Year End Presentation of Learning

Its the end of the 2013/2014 school year and our students are excited to be putting together "Presentations of Learning". We've asked that they use the three "Core Competencies" in BCs draft curriculum to anchor their presentations and tell stories of their learning with respect to these three competencies. Here's my own Presentation of Learning.


Artifacts and Examples Shared:

• Synergy in Inquiry Blog Post
• Curiosity, Connection, and Creation Blog Post
• PBL Why, What, How Presentation 
• Chemistry Demonstration Project Outline

Last Year's POL

Learning Together: Feedback and Critique

As I grow and learn with PBL my assessment practices evolve too. I was excited to share my learning at a recent regional Professional Development conference. Here are the slides from that presentation:

Learning Together: Feedback for Students and Teachers from Steve Chase

For me one of the biggest take-aways as I've pushed to blend good assessment practices with PBL as that strong peer assessment allows us to really "activate learners as resources for one another" (an idea Dylan Wiliam really got me thinking about). If students are getting deep with their questions to their peers then they can really push one another's thinking. How powerful is that!

The second big lesson in PBL based assessment, and really throughout classroom teaching, is that structure and routine are so important. The assessment based application of that in my classroom is critique protocols like this one from BIE. We actually distinguish between "clarifying" and "probing" questions in that clarifying is for us the audience, and probing is to push the thinking of the presenter. Questions first, before giving feedback is so key here in that it forces us to really consider the presenter and their dilemma and try our best to help them on their way with our feedback. Our tendency is to want to jump in with feedback and comments, but its so much more valuable to listen, clarify, and probe before we get thinking about feedback.

Its been great learning about feedback and critique with my students, and its helping our learning very step of the way. What forms of assessment are you using in your classroom? How do you vary your assessment practices with different tasks? What does assessment look like when there are different products being created by different groups or individuals?

PBL Learning Team

A group of Teachers met today at Kelly Road to discuss Project Based Learning. We've ordered BIE's PBL Starter Kit as a resources and will be working through that together as a way to inform and evaluate our practice. We've also started a blog dedicated exclusively to the group. Its online here. 

One of the things we did was share our questions. Here's what we came up with:

• What questions do we have?
• How does PBL work?
• How does PBL benefit our students?
• motivation
• engagement
• success
• building core competencies (thinking, communicating, personal and social competency)
• Definition of “The Educated Citizen” (we heard this recently and understand its in the BC school regulations, but do not know where)
• literacy and numeracy foundations
• understanding rich content
• core competencies
• How do we cover curriculum through PBL?
• What is “true PBL”, is there “true PBL”?
• How much information is required before students jump in?
• How much Teacher Direction/ Guidance is needed?
• How do we facilitate and let students drive?
• What role do driving questions play?
• How do we come up with really good driving questions?
• What skills and experiences do students bring to projects?
• How do different disciplines come together in projects?

We agreed its the highlighted questions that matter most. Its the difference this way of learning makes in the lives of our students that matters most. We want to be intentional about evaluating our practice based on the difference it makes for students. We are excited to be learning together!

What questions do you have about PBL?

cross posted at: http://sd57learning.blogspot.ca/

Talk of Change - Embracing Project Based Learning

change_thoughts, a photo by MMcDonough on Flickr.

I gave my first Professional Development workshop yesterday on Project Based Learning (PBL). While I've talked to Colleagues, Parents, and Community members about PBL, this was my first chance to have a deeper, focused dialoug with educators about PBL. 

I was very cognizant in putting it together that I wanted to create opportunities for rich conversations and sharing of ideas, activities, and strategies. I borrowed and adapted questions from David Truss's presentation "7 Ways to Transform Your Classroom". The questions participants discussed together and shared thoughts on were a powerful part of the day, in my opinion. 

Selling anything, though, is not easy. As George Couros points out, we need to be strategic if we want to help others embrace change. George poses three questions that we can answer for Educators as we present change. Let me share my thoughts on them as it relates to PBL:

• How will this save me time?
• Such a valuable question for Educators. I want to acknowledge that adopting and settling into new Teaching practices takes time and energy, we all know that. For me the investment pays off in the product, and we'll get to that in a minute. In my experience the payoff with PBL is in two places. First, I save time preparing discrete tasks. My projects are almost always chunked into pieces that stretch over 2-6 hours of class time. So, once students are engaged in a new activity we roll with it for a few days, allowing me to do much more guiding, facilitating, informal breakout workshops, and formative assessment. Secondly, I save time in assessment. PBL lends itself beautifully to AFL practices that look a lot like students developing ownership by understanding where they are at and where they are going in their learning. This requires coaching and practice, but does not require that I collect small pieces of work daily, or even every few days to document the small steps in their learning journey. I should say to that my context is also a BYOD program. This saves a huge amount of time for me photocopying discrete tasks. I've moved my project outlines to Google Drive so students have current (and ever-changing) copies shared with them and they can be set up to comment on the outline or even edit as needed. 
• We need to focus on different, not more
• Yes. Some of the shifts I've been cognizant of in my practice as it related to PBL are in the ways I synthesize and summarize information, share resources, and share my expertise. As I move to PBL I fully desire to shift my instructional methods from Teacher centered to Learner centered. It strikes me as odd that so often we stand up and synthesize and summarize content for students. We need to teach students to synthesize and summarize content. If we are too worried about covering the content to let the students summarize it for themselves then perhaps we are trying to cover too much content (and I don't mean to get too involved in the debate over covering content here, I am more interesting in suggesting that this is one way that PBL is different and not more). My argument on resources is very much the same. Students need to be able to effectively find and critically curate content online. We are doing them a disservice if we find it for them, and we are doing them an even greater disservice if we do not teach our students to use a variety of resources. So we shift from finding and curating and sharing resources for our students to having them find, curate, and share their own resources. Lastly, PBL comes with a shift in expertise. Methods of Inquiry seek to involve community and experts outside the school. Although I'm not there yet in my practice, efforts to do this have been rewarding. I believe the same can be said about the learning community that exists within the classroom. Prensky writes about a Partnering pedagogy where we are all Teachers and we are all Learners. We need to shift our practice enough to allow students to embrace the roll as the experts that they are and are becoming.  
• Is this better?
• I believe so. In the presentation I respond to the "Why?" question with three arguments: because of shared experiences, because of shared findings, and because of shared understanding of best practice. There's a lot to unpack there, but I'll leave that to the presentation itself. After reading Couros's post the piece of this I feel I missed was the way in which its better for me. Ultimately I am most satisfied as a Teacher when the Learners I'm working with are most satisfied in their Learning. To that end, yes. PBL has allowed for deeper, richer, more meaning learning for my students and left me more satisfied in my Teaching!

Do you agree? What burning PBL questions are on your mind? Does PBL save you time? What shifts has it come with in your practice? Is it better for you and your students? What conversations are you interested in having as you consider change?

Consumption Project

https://plus.google.com/photos/104665354261133320564/albums/5854582620766544849?authkey=CI39pPz3lf6FzwE

Project Outline

As I look back at this project there are some things I liked about and some things that need overhauling.

Liked:

-students engaged in quality research and fact finding to determine the rate at which a resource was consumed by a certain population at a certain point in time

-students were thinking critically about his to represent their model so as to bring the Math to life by picking a quantity that would be significant (for a certain population at a certain time)

-the project points to the global theme of sustainability

-models were engaging

-choice of topics, methods of modelling increased engagement

Bigger and better next time:

-sustainability is such a deep and far reaching theme, I want to make sure to do it justice in a project like this. I'm not sure exactly how to approach that, but for starters I'd either look at sustainable practices with respect to either the food industry or energy sector (rather then leaving the option open)

-again, to better serve the sustainability theme I want to make sure this project culminates in a real, applicable, significant prouduct. This could, perhaps, be something like a marketing project and pitch to a local restaurant. It would be really cool to get a sense of what a restaurant needs and how we can help th market themselves, or to help raise awareness of sustainable food choices 

-I could see using a question like "How do our consumption habits impact others?", or perhaps even making this more specific like "How does Canadian consumption of coffee effect Ethiopia?", but I'm not sure how the socials ties would be made, and that relationship may likely dictate the scope of the question and inquiry.
-as with other projects with a physical product, I've seen that getting into researching, drafting, and revising a model design early really pays off in the end. Along these same lines a goal I've been thinking of lately is to really improve the quality if sketches. I want to see students think through and prepare well for their sketches so they can approximate their product as well as possible. I wonder if a strategy here would be to have students actually prototype a scale sketch or model before constructing their final product.

Professional Learning Plan 2013/2014

Flickr (http://bit.ly/15BvNGX)http://bit.ly/15BvNGX)

After diving into PBL with both feet last year I've been trying to focus my efforts this year and be strategic in my practice. Today was our School Planning Day at Kelly Road and we were tasks to choose on of the 8 District Goals (Assessment for Learning, Data-Driven Evidence for Learning, Cultural Competencies, Social and Emotional Learning, Poverty and Student Learning, Differentiation/ Universal Designs for Learning, Enhanced Learning Through Technology, Supervision of Instruction/ Mentorship and Training are the 8 presented this morning)and develop a Professional Learning Plan relating to one of the goals. As the year goes on we will have a chance to spend time with others on staff working toward those goals.

My plan is to focus on the PBL process this year by targeting critique and developing a critique protocol with students. Here's the full plan:

Steve Chase’s Professional Learning Plan 2013/2014

My Learning Intention:

Will a class-created peer critique protocol improve students ownership of their learning, use of one another as learning resources, and understanding of course content?

Criteria:

• Students will agree that peer critique was comfortable 80% of the time
• Students will agree that peer critique was beneficial 80% of the time
• Students will agree that peer critique furthered their understanding of course content 80% of the time

My Plan:

• Develop peer critique language and structure with students (protocol)
• Use peer critique at set points in projects to allow students to present their work to peers and receive feedback
• Survey students each project to see if peer critique protocol is meeting the criteria

Questions:

• How can we structure critique sessions so students feel comfortable sharing their work?
• How can we structure critique sessions so students feel the time is beneficial?
• How can we structure critique sessions so it is rigorous in terms of content?

Descriptive Feedback:

I plan on using Beth Wilcox as a resource in building the critique protocol, but this inquiry is largely based on my students response to this as a practice, so their feedback is essential.

Self and Peer Support:

I’ve met and discussed feedback and critique in broader terms with a small group of teachers on staff and would appreciate the opportunity to meet with them in the future if possible.

I would also love the opportunity to explore more Project Based Learning resources on my own or with others. A few that seem particularly relevant are from www.bie.org: “PBL for 21st Century Success”, and “PBL Handbook”.

Ownership and Where:

I will be posting updates on my blog (http://chaselearning.blogspot.ca/), but would also be happy to share my learning with peers.

Summary of Our Work This Year as a Project Tuning Learning Team

Our actions:

Our learning team met once to establish group norms and introduce the protocol, six times to tune projects, and then concluded by hosting a Professional Development Day when we invited other teachers in our District. 

Work completed:

We tuned Kim’s Geography Project, Beth’s Mapping project, Steve’s Optics Project, Wayne’s Euthanasia Debate Project, Aaron's Plate Project, and Glen’s Landscapes and Literature Course. We also revised the tuning protocol and created a Facilitator and Participant Version. 

Evidence:

Our group focused our time around a project tuning protocol shared by High TechHigh (HTH). The protocol was used to guide our conversations as we shared projects. The process served as an opportunity to get an inside look at colleague’s methods of instructions, assessment practices, tasks and activities, and project structures. Initially the protocol was used as it was written by HTH, but by the end of the year we had revised the protocol to better suite our purposes.  

Sharing our Learning:

Members of our learning team hosted a workshop on Friday May 3rd where they shared two projects as well as the tuning protocol we had used. Participants were excited to see the projects that Wayne, Kim, and Beth brought to share, and many of them plan on using them back in their own classrooms. The tuning protocol was well respected and was also shared as a tool for participants to take away.

Next steps:

We hope to meet again next year and involve anyone interested. We enjoyed the use of the tuning protocol and have also considered implementing HTH’s “looking at student work” protocol.

KRSS Garden Update

Well Prince George has shown signs of summer and our KRSS Garden is one of them! Student`s have been excited to get their plants transplanted into containers in the garden, and also to start some new seeds in the garden itself too. We have planted cabbage, spinach, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, beets, cucumbers, potatoes, onlins, carrots and strawberries, The students have also constructed an automated watering system.

As the students have dug their hands into science they`ve been forced to think critically at every turn. First, student`s each put together a care plan for their plants. Next, student`s designed an experiment they can run in the garden. They are all responsible for their plants, making their own decisions about watering, containers, location in the garden, soil and fertilizers, and how to measure the plants overall health. In some ways the project has been made even more interesting by the fact that we won`t be able to harvest from each of our plants. Students have been forced to ask themselves what conditions are necessary to first, keep their plants alive, and secondly encourage their growth.

For me the research process has been particularly exciting, as many students have been able to swap stories and ask questions of friends and family as part of their inquiry. I`d love to see the KRSS Garden become a project that really pulls together the school community and local community as well.  Art Knapps, our local garden store, has been very supportive and we`ve enjoyed working with them. We`ve also been in touch with the Enhanced Forestry Lab at UNBC and hope to get there next year to see their work first hand.

In addition to the science experiments students are running the project has also involved a number of products in their Tech class. So far students have build an 8` by 16` greenhouse and gardening tools. Plans are in the works for storage containers, shelves, benches, expansions to the watering system, plant hangers, and planter boxes.

The project its taken us in a few unexpected directions. Some students who did not have successful plants are now experimenting with composting, and gaining a better understanding of how to compost effectively at the school; other students have brought a passion for sustainability to the project, and have enjoyed the upcycling of 5 gallon buckets and packing pallets in the garden. We saw a great community garden underway at Science World, and are excited to see the Alterrus vertical urban garden as well. 

Great Opportunity for community partnership

I'd love to see schools partner with Otway to help prep the site and the community to host the Canada Winter Games. I wonder what kind of projects could come out of this.
Opinion250 Mobile

The continuum of sharing information

As I reflect on the goals of 21st Century Learning I think one of the challenges facing teachers is determining which methods of  presenting information are most effective in any given context. At one end of the teacher-learner-technology continuum is a teacher presentation of information, somewhere in the middle we see teachers presenting information with technology, and as we continue we find teachers encouraging and enabling student access to information through technology; on the cuttin edge we find students sharing and communicating information with technology. This edge although cutting seems new enough that it can be the least comfortable.

I believe there are many other classroom trends that are correlated to this continuum. At one end we find teachers burdened by a focus on management, at the other we find teachers enjoying setting up opportunities to motivate students. At one end we view students as recipients of information, at the other the are owners of information.

A major challenge with the continuum seems to be pinpointing where the best learning is occurring. I think all educators will agree they've had days where quality learning has occurred at all points on the continuum.
One more question that comes to my mind is what will the continuum look like when today's Kindergartners hit High School, and will they be ready? Will we?

Examples of Project Based Learning

The more I look into Project Based Learning the more excited I get about its ability to teach students 21st century skills in a dynamic, exciting, applicable learning environment. Discovery Education produced histed a webinar recently on PBL, and publised their powerpoint presentation shared here http://mediashare.discoveryeducation.com/mediashare/index.cfm?event=pushFile&guidAssetMediaFileId=4186022d-2655-8579-76d3-5955f15d7565.

Edutopia is one site that came up in the presentation that, in particular, seems to have a wealth of information on the approach. http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning.

I've also recently discovered the PBL Co-Laboratory from PBL-online.org. Shortly after creating my free account I had generated a list of 21 of my personal favourite projects from teachers internationally. Its so encouraging to see teachers so willing to share their ideas, and I hope the NLC is able to enspire students to do the same.

Logistics in a 21st Century Classroom

• I've read about a number of schools that have created learning spaces that are very conducive to collaboration and communication. I'd love to see areas dedicated to experimentation - equipped with webcams; areas dedicated to recording audio and video - with some sound buffers; grouped tables for lessons and break out spaces galore!
• Would/ could parents attend monthly meetings? Meetings every term? What would be reasonable yet sufficient to create relationships that foster enhanced student achievement in a radically new environment.
• What will be the balance between 21st century skills and 20th century curriculum? Is it okay to lean toward the here and now?
• How will KRSS ensure the program supports the necessary technology to make such a technological classroom possible? Bandwidth? Print access?

Introducing Students to 21st Century Learning

• writers workshops
• start with activities on interpersonal communication
• who are you as a learner quizzes and activities (demonstrate various ways of learning)
• big emphasis on organizing information: begin with a series of mini lessons where students read various kinds of information (Socials, Science, Math) and decide what kind of graphic organizer to use to summarize the information (use Microsoft Smart Art)
• There are lots of C's tossed around in 21st Century Learning, and the more I get to know them the more I appreciate how these skills can and should take centre stage in a 21st century curriculum: 
• This article from the BCTF outlines them and explains some of the context behind their inception. Here are BC's 7 C's
• • Critical thinking and problem solving,
  • Creativity and innovation,
  • Collaboration, teamwork and leadership,
  • Cross-cultural understanding,
  • Communications, computing and ICT literacy,
  • Career and learning self-reliance, and
  • Caring for personal health and planet earth.

Projects Ideas for 21st Century Classroom

These are not necessarily original ideas, but are inspired from other websites mentioned in this blog. 

• debates
• math games fair
• science fair
• organize school events
• meetings
• ongoing blog of experience 
• mini math lessons via video (ex, algebra tiles and linear equations)
• democratic elections (for positions of responsbility in the classroom/ school/ at meetings)
• committees
• organization of school and community events, clubs, teams, fund raisers (student plan, organize, run, and reflect on events)
• ambassadors to other schools (teaching math games, conducting science demos and/ or projects with students, presenting technologies to help young readers, demoing math manipulatives)
• periodic news papers/ broadcasts
• I see the progression in a 21st century classroom very much one of a gradual release of responsibility. I think it would work well to start with activities where everyone is responsible for learning the same material, but presenting it in their choice of way, and/ or a series of activities where everyone is responsible for learning different material, but presenting it in common ways (so as to familiarize themselves with methods of demonstrating learning, provide exemplars for future use, and evaluate the relationships between the type of knowledge gained, and the method of demonstrating learning)
• After reading some of the information on Innovation Unit I've been thinking about a few new projects that would have a local focus, and a local impact. I would love to see some community partnerships into some of these projects. Ideas include; A project on sustainable trail building. The trails could be mountain bike, ski, or multipurpose, but would include research into trainbuilding techniques, local flora, fauna, topography, microclimate, and use; A second local project along the same vein I've been thinking about it is one on winter backcountry use. This could include studying weather patters, snowpacks, avalance gear and technology, GPS technology, and winter survival skills. The specifics of the projects would be entirely up to the students, but our goal as a learning community would be to create local partnerships and produce a product that could be shared with the community.
• A day in the life of ______________ (a project where students really research a career of their choice and report back to their classmates)
• Wikipedia creations (students find something they have expertise on and create content to add to wikipedia)
• Environmental Stewardship (student teams create, design, and implement projects to help green their school and make it a better environment for the life that exists in and around it)
• Documentaries/ Commercials/ Promo Videos (students create videos to promote Prince George/ their favourite book/ a novel they've read that's been turned into a movie...)
• School News/ Radio (students create broadcasts to be shared with the school/ community)
• Technology You Need (students research and market emerging, cost saving technologies to local businesses, VOIP phone?, Google Reviews, Twitter, Urban Spoon)
• Winter Frisbee Golf Course/ Golf Course Used for Cross Country Skiing/ Skate Park/ Indoor BMX park? (Students create their own piece of the park as part of a course the class would put together)
• Build a trail project (students work together to design a sustainable mountain bike trail with no net impact on the local ecosystem)
• Backcountry safety (students create PSAs to help teach younger students the value of backcountry safety)
• Here's another site with a host of "Challange Based Learning" (CBL) Projects teachers internationally are developing and implementing. The CBL format is analogous to PBL, but with its own unique process and Apple spin. 
• http://www.challengebasedlearning.org/
• Tweet Up where students take on roles as characters (for example, this could be science based and students could take on the roles of historic scientists; alternately, this could be socials based, and students could take on roles as 
• Class Elections where students have to campaign and run for roles in class government, modeling their platform on a certain party, individual, the position they are running for
• Toy Building Project where students design toys research, design, and send children's toys to an underprivileged community in BC (possibly floating toys to go along with Science 8 Water Unit).