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My final Learning Design on Human Rights
http://learningdesigner.org/designer.php?uri=/personal/mcuccus/designs/fid/9cf77c958fa1b0f1b68e72c6a4bc9d86a329665abce37ea1bba4e94a322971bf
and an updated version of my Learning Diary

https://padlet.com/mcuccus/dcq1incud6zj

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Ongoing scaffolding to foster student driven projects

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Ongoing scaffolding to foster student driven projects

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Great scaffolding tips
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTR_snb-0nQ&feature=youtu.be

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3. Developing student-driven activities for PBL

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3. Developing student-driven activities for PBL

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IT'S NOT THAT I'M SO SMART,
IT'S JUST THAT I STAY WITH PROBLEMS LONGER
Albert Einstein

Next to developing collaborative skills of students, another key part of PBL is for students to take ownership of tasks, initiative at solving problems, and most importantly to stick with these tasks and problems until they have come to a satisfactory conclusion. In other words, we try to develop a student-driven environment in which the energy and persistence of what is happening in the classroom does not primarily come from us but from the students.

One of the key essences of this module is getting students' to develop grit and resilience to stay with a problem or project even though they have failed previously .  This is one of the most difficult parts of PBL and at the core of developing a student-driven environment.
The learning objectives for this module are:

1. Understanding the importance of scaffolding the PBL process so that students increasingly develop independence and ownership over the tasks

2. Understanding the importance of a positive environment and mindset for building student confidence and resilience

3. Developing a range of activities, strategies and tools that facilitate an entrepreneurial mindset and entrepreneurial skills

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2. Developing effective collaboration for PBL:

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2. Developing effective collaboration for PBL:

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Coming together is a beginning,
keeping together is progress,
working together is success
Henry Ford

Our learning objectives for this module are:

1. Understand how different types of collaboration can be used in the context of PBL

2. Develop a series of strategies and activities to promote effective collaboration between students

3. Develop a series of strategies and activities to promote effective collaboration with actors outside of the classroom

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How can we find a significant Driving Question for our PBL?
Here are some tips from relevant sources:

https://youtu.be/DcH16hIuoEA

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Our mission is to realize the power and promise of 21st century learning for every student-in early learning, in school, and beyond school-across the country and around the globe.

As the pioneers in this movement, champions of the 4Cs (Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity), and creators of the Framework for 21st Century Learning, P21 is the premier organization ensuring every child-without exception-experiences 21st century learning.

Now Creating Even Greater Impact

And now, as a part of Battelle for Kids, P21 has even greater ability to make tangible and immediate impacts.

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As the pioneers in this movement, champions of the 4Cs (Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity), and creators of the Framework for 21st Century Learning, P21 is the premier organization ensuring every child-without exception-experiences 21st century learning. And now, as a part of Battelle for Kids, P21 has even greater ability to make tangible and immediate impacts.

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Components of good PBL
I find that the most challenging component of a good PBL is to have our student take action in their learning process. Education in Italy is still a lot of teaching without real participation on the part of the student.  And the way to obtain this participation is to find the real world connection, something students know is part of their real life  and feeling that they can DO something to change or improve a situation they all know.
A good deal of work has still to be done also about assessment and the fundamental role of failure to build good problem solvers and conscious citizens :)

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1. Real world connection;
2. Core to learning;
3. Structured collaboration;
4. Student-drive;
5. Multifaceted Assessment

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5 Keys to Rigorous Project-Based Learning

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Module 1: How students benefit when effectively engaged in the PBL

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Module 1: How students benefit when effectively engaged in the PBL

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Liked this intro a lot :)

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Propositions Project: 21st Century Skills

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My Driving Question
My driving question is:
Does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights still matter to teenagers of the 21st century?

The question will be proposed to a class of 18 12 years old students as a part of their Citizenship program.

My learning goals for the class are:

Make sure they know that a Universal Declaration of Human Rights exists;

Make sure they explore this Declaration and understand its importance for their lives and the lives of other people around the world

Make a comparison between their lives of Western Europe students and the lives of thousands of boys and girls of their age who are negated even the right to have a place to live in.

Be able to discuss the topic in English (make themselves understood by fellow students and teachers)

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I use a traditional approach to teaching English, but I usually try to improve it by sharing with my students at least a short CLIL module a year.  In this way they learn both grammar (what is felt to be very important in Italy) and other ways of approaching real life topics/problems in different ways.  We usually start with a brainstorming activity in order to show what everybody already knows about the proposed topic.  Then we go on with some scaffolding, that is a series of structures that may be useful for the students to participate in the class discussion using the English language.  We also work on vocabulary.  I think the CLIL approach can easily go together with PBL because it implies critical thinking, collaboration (there are often peer-to-peer and group activities to be done) and demonstration of what students have learned, usually with a final “product”.

It happens that some students don’t remember what they learned the day before, and this is a consequence of students not being really engaged in what they learn.  I usually try to find ways to find a topic that is significant to students.  It is important to form groups in which different roles can be “acted” (leader, reporter, vocabulary finder …).

Students needs are usually dealt with at the beginning of the school year.  In this last years we are taking great care of Citizenship Competences and I think this is a need that is always present in teenagers, even if they aren’t aware of it.

I would like to work on The Universal Declaration of Human Rights with class 3D next year.  Students will be 12-13 years old.

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1. What is PBL and why use it

TELL ME AND I FORGET,TEACH ME AND I REMEMBER,INVOLVE ME AND I LEARN
Benjamin Franklin
Our learning objectives for this module are:

1. Understand what PBL is and isn't

2. Reflect on our own teaching practice and how this corresponds to a PBL approach

3. Identify different components of effective PBL and which of these will be the most challenging in our context

4. Develop a first idea for implementing a PBL approach in our context and formulate a driving question

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Elisabetta C, Italy
I think one of the worst days in my personal and professional life was the day I was interviewed to get my job at school. In Italy we have to take a very difficult written exam and then an oral exam in which you don't really know what you might be asked to talk about. I had really good marks at the written exam and lots of credits for my after graduate studies, and yet one of the experienced teachers in the evaluating committee asked me unbelievable questions with an even more unbelievable pronunciation. And he was there to judge me about my own knowledge of what I was going to teach! I stuck to my chair and to my own dignity, even with my eight month kicking baby in my belly, and finished my interview with what I knew I knew and with what I was able to show I knew. This man gave me very low marks, but in the end I succeeded and in September I was able to go and sign my first contract as an English teacher with my 4 month old baby!

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4.4 A rubric on an oral presentation on Human Rights

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4.4 A rubric on an oral presentation on Human Rights

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I found this activity really interesting and I think I will be using rubistar again for more rubrics for my Learning Design.  It's really helpful!
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&rubric_id=2634343

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I think I can share here some good practice already at work in my school in Quartucciu, Sardinia, Italy.  Every year in April/May our students are involved in a project called “Monumenti Aperti”, Open Monuments.  For several weekends some towns like Quartucciu or bigger open their monuments to tourists.  Even monuments that aren’t usually open for public visits are opened on this occasion.  And on this occasion our students become the guides for tourists.  They learn a lot of information about the monuments (be they old ruins, fairy’s houses of old churches) and guide the tourists by telling them what they have learnt.

I think this opportunity can be transformed in a successful PBL experience by changing some of the usual characteristics of the project.  First of all students can start brainstorming about which monuments are more significant to them and to the wider community.  Then they can contact the professional they usually listen to in lesson(usually an archaeologist) to do a more creative work by asking these professionals what they would like him/her to do.  They can also have new ideas about whom can be interviewed on the chosen monument.

Students can also be asked to find by themselves to which school standards this kind of project can be connected to (for instance, third year students are already able to identify the different subjects in the curriculum).

The connection with the outside community is already present in the fact that students become guides for tourist, but I’m sure students will have more ideas about how to make this part of the project (dissemination) more their own.  My Arts and Crafts colleague, for instance, suggests that a group of students follow the “guides” with paper and pencil to draw “en plein air”, thus giving an immediate representation of what is happening through another media.

I really like the idea of “twitting” the news of Monumenti Aperti to the local news, making an already public event even more widespread.  Digital cameras and smartphones can be of great help in spreading the news nowadays and almost every student owns at least one of these devices in our school.

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Assessing PBL in my school/Country

I am free to assess students in any way I want.  Nevertheless in the last few years in my school we agreed that it is important to have a common way of assessing our students.  That’s why at the beginning of the last school year we met to prepare a testing system in order to give students the opportunity to be evaluated in the same way.  This is because at middle school in Italy we do have to give students grades at the end of the first term and at the end of the school year.  Since I am a teacher of English, I usually assess my students following the Common European Framework as far as regards grammar, vocabulary and functions.  But there are also other things to be taken into account and I think I’m going to improve my assessment of students, and my own personal assessment in projects and PBL in this last part of the course.

Last week I attended a seminar about EQF (European Qualifications Framework) where we were told that National Agencies in Europe are looking for a way to assess students’ learning so that if they move from one European Country to another their CV will be clearly understood and recognized for what has effectively been done and I think this is very important.  A first step towards a common Europe assessment grid in order to give young people the opportunity to study and work in other European Countries having their CV correctly recognized.

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http://learningdesigner.org/designer.php?uri=/personal/mcuccus/designs/fid/62cdbe8617ab694908adbb59588404856ed786135b149f63933a4b20de418c5b
and here for a shorter version of the link
https://v.gd/HFOaXn

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2.2 What is effective collaboration? With the help of a rubric entry.

1. A key goal of PBL is not the project but rather the process of building the project
2. one of the key things students should be learning as part of this process is effective collaboration.

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2.2 What is effective collaboration?
2.2 Use your answers to the questionnaire to draft a Learning Diary entry reflecting about the nature of collaboration in your classroom.

My students are often asked to work in pairs or in small groups.

Each group/pair  had a task and each student in the group or pair had a fundamental role.  Just like in a jigsaw puzzle, if the pieces don’t fit together the complete image can’t appear.  And each single element in the group/pair had the “right” piece to make things work.

During and e-Twinning project my students were asked to prepare a very simple game on the sea to share with their fellow students in other European countries.  They created a very simple bingo with sea animals, decided on the kind of game most suitable for this activity, decided on the vocabulary to use, made a little project and prepared the game. decided on the vocabulary to use, made a little project and prepared the game using some vocabulary they had just learned from our mother tongue teacher Silvia.  Here are some pictures of the game.
Rubric entry

Effective collaboration must include ALL this points:

Students DO have shared responsibility · AND they DO make substantive decisions together about the content, process, or product of their work · AND their work is interdependent.