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Read More at our school website under the Summit Learning tab after you click on the menu button.

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Read More at our school website under the Summit Learning tab after you click on the menu button.

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www.usd239.org

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https://www.summitlearning.org/program/learning-environment

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Co-teaching is a research-based practice that channels teacher and student strengths that bring together knowledge and skill sets in order to achieve academic and personal growth.

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Co-teaching has multiple benefit supported by research and legal trends with benefits and student achievements and attitudes as well as professional growth for teachers. Basically it creates an overall positive environment for all thus leading to higher academic achievement.

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Legally we have a responsibility to educate all students with age appropriate standards in the least restricted environment meeting the needs for freedom, shared responsibility, and reduce amount of support needed through co-teaching in collaborative and cooperative ways.

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Co-teaching empowers staff and students to both take risks by merging strengths to potentially close achievement gaps using research proven strategies to build community by sharing responsibilities.

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Co-teaching fulfills the five basic needs (survival, power, choice, fun, and sense of belonging) for both students & teachers, therefore increasing teacher effectiveness while also increasing all student achievement in the least restrictive environment.

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Project Based Learning; Field Kindley Technical Academy

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A look into Coffeyville's innovative project based learning program. Through projects, FKTA students use critical thinking and problem solving to individually combine their interests with the required academic standards; ultimately resulting in responsible, well-rounded, future employees. For more information please contact: Megan Abbott (Abbottm@cvilleschools.com), Jenna Nash (Nashj@cvilleschools.com), Casey Woodward (WoodwardC@cvilleschools.com)

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Buck Institute for Education's 30th Anniversary Video http://www.bie.org

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Author of the book "Bold School"
http://www.coachweston.com/about.html

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Two KC Schools that use PBL, both trained by BIE

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Two KC Schools that use PBL, both trained by BIE

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Human beings grow when tested.

Outward Bound asks people to take on physical challenges they are not sure they can complete. The goal is to build some skills, accomplish some big goals and, in doing so, change how you feel about yourself. Outward Bound challenges inspired the formation of Expeditionary Learning (now EL Education) schools where students take on projects they initially think they can't do. When they finish the projects and present the public products, it's often transformational.

Unlike a worksheet or spoon fed assignment, a big project (or choral work, or play, or big game) creates the butterflies of uncertainty: "Can I really do this?"

A good challenge has the potential to change young people's belief in themselves and their understanding of the world. An extended challenge uniquely builds self-management and growth mindset. A team project builds social awareness and collaboration. A well-developed project builds communication, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

We recently visited two Kansas City area elementary schools combining personalized and project-based learning to help young people develop valuable knowledge, skills and dispositions.

EPiC Elementary is north east of Kansas City in Liberty, Missouri. EPiC strives to be "an innovative, project-based learning community designed to inspire students to be creative and think big."

Serving 300 learners in the renovated district office, the EPiC architecture features double classrooms and partner teaching. Many of these "studios" have big roll up doors (below) and share common space (like the mini-theater below) and quiet small group rooms.

Each studio is home base for about 50 learners and use iPads to promote mobility and creativity in learning. Every studio also has access to a cart of MacBooks.

The grade level studios have theses that are reflected in projects: K: Builders; 1: Leaders; 2: Storytellers; 3: Connectors; 4: Changemakers; and 5: Designers.

Morning in the kindergarten studio includes seven literacy stations (projected below). Students had learned to navigate the blended learning stations and software in the second week of school.

EPiC lead learners (teachers) uses i-Ready (on laptops, below) to promote comprehension, Lexia for phonics, RazKids for leveled reading, Think Through Math and Dreambox, and Codable (starting in K).

The Buck Institute trained staff uses project-based learning (PBL) across the curriculum to empower, equip and engage students. Principal Michelle Schmitz () said students often decide how to present their work in a final product.

The EPiC learning model is well aligned with Buck's gold standard for PBL. EPiC learners:

Produce authentic work and showcase their learning

Learn at a personalized pace while acquiring key academic and social skills

Identify, propose, and defend solutions to real world issues

Work independently and in teams to accomplish goals

Engage in a collaborative culture to impact the larger community

Lead learner teams start with standards to plan a sequence of projects for the year. The staff meets daily from 3-4 p.m. to look at student data and work. They meet frequently to promote vertical alignment.

Launched in 2014, Jeremy Tucker's first year as superintendent of Liberty Public Schools ( LIBERTYSCHOOLS), EPiC quickly became an Apple Distinguished School.

Dr. Tucker said EPiC has served as a tremendous conduit of "'what is possible' and 'what could be' across Liberty Public Schools, our region and beyond." He sees evidence that the pilot school and project-based learning has started changing teaching practices on the other 18 Liberty campuses.

The Liberty High faculty, big users of open resources, is considering ways to combine project-based, competency-based and work-based learning experiences.

Apache Elementary(above, @ApacheIS512 ) in the Shawnee Mission School District () on the Kansas side of the state line and in the southwest metro area, is a slice of new America; of the 650 students, about a third are white, a third black and a third Hispanic.

As part of a 2014 district initiative, every Shawnee Mission elementary student has an iPad. Apache remains print rich with a complete library and leveled classroom reading sets. Principal Britt Pumphrey ( brpumphrey) encourages strategic use of iPads when they can add feedback or support creation.

In 2016, Apache was named an Innovation School by the district with the goal of reimagining learning and focused on developing content mastery, critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.

Both schools made wide use of Hokki stools from VSamerica (below) and modular tables that flex quickly from small group to large group.

Apache teachers loop with students for three years (grades 1-3 and 4-6). The Buck-trained staff supports two large projects per year.

The Apache team uses the Behavior Intervention Support Team model to promote productive behavior and lifelong skills. In every environment and experience, Apache staff encourage students to be Safe, On task, to Act responsibly and be Respectful (SOAR). Morning meetings are another structure they are using to promote mindful behavior.

Both schools showed classroom by classroom evidence of common practices indicating a high level of collaboration. The atmosphere at both schools was positive and the staff seems really committed to making the schools work for all students.
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They both combined personalized and project-based learning but in unique ways-EPiC uses wall-to-wall PBL while Apache uses periodic projects.

For more, see:

Tom Vander Ark is author of Smart Parents, Smart Cities and Getting Smart. He is co-founder of Getting Smart and Learn Capital and serves on the boards of 4.0 Schools, eduInnovation, Digital Learning Institute, Imagination Foundation, Charter Board Partners and Bloomboard. Follow Tom on Twitter, @tvanderark.

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Two KC Schools That Use Projects to Engage and Transform | Getting Smart

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Human beings grow when tested. Outward Bound asks people to take on physical challenges they are not sure they can complete. The goal is to build some skills, accomplish some big goals and, in doing so, change how you feel about yourself.

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Leader of educational research
Part 1

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March 7, 2016
Research Brief: What can we learn from John Hattie about Project Based Teaching? (Part 1)

In meetings with school leaders and during PBL 101 workshops, we are often asked: "What does the research say about PBL? Is there hard data to show that it works?" We addressed that question in Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning (Chapter 3). Rest assured that there are plenty of research studies showing that PBL can have more impact on student learning than traditional teaching approaches. But as any teacher knows, there is good PBL and bad PBL. Good PBL inspires and leads to deeper learning. Bad PBL wastes both the teacher's and the students' time. What separates good from bad PBL?

There is no single or simple answer to that question, but we believe what the teacher does while conducting a project is crucial. We describe exemplary project based pedagogy using the term, Project Based Teaching, a set of practices combining careful planning, content selection, culture building, classroom management, instruction, assessment, coaching and scaffolding. Said another way, Project Based Teaching brings together the things excellent teachers have always done, but within the context of Project Based Learning. These practices are an essential to good PBL.

In defining Project Based Teaching, we relied on our own teaching experience as well as the experience of the thousands of teachers we work with each year. We also examined project based and problem based research conducted over the last 30 years. In so doing, we came across the work of University of Melbourne professor John Hattie who has been obsessed with understanding what makes a difference in student learning.

Although not a PBL adherent - actually quite the opposite - Hattie has, for more than 15 years, directed one of the most audacious research projects ever conducted. By studying more than 1000 meta-analyses - a statistical method that combines the results of separate research studies - Hattie has drawn conclusions about the factors that make the most difference in student learning. He bases these conclusions on research that has involved more than 240 million students.

Although ill-informed journalists often trumpet the findings of a single empirical study ("Kale reduces cancer risk!"), many scientists believe a pattern of similar research findings is more compelling than a single study. If multiple research studies conclude the same thing, then the weight of evidence suggests the findings should be taken seriously. Hattie's work is based upon patterns from multiple research studies showing which factors have the most impact on student achievement.

Hattie writes about his colossal synthesis in three books: Visible Learning, Visible Learning for Teachers, and Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn. He also talks about his findings ( here and here). I would urge educators with a scholarly bent to take a look at Visible Learning for Teachers. You will find that his results both support and challenge your own beliefs, and will probably want to consider how your own teaching incorporates the effective practices Hattie identified.

Hattie's findings have inspired their share of controversy, and there are some well-respected researchers who distrust the meta-analysis strategy at the heart of his conclusions. I, however, am a supporter of his findings, believing there is much we can learn from them that can improve Project Based Teaching, and further the concept of Gold Standard Project Based Learning. This post will describe what Hattie has done, and review his major conclusion. Later posts will use the concept of Project Based Teaching as a lens to focus his findings, and reflect upon how his own vision of effective teaching works in a PBL classroom.

What did Hattie find out?

Hattie's first conclusion was that, statistically speaking, nearly everything makes a difference in student achievement. As he puts it: "about 95 percent of all things we do have a positive influence . . . One only needs a pulse and we can improve achievement." Consider the graph below.

The horizontal axis shows the impact of the factors Hattie considered on student achievement. These include characteristics of students, their homes, their schools, curricula, and teaching practices. Those with negative impacts (decreasing student achievement) appear on the left side of the graph. Those that had a moderate impact on achievement are in the middle of the graph. And those that really made a difference appear on the right. (The vertical axis shows the number of times the impact of each factor has been studied, and is unimportant for our purposes. And for the really wonky readers, the faint numbers appearing under the horizontal axis are effect sizes, a statistical measure of impact.)

Note that most of the graph is colored yellow and green. These are the things that have a positive impact on student achievement. At first that seems like good news. Nearly everything we do has some positive impact on students. But the things that we do have associated costs - in time, money, resources or training. Teachers and schools don't have unlimited resources. Shouldn't we emphasize, or at least consider carefully, the things that make the most difference to student learning? On the graph above, they appear in green, to the right of the green arrow labeled Average Impact on Learning. Hattie's message: Focus on the things that make a greater than average impact on student learning.

In Visible Learning for Teachers, Hattie recounts 67 factors that have a greater than average impact on student achievement. (You can find a similar list on this website.) Although most of the research was conducted in traditional classrooms, many of these factors refer to things that good PBL teachers do - or can do - within a project to have a greater than average impact on student learning. We will dig into these factors in the next post. Right now, let's conclude by looking at the big takeaways from Hattie's impressive work.

What does good teaching look like?

First, since it's apparent that most of the things teachers do have a positive impact on student learning, good teaching is not merely to know how to use specific instructional techniques, but when to use what approach, and to mix and match in service of student learning. Hattie writes that good teaching "combines, rather than contrasts, teacher-centered teaching and student-centered learning and knowing."

Projects provide fertile opportunities to do this, pulling together disparate instructional practices - cooperative learning, didactic instruction, peer tutoring, the meta-cognitive strategies of student planning and self-monitoring, woven together with regular formative evaluation and feedback. I like to think of a project as an envelope, in which the teacher - and often teacher and students - combines needed instruction, resources, evaluation, and feedback, organized by a driving question with ample opportunities for student voice and choice.

Second, good teachers are "activators" deeply engaged with their students, rather than mere "facilitators" of learning. For too long, constructivist-leaning educators have romanticized the potential of independent student learning, using the inappropriate metaphor of "inquiry-based" or "discovery" learning. Good teachers - at least in K-12 schooling - have never been limpid guides or stage-bound sages. Instead, they are activators, bringing about changes in their students. This is at the heart of Project Based Teaching. Hattie writes:

"The aim is to get the students actively involved . . . their role is not simply to do tasks as decided by teachers, but to actively manage and understand [their] . . . learning gains. This includes evaluating their own progress, being more responsible for their learning, and being involved with peers in learning together . . . "

Good teaching is interactive. The teacher is planning, managing, and instructing, making choices about when students can carry on without assistance, and when they need resources or content conversations or clarification of project goals. Good teachers and their students have complementary roles. For Hattie, the teacher's mantra is: "I see learning through the eyes of my students; I help students to become their own teachers." This too is an apt description of Project Based Teaching. It is a process of recognizing individual student's progress toward key knowledge, understanding and success skills, then providing enough scaffolding until students can kick away the scaffolds, continue to learn on their own, and monitor their learning progress.

Finally, Hattie believes strongly that at the core of good teaching is an insistent and continuing focus on the actual impact teachers are having on students:

"'My role, as a teacher is to evaluate the effect I have on my students.' It is to 'know thy impact', it is to understand this impact, and it is to act on this knowing and understanding. This requires that teachers gather defensible and dependable evidence . . ."

One important source of information about a teacher's impact is the quality of work students create, as well as test scores and student reflections. Hattie recommends that teachers "hold collaborative discussions with colleagues and students" around learning evidence. There is no teaching method that inevitably works - not even PBL! Good teaching is energetically adjusting classroom practices, project dimensions, and creating new scaffolds and resources for different students. There are many things that a teacher can do to make a difference, many different ways to approach content learning, further student understanding, and develop success skills. Good teachers become better teachers through observation and analysis of their own impact.

Hattie's conclusions about the importance of students developing the tools necessary to take charge of their own learning, and teachers adjusting and changing instruction and projects according to the accomplishments and challenges of their students, accords well with BIE's vision of gold standard Project Based Teaching. His work also identifies specific teaching practices that make a greater than average difference in student learning. We'll take a look at some of those practices in the context of Project Based Teaching in the next post.

Have questions, ideas, or resources to share? Please add them to the Comments below.

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Research Brief: What can we learn from John Hattie about Project Based Teaching? (Part 1) | Blog | Project Based Learning | BIE

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In meetings with school leaders and during PBL 101 workshops, we are often asked: "What does the research say about PBL? Is there hard data to show that it works?" We addressed that question in Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning (Chapter 3).

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https://www.bie.org/blog/what_can_we_learn_from_john_hattie_about_project_based_teaching_part_2

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https://www.bie.org/blog/what_can_we_learn_from_john_hattie_about_project_based_teaching_part_3

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https://www.bie.org/blog/what_can_we_learn_from_john_hattie_about_project_based_teaching_part_4

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Mr. Noon's 5th Grade PBL YouTube Channel.

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Students can't learn to become a "good person" by doing a worksheet, and their creativity can't be measured by taking a test. With that said, as teachers, we often feel that it is our duty to teach them to master academic standards, while also empowering them to think creatively, work together, and above all, learn to be upstanding citizens who care about others.

We have been able to bridge the gap between the classroom and the real world using high-quality project-based learning (PBL). Engaging students in projects that connect them to their local community opens up the door for them to show compassion and give to others in need. During the projects, students learn to work in teams, all while flaunting their individual creativity. Developing this style of projects does not have to be difficult or time-consuming. Plus, seeing the developmental growth of your students is 100% worth it.

Brandi Zivilik

Encouraging students to make a difference gives them a bigger purpose in life and motivates them in and out of the classroom. It lets students know that their thoughts and ideas are important and worth listening to. Additionally, learning is more enjoyable because they feel there is meaning behind it.

One way to engage students in this type of meaningful learning is through project-based lessons that ask students to solve real-world problems. PBL provides students an opportunity to apply what they have learned on a deeper level and develop skills that will make them successful in college and beyond. An example of this was a project I implemented last year where my students had to research a cause they were passionate about, and work together to raise awareness of it by creating fliers, fundraising sites and more.

To kick off the project and hook the students, I had a guest speaker from the WE organization come in and speak to my 6th-grade class about making a difference in the world. During the speech, he asked the students about what causes are important to them, and their answers included a wide variety of topics from suicide prevention to pollution of water in third-world countries.

Each student had his or her own reason for selecting a cause, which made each group enthusiastic about researching and presenting their information.

My classroom ran like a business, and students were challenged to act as advertising analysts to create a campaign to support their cause. Although each group had a different focus area, they were completing the same tasks and learning the same skills. Students set goals at the beginning of the project, and every day they wrote a three- to four-sentence summary of what they accomplished and how it impacted their final product.

During the project, they had to identify their audience, work within an ad budget, and consider how different ads appeal to different audiences, to help with research. Creating cross-curricular, project-based lessons from scratch is extremely time-consuming, so I use Defined STEM to provide students with credible, vetted resources including text, articles, and videos.

Each project required students to research, develop their ideas, analyze their results, and share the data through an end-of-project presentation. They reviewed a wide variety of ads to identify the power of symbols and patterns while analyzing market research reports to determine which advertisement would work best for their audience. Students were able to spread awareness in a variety of creative ways, such as sharing posters and TV announcements in whatever way they could. Some even started their own GoFundMe accounts, and one student asked that I receive board approval for her to sell the bracelet she designed to raise money for the water crisis in Afghanistan. I look forward to seeing her do it!

PBL offers creative freedom, which gives the students a sense of agency, purpose, and bring even more relevancy to learning - engaging them in making an impact in their community and exposing them to local careers. Not only do authentic, community-focused tasks prepare students for what they may encounter as an adult, but it also empowers them to think creatively, work together, think about their future, and above all, learn to be upstanding citizens who care about others.

Pamela Brennan

The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, is a staple for students in the Hopatcong School District. My class had just finished the part where Ponyboy, Johnny, Cherry, and Marcia met at a drive-in movie and I asked, "Have any of you ever been to a drive-in movie?" There was only one hand up. That is when I had the idea of recreating our own theater.

I spoke with the other 8th-grade teachers about weaving the recreation into a PBL opportunity. We brainstormed how to fit the recreation of the drive-in project into the subject area. Bringing teachers from different disciplines together to work on a common project and teach the concept to students who meet at different times is the true definition of collaboration.

In math, students worked with a drive-in movie owner to share business history, do cost comparisons on running a drive-in versus a traditional theater, and discuss proportions and ratios, which came in handy as the students had to figure out projector and screen size and the distance to project on the outside wall of school building. The science teacher worked on a quick lesson about "What makes popcorn pop?"

English classes worked in groups to research a variety of topics, including the history of drive-in theaters and the vocabulary associated with them. Students then reproduced advertising posters and a newsletter from the 1960s that revolved around the plot and characters from The Outsiders.

The community involvement with this project really made it come alive. Members of a local car club volunteered to bring their old cars to the movie and were thrilled to share their love of cars with a younger generation. The PTO volunteered to set up and run a concession stand, purchased 30 copies of the book to give away as prizes, and provided each moviegoer with treats.

Observing students at work was my favorite part of the whole process. They were able to discover their strengths and focus on tasks that interested them. The project also allowed students to push past their comfort zones. Students had an "I Can" attitude, and a large project was completed in a short amount of time with input from all. No one worked in isolation.

When you involve the community in student learning, everyone wins. Adults feel more connected to their children and the school, while students are empowered to use their knowledge to make their community a better place to live. Projects like this empower students to learn, bring relevancy to learning, and teach them to be overall "good people."

For more, see:

Brandi Zivilik is a 6 th -grade social studies teacher at Viking Middle School in Gurnee, IL. Connect with her on Twitter:

Pamela Brennan is a teacher at Hopatcong Middle School in Hopatcong, NJ.
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How Project-Based Learning Unleashes Students' Creativity

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Students can't learn to become a "good person" by doing a worksheet, and their creativity can't be measured by taking a test. With that said, as teachers, we often feel that it is our duty to teach them to master academic standards, while also empowering them to think creatively, work together, and above all, learn to be upstanding citizens who care about others.

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Why is Project Based Learning (PBL) effective?

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Why is Project Based Learning (PBL) effective?

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Impact on students

PBL blends content mastery, meaningful work, and personal connection to create powerful learning experiences, in terms of both academic achievement and students' personal growth.

PBL can be transformative for students, especially those furthest from educational opportunity. Now more than ever, we need young people who are ready, willing, and able to tackle the challenges of their lives and the world they will inherit - and nothing prepares them better than Project Based Learning.

Here are just some of the ways that PBL transforms students' educational experiences:

- Engaged hearts and minds

Students actively engage with PBL projects that provide real-world relevance for learning. Students can solve problems that are important to them and their communities.

- Deeper learning

PBL leads to deeper understanding and greater retention of content knowledge. Students are better able to apply what they know to new situations.

- Exposure to adults and careers

Students interact with adults, businesses and organizations, and their community, and can develop career interests.

- A sense of purpose

A great project can be transformative for students. Seeing a real-world impact gives them a sense of agency and purpose.

- Success skills

Students gain skills valuable in today's workplace and in life, such as how to take initiative, work responsibly, solve problems, collaborate in teams, and communicate ideas.

- Rewarding teacher relationships

Teachers work closely with active, engaged students doing meaningful work, and share in the rediscovered joy of learning.

- Creativity and technology

Students enjoy using a spectrum of technology tools from research and collaboration through product creation and presentation.
See Stories of PBL Success

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We believe Project Based Learning is transformative, providing students with real-world challenges and meaningful experiences that lead to deep and long lasting learning.

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Kansas Commissioner sharing the Kansas Can Vision. 

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Kansas Commissioner sharing the Kansas Can Vision. 

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KASB Newsmakers with Commissioner Randy Watson

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Scott Rothschild sits down with Education Commissioner Randy Watson to discuss Kansans CAN and state assessments

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It is the workforce, not colleges, that are driving the reform for school change and innovation.

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It is the workforce, not colleges, that are driving the reform for school change and innovation.

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Great Article

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Pre-Employment Testing | Talent Management Consulting - Success Performance Solutions

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Yes - you read that right. 65 percent of today's schoolchildren will eventually be employed in jobs that have yet to be created, according to this U.S. Department of Labor report. That also means that many currently employed workers for the first time since the industrial revolution must be thinking about what they will do to make a living 10 to 20 years from now. Rapid technological change is changing the skill requirements for most jobs. Just as manufacturing saw a shift from 80 percent unskilled jobs just 30 years ago to 12 percent today, the next decade will see a shakeout of unskilled jobs in early every industry.

*** FREE ebook " When the SHIFT Hits Your Plan " ***

Technology has already eradicated many jobs. For example, the elevator operator, pinsetter, copy boy, iceman, milkman, switchboard operator, typist, telegraph operator - all jobs that are almost extinct. The list is growing longer day by day.

Both educators and businesses have a daunting task ahead of them: teach students and employees skills to solve problems we've never seen before and won't see for years.

Many other jobs may stick around for a while but expectations and qualifications will evolve. Consider the librarian. Digitization and the Internet require less of a need for a person to be physically present. But research of a vast collection of resources and information is daunting for many people. The librarian of the past was an expert with the Dewey Decimal System. The new librarian will be a digital archivist, savvy with searches, keywords and helpful websites.

Stock brokers and accountants beware too. A stock broker used to be the go-to person to handle all of your investments. Today the order-take stock broker is a dinosaur. The same goes for the tax-preparing accountant. Software and off-shoring has made preparation and filing tax forms easy. Consumers and businesses will retain accountants to offer them business and financial advice, not fill and file forms.

*** Which jobs will be automated first? Download " When the SHIFT Hits Your Plan " ***

"America is at the beginning of its third great technological revolution," writes Ed Gordon in his soon to be released book Future Jobs. He predicts that major breakthroughs will produce new employment opportunities in:

What jobs in your company will be extinct within the next 10 years? What jobs will be changed so much that current employees won't qualify to be hired again? How will your business cope?

What are some of the new career possibilities? Here is a list of 8 new jobs people will have in 2025, at least according to a recent article in Fast Company.

The promises of science fiction are quickly becoming workday realities.

Learn more in this FREE ebook " When the SHIFT Hits Your Plan "

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65 Percent of Today's Students Will Be Employed in Jobs That Don't Exist Yet

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Yes - you read that right. 65 percent of today's schoolchildren will eventually be employed in jobs that have yet to be created, according to this U.S. Department of Labor report. That also means that many currently employed workers for the first time since the industrial revolution must be thinking about what they will do to make a living 10 to 20 years from now.

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Technology is changing the workplace, we need to think about the skills needed for the workplace, not what the jobs will be.

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Technology is changing the workplace, we need to think about the skills needed for the workplace, not what the jobs will be.

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Buck Institute of Education Research

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An overview of the 7 Essential Project Design Elements in the PBLWorks model for Gold Standard PBL. Adapted from "Gold Standard PBL: The Essential Project Design Elements" white paper by John Larmer and John Mergendoller (2015).
Gold Standard Project Based Learning

Project Based Learning is a powerful and transformative pedagogy that-when done well-can help all of our students learn and thrive. But what are the features that differentiate Project Based Learning (PBL) from other instructional approaches, and how can teachers ensure that they are implementing PBL in ways that will be most impactful for their students? In order to help teachers do PBL effectively, PBLWorks has developed a comprehensive, research-informed model for PBL - a "gold standard" to help teachers, schools, and organizations to reflect on and grow their practice. Our framework for Gold Standard PBL is designed to meet the needs of all learners, and includes several key components:

Essential Project Design Elements: These seven elements (the focus of this article) are the characteristics that differentiate a Gold Standard project from other forms of instruction- the key features that are evident in the design of an effective project.

Project Based Teaching Practices: These practices are the instructional moves teachers make to bring a project to life in the classroom. Many of them are familiar practices to teachers, but they look different in the context of a project. In addition to focus areas such as scaffolding and assessment, these teaching practices include the intentional practices teachers use to build a culture of interdependence in the classroom. (Learn more.)

An Equity-Centered Vision for PBL: In addition to knowing the nuts and bolts of PBL pedagogy, effective PBL teachers hold a clear vision for how their project design and implementation will meet the needs of all of their learners. This includes attending to four "levers" for equitable PBL- knowledge of students, cognitive demand, literacy, and shared power- and regularly using these levers to reflect on and refine practice. (Learn more.)

Each component of the Gold Standard frameworks is intended to support all students in deep learning of meaningful and relevant learning goals, so let's begin our discussion there.

Student Learning Goals

Student learning of academic content and skill development are at the center of any well-designed project. Like the lens of a camera, our framework puts the focus of PBL on helping students gain the knowledge, understanding, and success skills they need to thrive:

Key Knowledge and Understanding: Gold Standard PBL teaches students the important content standards, concepts, and in-depth understandings that are fundamental to school subject areas and academic disciplines. In good projects, students learn how to apply knowledge to the real world, and use it to solve problems, answer complex questions, and create high-quality products.

Key Success Skills: Content knowledge and conceptual understanding, by themselves, are not enough. In school and college, in the workplace, as community members, and in their lives generally, people need to be able to think critically and solve problems, work well with others, and communicate effectively. They also need to manage projects and approach novel tasks with creativity and innovation. We call these kinds of competencies "success skills." They are also known as "College and Career Readiness Skills" and are often seen in "Graduate Profiles" created by schools and districts.

It's important to note that success skills can only be taught through the acquisition of content knowledge and understanding. For example, students don't learn critical thinking skills in the abstract, isolated from subject matter; they gain them by thinking critically about math, science, history, English, career/tech subjects, the arts, and so on.

We recommend that each project explicitly teach and assess one or two specific success skills, even though students may learn other skills as well. Projects can also help students to develop and strengthen other personal qualities (such as perseverance and compassion), rooted in the needs and values of students and their local community.

Essential Project Design Elements

So what characterizes an effective project? Based on an extensive literature review and the distilled experience of the many educators we have worked with over the past several decades, we believe the following Essential Project Design Elements outline what is necessary for an effective project that maximizes student learning and engagement.

Challenging Problem or Question

The What: The heart of a project - what it is "about" - is a problem to investigate and solve, or a question to explore and answer. This question should be aligned to learning goals and, as much as possible, should connect to students' interests, identities, and communities. The challenge could be concrete (the school needs to do a better job of recycling waste) or abstract (deciding if and when war is justified). When teachers design and conduct a project, we suggest they (sometimes with students) write the central problem or question in the form of an open-ended, student-friendly "driving question" that focuses their task, like a thesis focuses an essay (e.g., "How can we improve our school's recycling system, so we can reduce waste?" or "Should the U.S. have fought the Vietnam War?"). Note that this problem or question should not be simple to answer, but should be cognitively demanding for students and require them to engage in deep and original thought.
The Why: A well-designed problem or question makes learning meaningful for students. They are not just gaining knowledge to remember it; they are learning because they have a real need to know something, so they can use this knowledge to solve a problem or answer a question that matters to them. This also helps students develop a problem-solving disposition, and creates the context for building skills and confidence that students can apply to other challenges in their lives, communities, and work.

Sustained Inquiry

The What: To inquire is to seek information or to investigate - it's a more active, in-depth process than just "looking something up" in a book or online. The inquiry process takes time, which means a Gold Standard project lasts more than a few days. In PBL, inquiry is iterative; when confronted with a challenging problem or question, students ask questions, find and use resources and other learning experiences to help develop answers to those questions, then ask deeper questions - and the process repeats. Projects can incorporate different modes of seeking answers, mixing the traditional idea of "research" - reading a book or searching a website - with other learning experiences such as labs, field trips, or interviews with experts and end-users.

The Why: Learning through sustained inquiry helps students engage with the world from a place of curiosity. Students who do inquiry-based projects develop the capacity to ask meaningful questions and the agency to effectively seek answers to those questions. Sustained inquiry also helps content and skills "stick:" students are not just passively receiving knowledge, they are actively seeking and co-constructing it.

Authenticity

The What: When people say something is authentic, they generally mean it is real or genuine, not fake or contrived. In education, the concept has to do with how "real-world" the learning or the task is. A project can be authentic in several ways, often in combination. It can have an authentic context, such as when students solve problems like those faced by people in the world outside of school (e.g., entrepreneurs developing a business plan, engineers designing a bridge, or advisors to the City Council recommending policy). It can involve the use of real-world processes, tasks and tools, and performance standards, such as when students plan an experimental investigation or use digital editing software to produce professional quality videos. It can have a real impact on others, such as when students address a need in their school or community (e.g., designing and building a school garden, improving a community park, providing support to local immigrant families) or create a product or service that will be used or experienced by others. Finally, a project can have personal authenticity when it speaks to students' own concerns, interests, cultures, identities, and issues in their lives.

The Why: When a project is designed with authenticity in mind, students are engaged in learning for a purpose. Their motivation increases because they see why what they are learning matters. Students also understand how to transfer their learning, as they apply the concepts and skills from the standards to life beyond the classroom. Finally, designing projects with authenticity in mind helps to bridge the gap between school and home, and provides an opportunity for students to use and share the knowledge and skills they bring into the classroom (including cultural competency, community wisdom, place-based knowledge, and language skills).

Student Voice & Choice

The What: Gold Standard projects include opportunities for students to make their voices and perspectives heard, within and beyond the classroom. Students are invited to speak in their own ways and to express their own opinions, rather than speak in ways they think the teacher wants.

Effective projects are also shaped by student choice: students can have input and (some) control over many aspects of a project, from the questions they generate, to the resources they will use to find answers to their questions, to the tasks and roles they will take on as team members, to the products they will create. More advanced students may go even further and select the topic and nature of the project itself; they can write their own driving question and decide how they want to investigate it, demonstrate what they have learned, and how they will share their work.

The Why: Having a say in a project creates a sense of ownership in students; they care more about- and bring more of themselves to- the project. When student voices are centered in projects, they are able to learn from one another, and they learn that their voices and ideas matter.

Creating opportunities for student choice in a project also increases student engagement and ownership. Additionally, students learn how to evaluate options and strategically approach challenges- critical skills that will support their leadership and agency within and well beyond the classroom walls.
Finally, both voice and choice within a project contribute to a culture of shared power- students learn to recognize their own power and that of their peers, and learn to use that power responsibly to benefit each other and the larger community.

Reflection

The What: John Dewey, whose ideas continue to inform our thinking about PBL, pointed out that we do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience. Throughout a project, students - and the teacher - should reflect on what they're learning, how they're learning, and why they're learning, as well as how they are changing as learners. Reflection can occur informally, as part of classroom culture and dialogue, but should also be an explicit part of project journals, scheduled formative assessment, discussions at project checkpoints, and public presentations of student work.

The Why: Reflection on the content knowledge and understanding gained helps students solidify what they have learned and think about how it might apply elsewhere, beyond the project. Reflection on the project itself - how it was designed and implemented - helps students decide how they might approach their next project, and helps teachers improve the quality of their PBL practice. And reflection on their own growth as learners- including in the area of success skill development- helps students to take ownership of their learning, celebrate success, and identify new goals for continued growth.

Critique & Revision

The What: High quality student work is a hallmark of Gold Standard PBL, and such quality is attained through thoughtful critique and revision. Students should be taught how to give and receive constructive peer feedback that will improve project processes and products, guided by rubrics, models, and formal feedback/critique protocols. In addition to peers and teachers, outside adults and experts can also contribute to the critique process, bringing an authentic, real-world point of view.

The Why: Giving and receiving purposeful feedback helps students build a shared understanding of what quality work looks like with regard to the targeted content and skills. It also expands responsibility for formative assessment and collective learning from the teacher alone to the whole class, helping to create a culture of interdependence and investment in collective learning. Finally, regularly engaging in critique and revision processes helps students to develop a growth mindset- moving from a paradigm in which work is "right or wrong" to a paradigm in which work is always improving.

Public Product

The What: In Gold Standard PBL, students share the work they create with an audience beyond the classroom. This can take many forms: a tangible product that students design or build, or the presentation of a solution to a problem or an answer to a driving question. A public product can be complex- the launch of a large-scale event, website, or change effort in the community- or simple- a video conference with classroom family members or a presentation to another class in the school. What's important is that someone beyond the teacher will see students' work and hear about their learning.

Many PBL schools and districts reinforce this message by repurposing the traditional "open house" into an exhibition of project work, which helps build understanding and support for PBL among stakeholders. When the public sees what high-quality products students can create, they're often surprised - and eager to see more.

The Why: There are three major reasons for creating a public product in Gold Standard PBL. First, like authenticity, a public product adds greatly to PBL's motivating power and encourages high-quality work. When students have to present or display their work to an audience beyond the classroom, the stakes- and the bar for student performance- are raised.

Second, by creating a product, students make what they have learned tangible and thus, when shared publicly, discussible. Instead of only being a private exchange between an individual student and teacher, the social dimension of learning becomes more important. This has an impact on classroom and school culture, helping create a "learning community," where students and teachers discuss what is being learned, how it is learned, what are acceptable standards of performance, and how student performance can be made better.

Finally, making student work public is an effective way to communicate with families, community members, and the wider world about what PBL is and what it does for students. When a classroom, school, or district opens itself up to public scrutiny, the message is, "Here's what our students can do - we're about more than test scores."

The Essential Project Design Elements are designed to serve as guideposts for teachers when planning Gold Standard projects for their classrooms. They are also intended to be developed over time- not all Elements will be strong in a teacher's first project, but they will become more evident as teachers and their students gain experience and confidence with the project process. What's most important as teachers begin to work with the Essential Project Design Elements is that they do so with a focus on the transformative impact that PBL can have for all students.

Yes, we provide PBL training for educators!

PBLWorks offers a variety of PBL workshops, courses and services for teachers, school and district leaders, and instructional coaches - whether you're just getting started or advancing your practice.

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Gold Standard PBL: Essential Project Design Elements

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An overview of the 7 Essential Project Design Elements in the PBLWorks model for Gold Standard PBL. Adapted from "Gold Standard PBL: The Essential Project Design Elements" white paper by John Larmer and John Mergendoller (2015).

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Buck Institute Research

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Adapted from Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning: A Proven Approach to Rigorous Classroom Instruction, by John Larmer, John Mergendoller, Suzie Boss (ASCD 2015). This post is also available as a downloadable article.
Teachers who make Project Based Learning a regular part of their teaching enjoy their new role, although for some it might take time to adjust from traditional practice. It's fun to get creative when designing a project, instead of just using "off the shelf" curriculum materials. Most teachers like working collaboratively with their colleagues when planning and implementing projects, and interacting with other adults from the community or the wider world. And PBL teachers find it rewarding to work closely alongside students, tackling a real-world challenge or exploring a meaningful questions.

When transitioning to PBL, one of the biggest hurdles for many teachers is the need to give up some degree of control over the classroom, and trust in their students. But even though they are more often the "guide on the side" than the "sage on the stage," this most certainly does not mean that teachers don't "teach" in a PBL classroom. Many traditional practices remain, but are reframed in the context of a project.

Design & Plan

Teachers create or adapt a project for their context and students, and plan its implementation from launch to culmination while allowing for some degree of student voice and choice.

Align to Standards

Teachers use standards to plan the project and make sure it addresses key knowledge and understanding from subject areas to be included.

Build the Culture

Teachers explicitly and implicitly promote student independence and growth, open-ended inquiry, team spirit, and attention to quality.

Manage Activities

Teachers work with students to organize tasks and schedules, set checkpoints and deadlines, find and use resources, create products and make them public.

Scaffold Student Learning

Teachers employ a variety of lessons, tools, and instructional strategies to support all students in reaching project goals.

Assess Student Learning

Teachers use formative and summative assessments of knowledge, understanding, and success skills, and include self and peer assessment of team and individual work.

Engage & Coach

Teachers engage in learning and creating alongside students, and identify when they need skill-building, redirection, encouragement, and celebration.

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Gold Standard PBL: Project Based Teaching Practices

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Adapted from Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning: A Proven Approach to Rigorous Classroom Instruction, by John Larmer, John Mergendoller, Suzie Boss (ASCD 2015). This post is also available as a downloadable article. Teachers who make Project Based Learning a regular part of their teaching enjoy their new role, although for some it might take time to adjust from traditional practice.

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Digital Leadership
http://ericsheninger.com/

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A fiscally responsible mechanism to increase student engagement and achievement using shared responsibility and skill strengths to implement research-based instructional strategies.

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Can Project Based Learning Help Social Emotional Needs?

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Can Project Based Learning Help Social Emotional Needs?

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March 23, 2017
The Perfect Couple: Social Emotional Learning & Gold Standard PBL

May I share something personal with you? I have, a few times in my life, found myself in a "PBL relationship" with a seemingly awesome interdisciplinary (read: meticulously planned, artfully scaffolded, student centered) project and watched in dismay as it fizzled. Maybe you've experienced similar PBL heartbreak. It happens to the best of us. Sometimes projects with " Gold Standard " potential on paper go out with more of a whimper than a bang. I've come to believe the key "missing ingredient" is this: personal emotional/affective connection, coupled with the integration of social emotional competencies:

Self-awareness

Self-management

Responsible decision-making

Relationship skills

Social awareness

These competencies are too often dismissed as intrinsic personality traits of "good students," something they acquire at home (or not), rather than skills that can be taught and reinforced every day at school. These competencies are closely related to what we at BIE call " Success Skills," but they are more subtle and behavior based.

Reflections on a Project
I sat down last October with Karen, an English teacher at Lana'i High and Elementary School, Hawai'i, in one of my Place-Based, Project Based Learning "(PB)2" cohorts, to review student project evaluations from the previous year, and to reflect on overall strengths and needs. The qualitative and quantitative data was better than we'd expected: marked improvement in critical thinking, metacognition, "college and career ready" research skills, written and verbal communication skills, academic confidence and effective collaboration. We did a happy dance, then settled into more professional "cautious optimism." There was still much to be done.

Based on our findings, and her own take-aways from the previous year, Karen decided to revise project plans, and continue with the same interdisciplinary project focus: supporting more culturally appropriate, environmentally sustainable, and economically viable food options on Lana'i. She felt that last year's students could have been more personally invested and more accountable to each other, rather than to her.

I considered her concerns and goals, and then Karen focused on improving her entry event.

A More Emotionally Engaging Entry Event
Last year, students had read, and written about, Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The two-step project entry event included a visit with a community mentor-a lawyer who specializes in Native American food sovereignty-and a close reading assignment about the significance of culturally and environmentally appropriate food availability. During our conference session, and earlier post-observation reflection sessions, I asked Karen to consider how she might adjust her entry events to build deeper emotional investment, and even deeper critical thinking about food and culture.

She had launched projects by asking students to consider food from an intellectual standpoint-economically, culturally, environmentally. This year, I suggested she back up a step and ask students to share emotionally charged food experiences through reading and writing food memoirs. Although this would take extra time, and require some "MacGyvering" of content plans, I was confident the benefits (stronger SEL competencies, increased time-on-task, higher quality projects and products, and, finally a more impactful exhibition night) would outweigh the risks (less time to arrange field trips, schedule filming, collect and grade annotated bibliographies, meet with teams, and plan for exhibition night).

In lieu of handing students a long, heavily-researched article about the widening gap between cultures and culturally-appropriate foods in schools, as she had the previous year, Karen asked students to read, mark, and discuss " Duck," a one-page personal narrative from the New Yorker by British "über chef" Heston Blumenthal. The piece recounts the complex steps necessary to create a swank update of "duck à l'orange" and homes in on the visceral link between food and memory. I recommend this piece to many 7-12 grade teachers. It contains enough culinary jargon and unfamiliar imagery to require close reading, context-based comprehension strategies, and collaborative meaning-making, yet students still find the content interesting and the message subtly moving.

The lesson plan was fairly simple: After spending half a double-block reading and discussing "Duck," students would reflect on and list their own food-related memories. They'd select their three most vivid and emotionally-charged food memories, journal for three minutes or so about each one, then choose one to share in a quick "turn and talk." The next class meeting, students would begin workshopping their own food memoirs. At the end of the week they would "publish" all or part of their memoirs in a writer's circle-inspired protocol.

I told Karen it was essential that she take time to write with her students, and share her own food memoir in writer's circle.

A Successful Project Launch
During our follow-up the following week, Karen recounted the events of the week with unprecedented enthusiasm. She couldn't believe the quality of the written work submitted-especially this early in the school year. What pleased her even more was the fact that several of her most reluctant students, those who rarely completed written work, and who almost never spoke in class, had opened up the most and written with the highest degree of emotional authenticity. One of these students wrote and shared a memory of his last meal with his father before his father was taken away to prison. The class was in tears as he read. Karen's voice broke when she talked about it.

Now students were ready to launch into the projects, to consider the overarching Driving Question:

How does what we eat affect who we are and what we become?

I visited Karen's classes last week to observe and chat with students about their projects. They were in the stage of their projects that Tony Harris, Will Fowler and I used to call "the weeds." Every team was either near-frantic or "in the zone." Reviewing footage, designing charts and graphs, yelling at each other about missing research, outside the classroom door pacing with cell phones, leaving messages about meeting with community health experts, grocery store managers, arranging visits to the loading docks, downloading FDA food pyramids. When I approached them to ask about their driving questions, final products and presentation plans, it was clear I was interrupting something very important.

Their work was very important because their projects were very important, because food is important to culture, economy, and environment, of course.

But mostly because food is important to them.

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May I share something personal with you? I have, a few times in my life, found myself in a "PBL relationship" with a seemingly awesome interdisciplinary (read: meticulously planned, artfully scaffolded, student centered) project and watched in dismay as it fizzled. Maybe you've experienced similar PBL heartbreak.

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Example of how PBL.

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Rigor and Relevance
http://www.leadered.com/

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Increased Opportunities for Students

Learning flexibility so students can participate in job shadowing, internships and apprenticeships --- Anywhere, Anytime Learning -- Virtual platform

College credits (earn A.S.), certifications/apprenticeships - trades

Students learning at their own pace including acceleration

Character Education including Soft Skills (dependability, honesty, hard work, being on time etc.)

Real World learning - Project Based Learning --- Hands On Learning --Total Engagement -- Cross - Curricular

School/business partnerships

Real business challenges/problems - team with students to solve

Renewed or increased focus on Vocational Education

Individual Plans of Study

Social Emotional component

Collaboration with all stakeholders (Community Business Leaders, Colleges, etc)

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http://www.interventioncentral.org/academic-interventions/reading-comprehension/reciprocal-teaching-reading-comprehension-package

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When you open this docuement, right click and click rotate clockwise to view properly.

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Right Click on the document and rotate clockwise to be able to read it properly.