not always divided up topically as easily as a Biology or a History textbook might be. At times I need to combine parts of what were previously distinct units or break apart one unit into smaller pieces so that I can focus my students on one or two essential areas for understanding. difficult as this sometimes is, it is also highly rewarding. I emerge from the process with a much richer understanding of what I am trying to teach, and ultimately my students are engaged in a richer and more meaningful educational experience. They are no longer working their way from one Biblical verse to the next, from one Talmudic page to the following one, but rather they are tackling defined units of knowledge and seeking to master and understand them.
Much has been made about the motivational advantages of PBL. I have always contended that people can only be motivated, at least long-term, to do something that they feel that they can understand and can be successful doing. A student with a great memory can perhaps be motivated to memorize lists of facts and dates and names. But any student can potentially be motivated by the opportunity to not only seize control of their learning, but to do so in a way where the path to mastery lies clearly before them.
Showing posts with label PBL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PBL. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Thursday, May 9, 2013
"Does Any of this Still Count?"
We have reached that point in the school year where my 8th graders have one overriding question on their minds. As their thoughts turn to the senior trip, graduation, and the various ways in which they can show that they are all grown up, they often wonder, "Hey, Rabbi - Does any of this still count?" On a basic level, they are asking why they should still have to sit in classes where there might not even be a final exam, and even for those classes (such as mine) where there is such an exam, they are wondering why they should bother studying. After all, they have all gotten into high school, and their June grades will have no impact on their immediate future plans.
On one level, this is understandable. While we stress to our students that things such as manner and respect and davening (prayer) do not recognize senioritis and should always be in play, it is harder to make that case for specific subject material. No one is going to miss out on medical school because they daydreamed through the last month of 8th grade science and no one is going to fail to become a Rosh Yeshiva because they were doodling during a month of Gemara back when they were 14 years old.*
*Although one can argue that the people who become Roshei Yeshiva are probably the ones who were already serious at age 14.
But on another level, it reflects a natural outgrowth of our educational system. So much of what we do in school is incentive based, and those incentives are generally grades. Students are well trained from an early age to know that what really matters is the number or letter that appears at the top of that quiz or test or project. They learn to ask things such as "will this be on the test?" and - even worse to my ears - "do we need to know this?"* At the end of the day, our assessment-focused system, no matter what type of assessments we use, conditions our students to judge something's value by its connection to a grade.
*My answer to that question is well-known to my students. "You need to know everything." Kind of removes the uncertainty while stressing that everything that we do is for a reason.
As adults, we know of course that not all of life is like this. While much of what we do is incentive-driven (in this case, the incentive is a paycheck), we also learn that there are many things in life that we do because we enjoy them or find value in them. One can construct an argument that says that that is also incentive-driven, but if it is, it is in a way that is so different from the grade-based or salary-based incentive system as to be unrecognizable as being the same thing. Our goal as educators is to find a way to convey to our students a love of learning - learning in general and our disciplines in particular - to the extent that they are driven to learn even when the tangible incentives fall away.
This was not intended as a Project-Based Learning post, but I believe that PBL can help in solving this conundrum. When students' experience in class is about listening to a lecture, filling out homework sheets, and cramming for a test, it is often the grade and the grade along which propels them forward on a daily basis. However, when given more control over their own learning, students gradually develop their own internal motivation towards their learning. This is not to say that they will necessarily love a discipline just because that class was a PBL environment; but they are more likely to at least have a positive attitude towards the learning experience in general when they felt a sense of ownership over it, and not a sense that they were charged with merely regurgitating information back to the person who dispensed that information in the first place. The more that we can make the learning experience belong to the students, the more that they will be willing to do it even after it "no longer counts".
On one level, this is understandable. While we stress to our students that things such as manner and respect and davening (prayer) do not recognize senioritis and should always be in play, it is harder to make that case for specific subject material. No one is going to miss out on medical school because they daydreamed through the last month of 8th grade science and no one is going to fail to become a Rosh Yeshiva because they were doodling during a month of Gemara back when they were 14 years old.*
*Although one can argue that the people who become Roshei Yeshiva are probably the ones who were already serious at age 14.
But on another level, it reflects a natural outgrowth of our educational system. So much of what we do in school is incentive based, and those incentives are generally grades. Students are well trained from an early age to know that what really matters is the number or letter that appears at the top of that quiz or test or project. They learn to ask things such as "will this be on the test?" and - even worse to my ears - "do we need to know this?"* At the end of the day, our assessment-focused system, no matter what type of assessments we use, conditions our students to judge something's value by its connection to a grade.
*My answer to that question is well-known to my students. "You need to know everything." Kind of removes the uncertainty while stressing that everything that we do is for a reason.
As adults, we know of course that not all of life is like this. While much of what we do is incentive-driven (in this case, the incentive is a paycheck), we also learn that there are many things in life that we do because we enjoy them or find value in them. One can construct an argument that says that that is also incentive-driven, but if it is, it is in a way that is so different from the grade-based or salary-based incentive system as to be unrecognizable as being the same thing. Our goal as educators is to find a way to convey to our students a love of learning - learning in general and our disciplines in particular - to the extent that they are driven to learn even when the tangible incentives fall away.
This was not intended as a Project-Based Learning post, but I believe that PBL can help in solving this conundrum. When students' experience in class is about listening to a lecture, filling out homework sheets, and cramming for a test, it is often the grade and the grade along which propels them forward on a daily basis. However, when given more control over their own learning, students gradually develop their own internal motivation towards their learning. This is not to say that they will necessarily love a discipline just because that class was a PBL environment; but they are more likely to at least have a positive attitude towards the learning experience in general when they felt a sense of ownership over it, and not a sense that they were charged with merely regurgitating information back to the person who dispensed that information in the first place. The more that we can make the learning experience belong to the students, the more that they will be willing to do it even after it "no longer counts".
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Teaching Students to Summarize via Twitter
One of the problems that I have encountered when asking students to work independently is that I need to create some system of accountability. In my Project-Based Learning (PBL) units, I often provide my students with many sources and options to learn, and I ask each working group to create a Google site as a hub for their running notes. This allows me to constantly check in on their work and to therefore monitor how they are progressing, issues that they may be having, and so on.
However, I have often been bothered by the fact that many students, and we are talking about honors students here, are often not good at summarizing material. Very often, I open a Google site to find verse-by-verse translation/explanation of material where a couple of well-thought-out sentences would have sufficed. It reached a point where some students were so focused on the verse that they were reading that they lost sight of the greater context, often asking me questions whose answers were contained in the previous paragraph.
Today I finally decided to do something about this. Rather than have my students walk into class, form into their regular work groups, and fan out across the building working on their assignments, I had everyone come into class together and sit down with an ipad (we use an ipad cart in my class) and a text. Each student was assigned one section (one parashat ha-shavua) and told that they were to read five verses and then boil all of that down to one tweet. Not one sentence - one, little, 140-character tweet. They were to do the same for the next five verses, and the five after that, and the five after that (and five more tweets for further practice tonight).
Aware of the fact that my students tend not to use Twitter, and that there are likely parents that do not want their children to do so, I created a Twitter account for our class (@7AChumash) and had everyone log in and post through that account. Blessedly, a Twitter account can be signed in on multiple devices at once and thus the entire class could engage in this activity at the same time. You can see some of their results by clicking on the link above.
All in all, the students enjoyed this activity and benefited greatly from it. For some, the challenge was how to shrink their tweets down by a few characters, and I explained that text language, abbreviations, and misspellings were par for the course. For almost all of them, the process of determining which information was essential and which was less-important detail was a valuable exercise in the fine art of summarizing. Hopefully, this will carry over into their daily research and their notes will become more focused while simultaneously becoming shorter.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
A Smashing PBL Success (with an assist from Twitter)!
As a teacher, there are few moments in your job than when your students not only reach but actually exceed the expectations and hopes that you have for them. Over the past two days, and really over the past several weeks, I was privileged to have one of those moments.
Every year, my 7th grade Chumash (Torah) class learns a unit on kashrut, the laws related to keeping kosher. It is one of my favorite units to teach, and one of the students' favorite units to learn. In addition to the Biblical text, I bring in a wide range of articles, videos, pictures, and other materials that discuss recent issues in kashrut, ranging from how we determine if buffalo or turkey is kosher, to problems that might arise when ordering coffee at Starbucks. If any unit was ever primed to be turned into a Project-Based Learning (PBL) unit, this was certainly it.
However, in preparing the unit I ran into my usual dilemma. I had plenty of materials ready for the students, both posted on a class wiki and copied and placed in a filebox on my desk. I had arranged for the students to have daily use of the school's ipad cart during our class and sporadic access to the computer lab. I had divided the class into solid working groups. But I needed a project that would drive their learning and would lead them to produce something more than a simple spitback of the material (see this post for more on this problem).
I wanted my students to create visual presentations of the laws that they were studying, but I wanted them to present them to people who were not knowledgeable of those laws. My goal was to find a class of Middle School students who knew little to nothing about the details of the Jewish kosher laws who could serve as the target audience for my students and their presentations. My thinking was that since the other students would not be familiar with any of the terms of details of the subject matter, my own students would have to prepare assiduously to be able to explain virtually any word that they would mention. In other words, spitback would not be enough - they would have to fully understand every single aspect of what they were presenting.
So I reached out on Twitter looking for an audience. Within moments, Tyler Amidon (@mramidon), a friend from #Edchat who I have met in person and correspond with frequently (see the story of our live meeting here) replied that he felt that he had a class or two who could participate. Tyler is principal at the Highland Ranch campus of Denver Christian Academy, and he put me in touch with Tim Zieste, who teaches 7th grade history. As luck would have it, Tim's classes recently learned what my students would refer to as the Chanuka story, specifically the restrictions that the Seleucids placed on the Jews, which included restrictions on keeping kosher. I had hit paydirt.
***************************************
So now the project proceeded on two fronts. In the classroom, my students were running like well-oiled machines. They entered class every day, opened their iPads, and set to work on the material. Some groups tackled each item as a group, others split the material up among themselves. I asked every group to create a Google Site as a place to take notes, which gave me the ability to monitor their progress. For the actual presentations, I allowed them to use any presentation tool that they preferred, which resulted in a collection of Powerpoints, Google Presentations, Prezis, and one iMovie (out of eight groups of students). Once in a while, class ended with a Socrative quiz, which allowed me to further gauge how each group was progressing, which sources and materials they were using, what help they might still need from me, and if they had gone beyond the materials that I provided to seek out new sources of information. In total, I spent less than one period over the course of over three weeks doing any real frontal teaching, and that was to learn a source that was not essential to the unit as a whole but that helped provide a important way of thinking about the entire system of kashrut.
At the same time, Tim and I were in contact to work out the details of our collaboration. Over Skype, we discussed the nature of what we each teach, the nature of the project, the size of our classes, and the particular timing of the presentations. That was following by several days of emails back and forth nailing down the logistics of how we would connect our students. We decided to use Skype, as that provided my students with the chance to share their screens while speaking to Tim's students.
****************************************
And, finally, showtime! I broke my class into two groups - four project groups in each one - so that they could spread out in the computer lab and not disturb the other groups. Four groups presented yesterday and the other four today. With the help of the amazing computer faculty at Yavneh (and especially our IT man Emyll Almonte), we figured out the best way to set up the students so everyone could speak and hear without disturbing the other groups in the lab at the same time (if you're wondering - audio headsets with splitters and snowball microphones which allow students to speak in indoor voices). I gave my students some brief coaching on how to introduce themselves, to give an overview of their projects before diving into the nitty-gritty, and to make sure to stop and ask for questions every once in a while.
I would like to say that my students did me proud, but I would be selling them short if that would be all that I said. They were, in a word, amazing. They were poised and articulate and very well prepared with their material. Most groups kept a second computer open with additional notes to help them explain their points or answer questions. While I could not hear what the students in Denver were asking, I was able to here my students respond and I was duly impressed with how much they had learned. And remember - I taught them none of this material. Said differently, I did not lecture this material to them. I brought the material to them and allowed their natural curiosity and desire to turn out a good product drive them through this entire unit. The students in Denver proved to be an excellent audience, asking many questions which kept my students thinking. Most groups spent a few minutes after the formal presentations concluded schmoozing a little about their different schools and different lives. Amazing Amazing Amazing.
****************************************
Now what? For starters, our official post-PBL pow-wow in class tomorrow morning will include food as congratulations for a job well done. Tim, Tyler, and I have scheduled a post-game schmooze to discuss any further takeaways for students on both sides. I emailed the parents to let them know what a fantastic job their children did. I am getting at least one easy blogpost out of this.
For my students, I hope that they appreciate how many skills they worked on over the course of this project. They had to collaborate with their partners, which were chosen by me. They had to decide on an effective approach to researching and curating material. They had to step outside of themselves and think about all of the little things that they take for granted but that others may not understand in the slightest - and then figure out how to explain it. They had to create presentations that were ready for prime time, since they could not guarantee that their audience would be as forgiving as I would be. They had to really think about what Jewish law looks like to someone who does not live it, and be prepared to explain at some level why they do live it.
I gained a tremendous amount from this unit as well. As I get more comfortable with iPads in my classroom, I continue to learn new apps and new ways of deploying those apps to help instruction. I have become more sensitive to the need to stay on top of what the students are doing, and having them share a Google Site with me proved to be an excellent way to do that. During the presentations, I discovered some content areas that I do not always cover but that really matter to Middle School students (such as "what happens if you don't keep kosher?"). And, of course, I learned that it is always important to test every aspect of your technology with time to spare before you go live.
I was also privileged to have many of my colleagues stop in to watch the presentations. As we work to expand the practice of PBL in our school, sometimes showing it in action can be the best way to encourage someone who is considering PBL to actually give it a try. Yes, it is a big leap to trust your students enough to take control of their own learning. But with the proper preparation, structure, and constant guidance, the results can be, well, simply amazing.
Every year, my 7th grade Chumash (Torah) class learns a unit on kashrut, the laws related to keeping kosher. It is one of my favorite units to teach, and one of the students' favorite units to learn. In addition to the Biblical text, I bring in a wide range of articles, videos, pictures, and other materials that discuss recent issues in kashrut, ranging from how we determine if buffalo or turkey is kosher, to problems that might arise when ordering coffee at Starbucks. If any unit was ever primed to be turned into a Project-Based Learning (PBL) unit, this was certainly it.However, in preparing the unit I ran into my usual dilemma. I had plenty of materials ready for the students, both posted on a class wiki and copied and placed in a filebox on my desk. I had arranged for the students to have daily use of the school's ipad cart during our class and sporadic access to the computer lab. I had divided the class into solid working groups. But I needed a project that would drive their learning and would lead them to produce something more than a simple spitback of the material (see this post for more on this problem).
I wanted my students to create visual presentations of the laws that they were studying, but I wanted them to present them to people who were not knowledgeable of those laws. My goal was to find a class of Middle School students who knew little to nothing about the details of the Jewish kosher laws who could serve as the target audience for my students and their presentations. My thinking was that since the other students would not be familiar with any of the terms of details of the subject matter, my own students would have to prepare assiduously to be able to explain virtually any word that they would mention. In other words, spitback would not be enough - they would have to fully understand every single aspect of what they were presenting.
So I reached out on Twitter looking for an audience. Within moments, Tyler Amidon (@mramidon), a friend from #Edchat who I have met in person and correspond with frequently (see the story of our live meeting here) replied that he felt that he had a class or two who could participate. Tyler is principal at the Highland Ranch campus of Denver Christian Academy, and he put me in touch with Tim Zieste, who teaches 7th grade history. As luck would have it, Tim's classes recently learned what my students would refer to as the Chanuka story, specifically the restrictions that the Seleucids placed on the Jews, which included restrictions on keeping kosher. I had hit paydirt.
***************************************
So now the project proceeded on two fronts. In the classroom, my students were running like well-oiled machines. They entered class every day, opened their iPads, and set to work on the material. Some groups tackled each item as a group, others split the material up among themselves. I asked every group to create a Google Site as a place to take notes, which gave me the ability to monitor their progress. For the actual presentations, I allowed them to use any presentation tool that they preferred, which resulted in a collection of Powerpoints, Google Presentations, Prezis, and one iMovie (out of eight groups of students). Once in a while, class ended with a Socrative quiz, which allowed me to further gauge how each group was progressing, which sources and materials they were using, what help they might still need from me, and if they had gone beyond the materials that I provided to seek out new sources of information. In total, I spent less than one period over the course of over three weeks doing any real frontal teaching, and that was to learn a source that was not essential to the unit as a whole but that helped provide a important way of thinking about the entire system of kashrut.
At the same time, Tim and I were in contact to work out the details of our collaboration. Over Skype, we discussed the nature of what we each teach, the nature of the project, the size of our classes, and the particular timing of the presentations. That was following by several days of emails back and forth nailing down the logistics of how we would connect our students. We decided to use Skype, as that provided my students with the chance to share their screens while speaking to Tim's students.
****************************************
I would like to say that my students did me proud, but I would be selling them short if that would be all that I said. They were, in a word, amazing. They were poised and articulate and very well prepared with their material. Most groups kept a second computer open with additional notes to help them explain their points or answer questions. While I could not hear what the students in Denver were asking, I was able to here my students respond and I was duly impressed with how much they had learned. And remember - I taught them none of this material. Said differently, I did not lecture this material to them. I brought the material to them and allowed their natural curiosity and desire to turn out a good product drive them through this entire unit. The students in Denver proved to be an excellent audience, asking many questions which kept my students thinking. Most groups spent a few minutes after the formal presentations concluded schmoozing a little about their different schools and different lives. Amazing Amazing Amazing.
****************************************
Now what? For starters, our official post-PBL pow-wow in class tomorrow morning will include food as congratulations for a job well done. Tim, Tyler, and I have scheduled a post-game schmooze to discuss any further takeaways for students on both sides. I emailed the parents to let them know what a fantastic job their children did. I am getting at least one easy blogpost out of this.
For my students, I hope that they appreciate how many skills they worked on over the course of this project. They had to collaborate with their partners, which were chosen by me. They had to decide on an effective approach to researching and curating material. They had to step outside of themselves and think about all of the little things that they take for granted but that others may not understand in the slightest - and then figure out how to explain it. They had to create presentations that were ready for prime time, since they could not guarantee that their audience would be as forgiving as I would be. They had to really think about what Jewish law looks like to someone who does not live it, and be prepared to explain at some level why they do live it.
I gained a tremendous amount from this unit as well. As I get more comfortable with iPads in my classroom, I continue to learn new apps and new ways of deploying those apps to help instruction. I have become more sensitive to the need to stay on top of what the students are doing, and having them share a Google Site with me proved to be an excellent way to do that. During the presentations, I discovered some content areas that I do not always cover but that really matter to Middle School students (such as "what happens if you don't keep kosher?"). And, of course, I learned that it is always important to test every aspect of your technology with time to spare before you go live.
I was also privileged to have many of my colleagues stop in to watch the presentations. As we work to expand the practice of PBL in our school, sometimes showing it in action can be the best way to encourage someone who is considering PBL to actually give it a try. Yes, it is a big leap to trust your students enough to take control of their own learning. But with the proper preparation, structure, and constant guidance, the results can be, well, simply amazing.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Creating Projects for Project Based Learning
I was speaking with a friend the other day about project-based learning (PBL). This friend, who teaches science in Middle School, is still relatively new to PBL and was discussing his difficulty in coming up with projects that successfully and sufficiently drove the learning of his students so that they could have a meaningful learning experience along the way.
It was at this point that I stopped him. "You do realize," I said, "that teachers in most subjects would kill to be in your position." I went on to explain to him that in my view, science is the subject most naturally given to PBL. After all, science has always been about empirical learning and experimentation, and the conversion to PBL should therefore be not much more than a simple (yet painstaking) re-ordering of the learning process.
(Qualifying note: of course it is harder than that, and science teachers who engage in PBL put in tremendous amounts of work in order to make it happen. My point, as will be seen shortly, is the contrast to other disciplines.)
If you have tried PBL, you know that the hardest part of the process in terms of creative juices is devising an appropriate project that will serve as a good structure within which the students can do all of the learning that you want them to do. This was driven home to me by two PBL experiences that I had last week, one involving me and one involving my wonderful colleague, Rabbi Simcha Schaum (@simchaschaum).
The common thread between both of these recent experiences was what I will call "minimum level projects." What do I mean by that? Allow me to illustrate. In the case of my class, the students began a unit on kashrut (Jewish dietary laws), and the project that they will have to complete will be to create a series of short presentations about different segments of those laws to be presented to students who know next to nothing about this topic. With help from a couple of my Tweeps, Tyler Amidon (@mramidon) and Chris Fancher (@cfanch), I have been working to find classes of students across the country who can serve as a skype audience for my own students to present their projects to.
Rabbi Schaum took a similar approach, but kept it within the walls of our school. He had his 6th grade Mishna class learn a few mishnayot on their own, with the goal of presenting what they had learned to several of our 4th grade students. I was privileged to be in the classroom last week when the presentations took place, and it was truly a sight to see. What had been a class of students of mixed abilities and motivation became a highly motivated group of teachers, who came up with a wide range of approaches to presenting what they had learned to their younger counterparts.
Notice the similarity - neither my project nor Rabbi Schaum's project required the students to create something or to really apply what they had learned to a specific real-world situation. In both cases, we merely asked the students to present their findings. I would say that that is the minimum level project that can be devised.
On the other hand, it is rare when something accomplishes everything that we want it to accomplish. In both cases, our students seized control of their own learning, were highly motivated, and did have to achieve a true mastery of the material in order to present it to other people who had no knowledge of the subject matter. While that is not quite the same as learning aerodynamics in order to build a working airplane, it is definitely a step above simply regurgitating facts into a powerpoint. In both cases, we are working with active and inquisitive audiences who force the "teachers" to be exceedingly well prepared, and thus even this "minimalist" approach yields some impressive results.
It was at this point that I stopped him. "You do realize," I said, "that teachers in most subjects would kill to be in your position." I went on to explain to him that in my view, science is the subject most naturally given to PBL. After all, science has always been about empirical learning and experimentation, and the conversion to PBL should therefore be not much more than a simple (yet painstaking) re-ordering of the learning process.
(Qualifying note: of course it is harder than that, and science teachers who engage in PBL put in tremendous amounts of work in order to make it happen. My point, as will be seen shortly, is the contrast to other disciplines.)
If you have tried PBL, you know that the hardest part of the process in terms of creative juices is devising an appropriate project that will serve as a good structure within which the students can do all of the learning that you want them to do. This was driven home to me by two PBL experiences that I had last week, one involving me and one involving my wonderful colleague, Rabbi Simcha Schaum (@simchaschaum).
The common thread between both of these recent experiences was what I will call "minimum level projects." What do I mean by that? Allow me to illustrate. In the case of my class, the students began a unit on kashrut (Jewish dietary laws), and the project that they will have to complete will be to create a series of short presentations about different segments of those laws to be presented to students who know next to nothing about this topic. With help from a couple of my Tweeps, Tyler Amidon (@mramidon) and Chris Fancher (@cfanch), I have been working to find classes of students across the country who can serve as a skype audience for my own students to present their projects to.
Rabbi Schaum took a similar approach, but kept it within the walls of our school. He had his 6th grade Mishna class learn a few mishnayot on their own, with the goal of presenting what they had learned to several of our 4th grade students. I was privileged to be in the classroom last week when the presentations took place, and it was truly a sight to see. What had been a class of students of mixed abilities and motivation became a highly motivated group of teachers, who came up with a wide range of approaches to presenting what they had learned to their younger counterparts.
Notice the similarity - neither my project nor Rabbi Schaum's project required the students to create something or to really apply what they had learned to a specific real-world situation. In both cases, we merely asked the students to present their findings. I would say that that is the minimum level project that can be devised.
On the other hand, it is rare when something accomplishes everything that we want it to accomplish. In both cases, our students seized control of their own learning, were highly motivated, and did have to achieve a true mastery of the material in order to present it to other people who had no knowledge of the subject matter. While that is not quite the same as learning aerodynamics in order to build a working airplane, it is definitely a step above simply regurgitating facts into a powerpoint. In both cases, we are working with active and inquisitive audiences who force the "teachers" to be exceedingly well prepared, and thus even this "minimalist" approach yields some impressive results.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
What is Important for Kids to Know? - PBL as a Clarifier
An advantage of teaching a class frontally, as most classes have been taught since time immemorial, is that you as the teacher has total control over what information is taught. Notice that I said taught not learned. We can never be 100% sure whether or not our students are learning, and we are often not even sure what we mean by learning. However, we can be 100% sure that we have taught something, and that often provides comfort to us as teachers. It is comforting to know that if our students grow up not knowing the function of a mitochondria or the purpose of a semicolon or the correct dates for all Jewish holidays, it is definitely not our fault, since we are sure that we taught them that information.
The problem with this approach is that it makes real learning into almost a non-sequitur. Students tend to get so focused on the details that they miss the overall idea behind the learning. How much of studying is about memorizing lists and flashcards - in other words, bits of information that can be easily digested in quick shots without taking the time to step back and appreciate the forest that all of these trees make up?
But are we ready and willing to make the sacrifice in the other direction? Are we OK if students miss some details here and there as long as they are focused on the big picture? I think that this is one of the key questions that one needs to consider when constructing a PBL unit. If you are going to let students loose on information for several weeks, you could have them fill out homework questions and take quizzes every day or so, thus ensuring that they have at least written down every oh-so-important detail at least once. Or, you can have them decide on their own (with some help and guidance) which details are essential to answering the guiding question of the project. Yes, they might not be able to list every single part of the cell along with a seven word explanation of its function, but they will have a very solid comprehension of the cell as a whole.
And, let's face it, that is really all that they need. I am not trying to minimize any particular discipline, and so I will take my own as an example. I am currently involved in a PBL unit on korbanot (sacrifices). When I taught the unit frontally, students needed to know every part of the altar in the Holy Temple and what function it served, among myriads of other details. Now that I am turning the learning over to them and have decided to not give them small summative assessments along the way, I am risking that some of them may not know every one of those parts. However, they are far more likely to have a deeper understanding of how the altar as a whole functioned in offering of the daily sacrifices (for the uninitiated, it is not so simple).
To take it a step further, if I am truly concerned with my students leaving this unit with some knowledge of the sacrifices and the role that they played in the religious life of Ancient Israel, do I want them clinging to fading memories of a few scattered details, or do I want them feeling that they have a basic understanding of this aspect of worship - and that they can go back and fill in the details later if they desire to pursue it further? I am gambling on the latter option.
The problem with this approach is that it makes real learning into almost a non-sequitur. Students tend to get so focused on the details that they miss the overall idea behind the learning. How much of studying is about memorizing lists and flashcards - in other words, bits of information that can be easily digested in quick shots without taking the time to step back and appreciate the forest that all of these trees make up?
But are we ready and willing to make the sacrifice in the other direction? Are we OK if students miss some details here and there as long as they are focused on the big picture? I think that this is one of the key questions that one needs to consider when constructing a PBL unit. If you are going to let students loose on information for several weeks, you could have them fill out homework questions and take quizzes every day or so, thus ensuring that they have at least written down every oh-so-important detail at least once. Or, you can have them decide on their own (with some help and guidance) which details are essential to answering the guiding question of the project. Yes, they might not be able to list every single part of the cell along with a seven word explanation of its function, but they will have a very solid comprehension of the cell as a whole.
And, let's face it, that is really all that they need. I am not trying to minimize any particular discipline, and so I will take my own as an example. I am currently involved in a PBL unit on korbanot (sacrifices). When I taught the unit frontally, students needed to know every part of the altar in the Holy Temple and what function it served, among myriads of other details. Now that I am turning the learning over to them and have decided to not give them small summative assessments along the way, I am risking that some of them may not know every one of those parts. However, they are far more likely to have a deeper understanding of how the altar as a whole functioned in offering of the daily sacrifices (for the uninitiated, it is not so simple).
To take it a step further, if I am truly concerned with my students leaving this unit with some knowledge of the sacrifices and the role that they played in the religious life of Ancient Israel, do I want them clinging to fading memories of a few scattered details, or do I want them feeling that they have a basic understanding of this aspect of worship - and that they can go back and fill in the details later if they desire to pursue it further? I am gambling on the latter option.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Revamping my approach to PBL
After my initial ventures into the world of Project Based Learning (PBL) last year, I have had several months to think about my experiences, to read up on how others approach PBL, to meet PBL rockstars such as Suzie Boss (@suzieboss) and to just generally consider in what ways I could alter and improve my Project Based Learning units. A few thoughts as I am about to launch my first redo:
1) The projects should not all look the same. When I launched my PBL unit on korbanot (sacrifices) last year, the basic structure of the unit was for the students to follow my original curriculum that I had used for the past decade, only to proceed at their own pace and with some high-tech enhancements (such as instructional videos that I created using Camtasia Studio). I also included some extra material for some built-in enrichment for those students who wanted to push themselves a bit further. Overall, I felt that it was not a bad plan, and the fact that the students generally took to the new approach seemed to justify that feeling.
However, when it came to the students' projects, I had a feeling that something was not as right as it could have been. Most projects seemed to be variations on each other, with the main difference being students' various strengths in PowerPoint and their creativity in designing their presentations. While I sense that each group did have a valuable learning experience, I think that it fell short of what could have been.
With that in mind, I am altering the unit this time in several ways. For starters, I am expanding the range of materials that is open to the students. While still guiding them towards certain key areas, I want them to come study those areas because the project drives them to it, not because the curriculum page tells them that they must. As before, there will be the opportunity for some students to push themselves farther and some to merely satisfy the requirements.
I am also making the project more open-ended. On round one, the goal was for the students to envision what the Beit HaMikdash (Temple) would look like if modern technology was incorporated. A creative idea, but ultimately somewhat limited. The new version will ask the students to construct a convincing case for including this oft-neglected topic in the general curriculum, including presenting a sample curriculum outline. I am enlisting several Jewish educators to serve as the panel to whom the students will have to present (if you are interested in being a part of this, please let me know).
2) Students need to be placed into groups. For my first try, I stayed away from following this piece of advice, figuring that it would be easier for the students to handle the new modality of learning if they could at least have the comfort of working with a friend. But, as they say in teen romance movies - "It's not you, it's me" - I think that I was more concerned about how the kids would react than I needed to be. And so, I spent a few key minutes making groups that will combine students of different strengths. I was not as concerned with who is friends with whom - one key 21st century skill is learning how to collaborate with all sorts of people, and being able to collaborate with a classmate who may not be your best friend actually seems like a fairly easy version of this.
3) Assessments. One of the challenges of a PBL - actually, a double-edged challenge - is how to ensure that the students are learning as they go off on their own, and how to have enough "grades" during the period that they are working on the unit. The easy solution for this would seem to be to have the students complete a series of small assignments such as homeworks and quizzes as they proceed through the materials. while this makes sense from the teacher side of things, or at least from the bookkeeping side of things, it creates more busywork that does not in itself have much of an educational outcome.
A better use of everyone's time is to have the students create some living and dynamic document or product that must be updated on a regular basis. It can be something as simple as a Googledoc or a wikispace page or a blog. Whatever the medium, it should encourage students to reflect on what they have learned over the past day or two and integrate into what they learned previously in the unit. In this way, their final project will gradually emerge, rather than being something that they have to put together at the end of the unit, looking back over weeks of notes (the way they currently study for tests or work on summative projects). This goes to what I consider to be the heart of PBL, which is deeper and more meaningful learning every step of the way, not only because the students are responsible for their own learning, but because they become more invested in it.
Undoubtedly there are more changes and adjustments that I will be making as this unit moves forward. Stay tuned.
1) The projects should not all look the same. When I launched my PBL unit on korbanot (sacrifices) last year, the basic structure of the unit was for the students to follow my original curriculum that I had used for the past decade, only to proceed at their own pace and with some high-tech enhancements (such as instructional videos that I created using Camtasia Studio). I also included some extra material for some built-in enrichment for those students who wanted to push themselves a bit further. Overall, I felt that it was not a bad plan, and the fact that the students generally took to the new approach seemed to justify that feeling.
However, when it came to the students' projects, I had a feeling that something was not as right as it could have been. Most projects seemed to be variations on each other, with the main difference being students' various strengths in PowerPoint and their creativity in designing their presentations. While I sense that each group did have a valuable learning experience, I think that it fell short of what could have been.
With that in mind, I am altering the unit this time in several ways. For starters, I am expanding the range of materials that is open to the students. While still guiding them towards certain key areas, I want them to come study those areas because the project drives them to it, not because the curriculum page tells them that they must. As before, there will be the opportunity for some students to push themselves farther and some to merely satisfy the requirements.
I am also making the project more open-ended. On round one, the goal was for the students to envision what the Beit HaMikdash (Temple) would look like if modern technology was incorporated. A creative idea, but ultimately somewhat limited. The new version will ask the students to construct a convincing case for including this oft-neglected topic in the general curriculum, including presenting a sample curriculum outline. I am enlisting several Jewish educators to serve as the panel to whom the students will have to present (if you are interested in being a part of this, please let me know).
2) Students need to be placed into groups. For my first try, I stayed away from following this piece of advice, figuring that it would be easier for the students to handle the new modality of learning if they could at least have the comfort of working with a friend. But, as they say in teen romance movies - "It's not you, it's me" - I think that I was more concerned about how the kids would react than I needed to be. And so, I spent a few key minutes making groups that will combine students of different strengths. I was not as concerned with who is friends with whom - one key 21st century skill is learning how to collaborate with all sorts of people, and being able to collaborate with a classmate who may not be your best friend actually seems like a fairly easy version of this.
3) Assessments. One of the challenges of a PBL - actually, a double-edged challenge - is how to ensure that the students are learning as they go off on their own, and how to have enough "grades" during the period that they are working on the unit. The easy solution for this would seem to be to have the students complete a series of small assignments such as homeworks and quizzes as they proceed through the materials. while this makes sense from the teacher side of things, or at least from the bookkeeping side of things, it creates more busywork that does not in itself have much of an educational outcome.
A better use of everyone's time is to have the students create some living and dynamic document or product that must be updated on a regular basis. It can be something as simple as a Googledoc or a wikispace page or a blog. Whatever the medium, it should encourage students to reflect on what they have learned over the past day or two and integrate into what they learned previously in the unit. In this way, their final project will gradually emerge, rather than being something that they have to put together at the end of the unit, looking back over weeks of notes (the way they currently study for tests or work on summative projects). This goes to what I consider to be the heart of PBL, which is deeper and more meaningful learning every step of the way, not only because the students are responsible for their own learning, but because they become more invested in it.
Undoubtedly there are more changes and adjustments that I will be making as this unit moves forward. Stay tuned.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Can PBL be Inspirational?
We all remember them. The teachers who sparked an interest that became a passion that became a career. The professors whose command of their subject matter and brilliant lecturing style made attending a class about Etruscan Art as much fun as mindlessly watching Animaniacs. The instructors that we still talk about and quote with reverence and fondness decades after we have left their classrooms.
After spending two or three decades in school, each of us can likely point to a few teachers scattered over the course of our educational experiences who inspired us in some way, be it intellectually, spiritually, morally, or otherwise. Sometimes what we remember about them is what they actually taught us, but more often than not, I suspect, our memories are more visceral and emotional - we remember the excitement that we had for their class, our desire to learn more from them, and the life lessons that we possessed upon emerging from their classrooms.
Can a Project-Based Learning (PBL) classroom produce this type of inspiration? As readers of this blog are well aware, I am a big proponent of PBL as a more natural and mature approach to learning, and a way to ensure that more of our students are more actively learning more of the time, and in a way that will result in better and deeper understanding of the material. I fully think that it is worth the extra effort that it requires of teachers, both on the preparation level and in the classroom on a day-to-day basis. The more that a student's day is conducted in PBL (and related type) environments, the more likely that student is to have a rich and meaningful educational experience, and particularly an experience that he or she is meaningfully engaged in.
However, my question aims for the next level - can this produce the type of inspiration that we recall receiving from the best of our own teachers? Where did that inspiration come from? Did it come from finally understanding the concept behind the Pythagorean Theorem or the causes of World War I? Did it result from the feeling of satisfaction that came from completing a creative project demonstrating a principle in physics? Was it in any way related to the curriculum?
My sense is that the actual curriculum is merely a context for inspiration. The fact that I love American History is not simply because it is a good story. More likely, it is due to the fact that over a six year span, five of those years were spent with two teachers who demonstrated a genuine interest in their students, a passionate love for their subject, and a single-minded devotion to trying to imbue their young charges with the same feeling. While not every student caught the fever, it was inevitable that some would - and many did. Can this happen in a PBL classroom? Does the less-structured and less-teacher-centric nature of the PBL classroom provide a framework within which the best teachers can connect with their students in a way that they will not only facilitate learning but will be able to inspire an enthusiasm that will remain far beyond the end of the course?
My sense is that PBL definitely provides an opportunity for inspiring students, but like everything else in PBL, it takes more work. A PBL teacher is not going to elevate students through brilliant oratory or by overwhelming them with encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. Rather, the inspiration will come through the working with small groups of students, through helping students organize themselves as they struggle to direct their own learning, through providing every student with everything that they need to emerge as independent learners. Students are unlikely to walk out of every day of a PBL class wowed at what they learned. But they are more likely to look back at the overall experience and be amazed at the type of learners they have become - and realize that there was someone guiding and encouraging that entire process.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Is Project-Based Learning Countercultural to Judaism?
I have been spending a fair amount of my time since the school year ended involved in Project-Based Learning (PBL). As readers of this blog know, I began introducing PBL into one of my Judaic Studies classes this year and I have been working to encourage other Judaic Studies teachers to do the same. As it is always easier to try new things when you have a community of people to support, encourage, and guide you along, I am trying to spur along the creation of that community. I delivered a webinar for Yeshiva University on this topic several months ago, and I have been meeting with my own teachers as well as teachers from other Jewish day and high schools in the months since, offering guidance and advice as to how to take our most ancient texts and teach them in a new and hopefully more thought-provoking fashion.
One thought that has been nagging at me all along is whether or not PBL is countercultural to Jewish tradition. By this I do not mean simply that PBL, by placing the student in control of his or her learning, represents a change from the normal and accepted method of teaching. That is true in just about any school context, certainly in the United States. However, it strikes me that this shift is even more pronounced within a Jewish context due to the importance that we place on Rabbinic authority, the wisdom of the ages, and respect for elders.
My friend Rabbi Gil Student has recently written about the erosion of Rabbinic authority in our world, and the ever-hardening stance of right-wing Jews towards total obeisance to Rabbinic authority and the corresponding Modern Orthodox flight from such a position is just one example of the tensions involved in this all-important issue. Seemingly, Project-Based Learning, by making the student the main engine of his own learning, would seem to decrease the perceived need for the teacher as the fountain of all wisdom, and thus would possibly lead to a sense that our revered teachers - revered as they may be - are not the authority figures that they once were. Taking this out to one possible logical conclusion, by encouraging the use of PBL in Judaic Studies classrooms, I may perhaps be unwittingly sowing the seeds of my own demise, and the demise of my profession in general. Perhaps all that we will need are teachers who can construct a good curriculum or lesson plan, and let the students go on their own from there.
Fortunately, I have come to the conclusion that the opposite is, in fact, the case. Project-Based Learning does indeed put students at the center of their own learning, but the teacher is still a necessary component of that learning, and perhaps an even more important component than when the teacher was the one standing at the head of the room, spouting wisdom to be lapped up by intellectually thirsty students. In a well-run PBL classroom, there is no question that the teacher is the one providing the framework and guidance for what is to be learned, that the teacher is the one directing the students to both sources and ideas, and that the teacher is the one who is constantly on the move, answering a question from one group and then another and then another. In fact, the students are more likely to see their relationship with the teacher as being one where they want to learn well in order to take part in the learning atmosphere created by the teacher as opposed to trying to memorize the information in order to score high on the test created by the teacher. The former represents a more collaborative context, whereas the latter is potentially competitive or, at worst, cynical.
I will take this even one step further. When I think about the hundreds of teachers that I have had, which ones stand out? Sure, some of the best are those who impressed me for their brilliance or their humor or for some other surface type of reason. But the teachers that I think about most and refer to the most are those who provided me with specific skills that I continue to draw from every time I learn. What is important from those relationships is not so much the specific material that I learned from them (although that is undoubtedly key as well), but the fact that they taught me how to do it on my own. And that is what a teacher is doing in a PBL class. He may not be the one imparting the specific bits of knowledge to the students, but he is the one showing them how to effectively find the knowledge, how to think about and analyze it, how to work with others in curating that knowledge, and how to think broadly and creatively about that knowledge. Those skills are universal and timeless, and they are likely to strengthen, not weaken, the respect that the student has for such a teacher.
Monday, January 30, 2012
PBL thoughts as a new unit begins
Two thoughts, one practical and one philosophical, as I prepare for my new PBL unit on kashrut.
1) In my first unit, which focused on korbanot, I essentially had the students learn the material that I used to teach, and the project asked them to take that material up a level by envisioning a 21st-century Beit HaMikdash. On the whole it worked well, insofar as the students did learn the material and did manage to find areas where technology could be integrated. However, the leap from material to project was fairly small.
For this new unit, I am planning on having the old curriculum material serve as merely a launching pad for a more comprehensive study of modern kashrut. The unit is based on Devarim 14, where the Torah presents a list of kosher and non-kosher animals. Our study in the past has included reading several articles about animals of questionable kashrut status, as well as comparing these verses with the similar list in Vayikra 11. While I plan on keeping all of that material in, my goal is to construct a learning experience that uses those sources as a way to teach certain principles that guide modern kashrut, and for the students to take advantage of the many resources available from kashrut organizations (OU, Kof-K, Star-K, and CRC, among others, have extensive reading materials online). While I have not yet finalized what the project itself will be, there will definitely be a greater gap between this unit this year and the same unit in past years than there was for the korbanot unit.
2) Taking a broader perspective, one of the beautiful things about a PBL unit is that it actually helps to transition students to a higher level of learning. When students are younger, their learning activities and experiences are wholly guided and directed by their teachers. As adults, we are in full control of what we learn and how we learn it. In between, there should hopefully be a gradual shift in the locus of control when it comes to learning - witness the existence of electives in high school and a college student's freedom to choose courses and concentrations. By introducing PBL in Middle School, I am easing students into the next level of their education - I am still controlling the overall curriculum, but students are given choices about what sources to learn and at what pace they proceed. They also have substantial latitude about what the final product should look like. And, of course, I am always around. Unlike at higher levels of education where a student often has to chase down a professor and sometimes has to go it alone in between meetings with his or her advisor, my PBL students work mainly in the context of our class, which means that they have full access to me to help guide them to the next level of their learning.
And, of course, that is what I like the best about PBL - it moves towards more "authentic" learning, where the learning is driven not by the curriculum of the teacher but by the curiosity of the student.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
PBL - What I would do differently
My class's Project-Based Learning (PBL) unit is just about finished. Projects have been handed in and students will be presenting over the next few days. Before I sum up with my successes, a few lessons learned for future endeavors such as this:
1) Defining work expectations from the outset - We ran this unit over the course of three weeks, sometimes in the computer lab and sometimes in the classroom. Most students got into the mindset that all work was to be done in class. What resulted was a bit of a rush towards the end when they realized that there was too much material left to be done in the remaining class time. Takeaway for me is to help them realize that doing a little bit outside of class each night would help move the process along.
2) Grading system - For this unit, the students had about 20 small assignments along the way, which were a combination of google form questions, written reviews, and voicethreads. Of course, the end goal of the unit was a major project that called on all that they had learned. While I am not clear exactly what form it should take, it seems that presenting graded material as being part of a portfolio would be beneficial to all involved. For the students, it would help them to organize their work as they build towards the final product. For me, it would allow me to produce a final grade that takes all steps of the project into account, as opposed to having 21 distinct grades.
3) Review and reflection - After the learning was complete, we spent one day in a circle reflecting as a class on the process (more on the student reaction in a different post). Ideally, we should have be doing some form of reflection daily or at least every few days. I had intended for the last 2 minutes of each class to be a time for this, but 40 minutes passes by very quickly and I was never able to really establish the pattern.
4) Move beyond PowerPoint - Let's face it, when students use PowerPoint they aim for flashy backgrounds and all sorts of crazy entries for their text and images. Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe I am just no longer impressed by it. Or maybe I am aware of the many, many more ways that they can creatively present their material. One of my groups did make use of Prezi, which is PowerPoint on psychedelic drugs, but is definitely a change. No one went for the various animation or storytelling sites that are out there - the question is whether they knew about them, and, if not, how do I introduce them to such sites without taking too much class time (if any)?
This is not to say, by the way, that their presentations are not well-done. Many of them are visually appealing and display some real tech-savviness. But there is so much more out there for them to discover.
5) Plan better and more publicly - The Buck Institute of Education, the gurus of PBL, have many useful forms online that are helpful in designing these units (and a strongly encourage anyone contemplating PBL to visit the site). One form is a 4-week blank calendar to be used to plan out learning experiences. While I did make use of it, some of it was built as I went along. To a degree this was necessary, as I was still feeling things out and getting used to how long everything really takes. In the future, as I get better at this, I would definitely suggest having the entire thing built before the unit begins and posting it for the students. My students were generally great about walking into class and getting started before I got there - imagine if they knew exactly what was on the agenda for the day.
All in all, I think that this was an amazing experience and one that I will be repeating for future units. As I noted above, the positives will be forthcoming.
(By the way, tonight's twitter Jedchat was about PBL in the Judaic Studies classroom. Archives can be found here)
1) Defining work expectations from the outset - We ran this unit over the course of three weeks, sometimes in the computer lab and sometimes in the classroom. Most students got into the mindset that all work was to be done in class. What resulted was a bit of a rush towards the end when they realized that there was too much material left to be done in the remaining class time. Takeaway for me is to help them realize that doing a little bit outside of class each night would help move the process along.
2) Grading system - For this unit, the students had about 20 small assignments along the way, which were a combination of google form questions, written reviews, and voicethreads. Of course, the end goal of the unit was a major project that called on all that they had learned. While I am not clear exactly what form it should take, it seems that presenting graded material as being part of a portfolio would be beneficial to all involved. For the students, it would help them to organize their work as they build towards the final product. For me, it would allow me to produce a final grade that takes all steps of the project into account, as opposed to having 21 distinct grades.
3) Review and reflection - After the learning was complete, we spent one day in a circle reflecting as a class on the process (more on the student reaction in a different post). Ideally, we should have be doing some form of reflection daily or at least every few days. I had intended for the last 2 minutes of each class to be a time for this, but 40 minutes passes by very quickly and I was never able to really establish the pattern.
4) Move beyond PowerPoint - Let's face it, when students use PowerPoint they aim for flashy backgrounds and all sorts of crazy entries for their text and images. Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe I am just no longer impressed by it. Or maybe I am aware of the many, many more ways that they can creatively present their material. One of my groups did make use of Prezi, which is PowerPoint on psychedelic drugs, but is definitely a change. No one went for the various animation or storytelling sites that are out there - the question is whether they knew about them, and, if not, how do I introduce them to such sites without taking too much class time (if any)?
This is not to say, by the way, that their presentations are not well-done. Many of them are visually appealing and display some real tech-savviness. But there is so much more out there for them to discover.
5) Plan better and more publicly - The Buck Institute of Education, the gurus of PBL, have many useful forms online that are helpful in designing these units (and a strongly encourage anyone contemplating PBL to visit the site). One form is a 4-week blank calendar to be used to plan out learning experiences. While I did make use of it, some of it was built as I went along. To a degree this was necessary, as I was still feeling things out and getting used to how long everything really takes. In the future, as I get better at this, I would definitely suggest having the entire thing built before the unit begins and posting it for the students. My students were generally great about walking into class and getting started before I got there - imagine if they knew exactly what was on the agenda for the day.
All in all, I think that this was an amazing experience and one that I will be repeating for future units. As I noted above, the positives will be forthcoming.
(By the way, tonight's twitter Jedchat was about PBL in the Judaic Studies classroom. Archives can be found here)
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
PBL Ponderings - The Unsure Stage
I am now two and a half weeks into my PBL experiment. On one level, it is working wonderfully. I have watched my students become very self-reliant in their learning - sometimes I feel that I am bothering them when I ask for 15 minutes every other day in order to teach them some small piece of material that I think is best done as a class. Several of them have searched for and discovered new resources online and added them to the wiki for their classmates to benefit from. They are learning how to divide and conquer with their working partners so that they can efficiently finish the material on deadline. And, of course, I have not once had to tell them to get to work.
And yet - I am left to wonder to what degree they are actually learning the material. When I frontally taught this material over the past 10 years, I could be content in the knowledge that the information had been accurately conveyed and that the big picture view had been applied. I was able to make little side comments that would provide "bonus" knowledge, and class discussion was generally very fruitful in terms of broadening the scope of what the basic material conveyed.
Now, I am left to wonder about all of that. While I spend virtually every moment in the classroom answering questions, working with small groups to discuss finer points that they might pick up on, and helping to guide student learning in a much more precise and individualized fashion than I ever before did, I am holding my breath until the final projects to see what they have really learned.
Of course, all of this may just be my basic teacher ego speaking. In the past, I knew that the material had been properly taught, but I had no guarantees that it had been correctly learned. In fact, it was a near-sure thing that student unit assessments would be handed in with weak attempts to parrot back the phrases that I had uttered, but without a deeper understanding of what they meant. In theory, a PBL classroom environment should solve much of that - while I do not yet know if everything is being learned properly, I do know that everyone is learning - and that might be a far more valuable lesson and experience than whether or not they can explain the intricacies of the אשם שפחה חרופה to me in a project.
All will be answered soon - the learning ends this Friday, and projects are due next week. Included in next week's lesson plans is time for reflection as a class (a crucial component of PBL). As always, stay tuned.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
PBL Update - How's it going so far?
Thank you to those who have commented, retweeted, and otherwise provided some feedback and encouragement about my initial post about my Project Based Learning experiment. Having now completed four days of the unit, a few reflections on what I have learned.
1) This is hard work, even though I am not really "teaching." Given the fact that I am doing this with an honors-level class, I have a roomful of very motivated students. What that means is that when I include material on their project sourcesheets that are for enrichment if they choose to do it, most of them are going to go for it. That keeps the pressure on me to keep materials ready and available, and to be around to explain things when they challenge themselves to study materials that might be slightly above them.
2) Structure is key, despite the lack of structure. On Tuesday, we spent class in the computer lab, mainly since the first round of materials were a series of online videos that I had created. Over the past two days, we have been back in our classroom (mainly due to lack of computer lab availability) with the students equipped with their Chumashim, notebooks and in some cases laptops. A number of students entered class yesterday unsure what they were supposed to do - wait, rabbi, you mean you're not teaching us? By the time I walked in today, everyone was already hard at work.
2a) My students are awesome. Did you catch that last sentence? 7th graders were working before the teacher entered the room! Amazing.
3) Flexibility is key. One of the early sources that they had to cover was a bit beyond their ability to comprehend. I let them all discover this on their own, then put on the board today that at 9:45 we would be learning that source together. This allowed them about 20 minutes to continue to proceed at their own pace, after which we had a 15-minute lesson that they had already learned some of the background material for and that they understood where it fit into the overall picture. The key for me has been to see when it is appropriate to help out each group of students and when I need to call everyone together for a mini-lesson. I think that they appreciate coming together once in a while, as it represents their notion of what "class" is "really" like.
4) Feedback and reflection. I am reserving the last two minutes of each class period for the students to reflect on what they have done, both for themselves and for me. I have made available feedback forms which provide space for both, and thus far they have been very helpful to me to know what they would want more of, and I believe it is helpful to the students to catch their breath and take stock of how far they have progressed and what their next steps are.
5) Is this for everyone? As I noted, I am doing this with an honors-level class, which means that motivation is relatively high, as are ability and skills. Could this work with a more heterogeneous class? I don't yet know. Part of my goal is to first try it out with this group so as to get an understanding of potential difficulties and pitfalls in a class where their strengths will help to make it work. Once that has been done, I can move towards encouraging it in other classes as well.
More to follow as we get further into this process. So far, it has been exhilarating.
1) This is hard work, even though I am not really "teaching." Given the fact that I am doing this with an honors-level class, I have a roomful of very motivated students. What that means is that when I include material on their project sourcesheets that are for enrichment if they choose to do it, most of them are going to go for it. That keeps the pressure on me to keep materials ready and available, and to be around to explain things when they challenge themselves to study materials that might be slightly above them.
2) Structure is key, despite the lack of structure. On Tuesday, we spent class in the computer lab, mainly since the first round of materials were a series of online videos that I had created. Over the past two days, we have been back in our classroom (mainly due to lack of computer lab availability) with the students equipped with their Chumashim, notebooks and in some cases laptops. A number of students entered class yesterday unsure what they were supposed to do - wait, rabbi, you mean you're not teaching us? By the time I walked in today, everyone was already hard at work.
2a) My students are awesome. Did you catch that last sentence? 7th graders were working before the teacher entered the room! Amazing.
3) Flexibility is key. One of the early sources that they had to cover was a bit beyond their ability to comprehend. I let them all discover this on their own, then put on the board today that at 9:45 we would be learning that source together. This allowed them about 20 minutes to continue to proceed at their own pace, after which we had a 15-minute lesson that they had already learned some of the background material for and that they understood where it fit into the overall picture. The key for me has been to see when it is appropriate to help out each group of students and when I need to call everyone together for a mini-lesson. I think that they appreciate coming together once in a while, as it represents their notion of what "class" is "really" like.
4) Feedback and reflection. I am reserving the last two minutes of each class period for the students to reflect on what they have done, both for themselves and for me. I have made available feedback forms which provide space for both, and thus far they have been very helpful to me to know what they would want more of, and I believe it is helpful to the students to catch their breath and take stock of how far they have progressed and what their next steps are.
5) Is this for everyone? As I noted, I am doing this with an honors-level class, which means that motivation is relatively high, as are ability and skills. Could this work with a more heterogeneous class? I don't yet know. Part of my goal is to first try it out with this group so as to get an understanding of potential difficulties and pitfalls in a class where their strengths will help to make it work. Once that has been done, I can move towards encouraging it in other classes as well.
More to follow as we get further into this process. So far, it has been exhilarating.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Project Based Learning and the Big Flip
Making the transition from teaching a standard, teacher-focused class to running a student-directed inquiry center is not easy. Despite all of the talk about blended learning, flipped classrooms, 21st-century skills, and so on, the fact is that most teachers remain most comfortable doing what they have been doing with, at most, minor alterations and accommodations to new technologies and methodologies.
I definitely fit into that description - until this morning. This morning, my 7th grade Chumash class began their first Project-Based Learning (PBL) unit. I have taught a wonderful unit on Korbanot for the past 10 years, and over time the unit has been adjusted slightly to allow for different projects, to make use of a wiki, and to incorporate more and varied material. However, the class was still essentially a "sage on the stage" performance starring yours truly. This morning, all of that was blown to bits.
I walked into the classroom and presented the students with a "memo" from Eliyahu HaNavi explaining that the Beit HaMikdash is about to be rebuilt and their were charged with the task of devising a plan to effectively integrate modern technology into the regular system of korbanot. In order to do so, they have to research the korbanot (instead of my teaching it to them) as well as several other details related to the Beit HaMikdash. I have been busy preparing online materials (such as this) as well as hard-copy resources to be used in the classroom. We will be meeting in the computer lab twice per week during this unit, and students are free to go at their own pace as well as to take advantage of built-in enrichment by pushing themselves to research deeper into certain topics or to take on additional topics (such as korbanot ha-of or menachot, which I have never included in this unit in the past).
I will be posting every few days as this project continues - it is as much an experiment for me as it is a new experience for my students. One reflection for now: As I sat in my study over the weekend preparing various outlines and materials (and many thanks to the Buck Institute for Education, the gurus of PBL), I was struck by the momentary discomfort when I realized that I was preparing to give up my role as the sole voice of authority in the classroom in favor of being a research advisor. I forced myself through that discomfort, and hopefully my students will reward me with several weeks of exciting learning and creativity.
More to follow - stay tuned.
I definitely fit into that description - until this morning. This morning, my 7th grade Chumash class began their first Project-Based Learning (PBL) unit. I have taught a wonderful unit on Korbanot for the past 10 years, and over time the unit has been adjusted slightly to allow for different projects, to make use of a wiki, and to incorporate more and varied material. However, the class was still essentially a "sage on the stage" performance starring yours truly. This morning, all of that was blown to bits.
I walked into the classroom and presented the students with a "memo" from Eliyahu HaNavi explaining that the Beit HaMikdash is about to be rebuilt and their were charged with the task of devising a plan to effectively integrate modern technology into the regular system of korbanot. In order to do so, they have to research the korbanot (instead of my teaching it to them) as well as several other details related to the Beit HaMikdash. I have been busy preparing online materials (such as this) as well as hard-copy resources to be used in the classroom. We will be meeting in the computer lab twice per week during this unit, and students are free to go at their own pace as well as to take advantage of built-in enrichment by pushing themselves to research deeper into certain topics or to take on additional topics (such as korbanot ha-of or menachot, which I have never included in this unit in the past).
I will be posting every few days as this project continues - it is as much an experiment for me as it is a new experience for my students. One reflection for now: As I sat in my study over the weekend preparing various outlines and materials (and many thanks to the Buck Institute for Education, the gurus of PBL), I was struck by the momentary discomfort when I realized that I was preparing to give up my role as the sole voice of authority in the classroom in favor of being a research advisor. I forced myself through that discomfort, and hopefully my students will reward me with several weeks of exciting learning and creativity.
More to follow - stay tuned.
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