…of course I end up needing it. In this case, I’m talking about the stuff that I had to learn in my Preparing 21st Century Learners class for my credential.
21st (?) Century learners
When I first opened up the book for this class, I was deeply skeptical. There was a lot of talk about school cultures, and that seemed way out of reach for someone who was just starting out as a brand new teacher. There was a lot of talk of community buy-in, and revamping entire departments and schools, and that felt way out of my league. Once I got deeper into the book, however, there were some great concepts that jumped out. The first was the idea of group polishing of project-based learning plans, especially for new teachers. In the model that was presented, new teachers come on board for a week’s worth of PD that starts with veteran teachers modeling the group polishing method and ends with the new teachers presenting their projects for group polishing. I also was alternately intrigued and horrified by the idea of project-based learning as a whole. Choice in what information they learned, and to what depth?? I struggle with the concept of not pushing all my students into learning all the things, so this isn’t natural for me at all. But I love the idea of students pursuing knowledge out of interest instead of need to stay in lockstep with the class.
With all of this in mind, I put together a crazy project-based learning thing that would end up launching RIGHT when shelter-in-place hit- through EdPuzzle, because we couldn’t be together in person. The students had to choose a recipe and deconstruct the chemistry in a way that non-scientists could understand AND use to improve their cooking skills. Ultimately, releasing this during SIP was a blessing in disguise. The back-and-forth editing and discussion process I had with my students as they honed their recipes and explanations kept us in continuous contact in a constructive way. Instead of a one-and-done grade for their explanation, they were allowed to keep revising until they got it GOOD – and then it went to an outside-the-school panel for a review. To me, that was one of the biggest scary logistical things about PBL: the outside dissemination of what the students have put together. I know the kids take criticism to heart, so exposing them to outside adult critiques was scary, but ultimately most of the students took the gentle critiques in the manner in which they were intended, making a great final cookbook product. Another great thing about having the cookbook project during SIP is that it gave the kids a reason to experiment around with cooking – they tried tweaking their own recipes, they tried each other’s recipes, and it helped keep up our sense of community. On the last day of class, I had everyone cook someone ELSE’s food and bring it to the Zoom meeting while we debriefed the year.
I highly recommend the group-polishing model to anyone who is about to do their first venture into the PBL world. When I was trying to put this together, I talked to not only my department chair and the other chemistry teachers (sorry guys), but I also reached out to the English team to see how we could incorporate some of the ELA concepts and/or teachers into the project. It was thanks to everyone’s questions that the final project took the shape that it did, and the deliverables and due dates got a lot more clear.
I also found that releasing some control to the students actually worked well, and it allowed differentiation to a certain extent. Some students stuck with very simple concepts, and needed extensive scaffolding and guidance to evaluate their recipes. Other students needed guidance because they went to super advanced topics that wouldn’t be covered in the class at all, simply because they were interested in them! For each of the students, I tried to help them find resources to answer their questions. Some students really didn’t seem to be engaged in finding the answers, or even the questions (recipes) to engage themselves, which was frustrating. I’m not sure if they needed tighter guidelines/pre-selected recipes to help narrow things down, or if it was simply a mismatch between the question and their interests.
For a first attempt, particularly in the weirdest year ever? I was pretty happy! Now comes the fine tuning for this school year…
Awesome, and thanks for the recipes. One of the most successful PBL experiences I had was my first foray into blended learning at my previous school. I had a summer teaching assignment for students who had received D's and F's and had to remediate. They has a week off and were expected back in the classroom the second week of June. It made no sense to simply put them back into the exact same environment and have them do the kind of assignments that they had just failed with. So, we blended it and created a number of projects related to the content. At first the projects focused on the different ways to present but then several students asked, actually asked, if they could explore a different "thread" or "area of interest." For example, in reading A Lesson Before Dying a student really wanted to explore profiling and what was occurring in the Oakland police dept. (this was over a decade ago). The light switched on for so many of those students, and there were people who had just showed they weren't all that interested in learning…I'm an advocate because I've seen how well it can work.
Thanks Katie, awesome ideas….and good food. 🙂
OK so this is AMAZING… I want to try and share this with everyone… what a great project… I am taping @scline@carondeleths.org (not sure this works in blogs)… Stephanie and I had a book club this summer around a book called "Eat to Beat Disease" and it was all about immunity and the science of how and what foods impact your body… (happy to share the ebook) if you want to see…
Beyond personal interest in the topic of food… What an Amazing PBL project… and a great way as well to connect the multiple sections you teach. Do you see this as a yearly project you may incorporate?
This was an outstanding project. I had the pleasure of being an outside editor and got to review many of the students' recipes. It tapped into creative skills while still addressing some summative chemistry principles. I think the inclusion of other non-teacher outside reviewers made this very special. She even had a baker, who is a member of CheeseBoard in Berkeley review some of the recipes. Flipboard as a platform to share the students work to outside reviewers was an efficient and safe way to have our students show off their recipes.
I was debating repeating it, or trying to find something else. It's honestly going to depend on how this year goes! I liked that it involved a LOT of student choice and voice, and it was pretty easy to have natural differentiation, which is something that I struggle with. One student decided to learn starch gel polymerization on her own which was incredible!
there is value in running something a few times to tweak and perfect! This one is definitely good enough to do again…