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(Above is a rubric)

(1)   "Why:" Explain why you will do this assessment/activity (Why are you doing this particular assessment? How will it help students explore and express their identities? How will it benefit them and you? Use vocabulary/concepts from the unit in your response.)

I chose to elaborate on the assessment Service Based Learning. Service Based Learning is to help students apply what they are learning to real-life problems. In an English class this is perfect for me to choose novels that relate to this. Such as To Kill a Mockingbird and racism plays a huge role in that novel. Students can relate to that in a sense of how far the world has come and to learn more about their ancestors. I am doing this assessment to allow students to express how they feel towards that topic. As well as if they have personal experiences that relate to some characters in the novel.  Students will be able to explore their identities by having the opportunity to see where they stand and to see what kind of opinions, they form that reflect who they are.

(2)   "What:" Explain what you will do for this assessment and how you will implement it. This is where you'll tell ME (not your students) the logistical details: Will the projects be completed at home (beware of bias) or at school? Will students be working in groups or alone? If in groups, how will those groups be assigned? How much time will be allotted each day or in total to work on this? Etc.

This project will be completed within the unit. Readings will obviously be mostly outside of the classroom but on occasion students will have time to read in class. Students will be primarily working alone but at times they will have time to collaborate within the classroom. Hopefully an allotted time frame would be at least an hour a day to complete a couple chapters of the novel. Discussions will be within class that will allow students to discuss in groups or even discuss as a class. Within groups they will be assigned to have new people each time so that the discussions can vary and new opinions will be heard.

(3)   "How:" Explain how you will review and use the results of this assessment to improve your instruction, the class environment, assignments, etc. How will you use the information students provide?

To use the information that students provide I will create an assignment of students creating their own padlet. With their padlet they will be allowed to brainstorm on the novel. Starting with a huge part of the novel, which is the problem that is faced within it. They will then go further to discuss if this problem is still an issue in today’s world as well as how they truly feel about this struggle.

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Service-based learning helps students apply what they are learning to real-life problems. Students in an English class can apply novels and articles read that relate to them and real life.

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Cooperative learning is an instructional format in which students have to work together in small groups to master the skills lesson. The jigsaw model would be a good way to get students to cooperate and work together. Students will be split up into a different groups to complete worksheets. After the students complete the worksheet they will meet back to share their findings with other classmates.

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Inquiry-based learning is based on guiding students to find information for themselves and gaining knowledge on their own. Allowing students to choose articles that guide them to gain their own opinion on a particular topic. Attached is successful ways to interact, clarify, question, and design to support students.

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by Terry Heick

According to Indiana University Bloomington, Inquiry-based learning is an "instructional model that centers learning on a solving a particular problem or answering a central question. There are several different inquiry-based learning models, but most have several general elements in common:

Learning focuses around a meaningful, ill-structured problem that demands consideration of diverse perspectives

Academic content-learning occurs as a natural part of the process as students work towards finding solutions

Learners, working collaboratively, assume an active role in the learning process

Teachers provide learners with learning supports and rich multiple media sources of information to assist students in successfully finding solutions

Learners share and defend solutions publicly in some manner"

The process itself can be broken down into stages, or phases, that help teachers frame instruction. The model we've created can be used as a guide for teachers, as it includes teacher and student indicators at each stage, ideal "tones" of each phase, and even apps that can support that phase as well.

Inquiry-based learning is an approach that can easily accommodate project-based learning, challenge-based learning, place-based education, blended learning, and other trends in education.
4 Phases of Inquiry-Based Learning: A Guide For Teachers Big Idea: Dive into engaging, relevant, and credible media forms to identify a 'need' or opportunity for inquiry
The first phase of inquiry (often produced by strategies for promoting inquiry-based learning) is one characterized by interaction. This interaction can be:

Student-to-material. This material is ideally obtained through formal (i.e., research) and informal (e.g., reading, social and digital media, collaboration) means. It can be modeled or supplemented by teacher-provided materials

Student-to-peer. This interaction is chosen by teacher or student, informed by need for information and perspective

Student-to-expert (experts within relevant fields at accessible levels)

Student-to-media (digital, text, pure data, etc.)

The nature of inquiry is ideally both curiosity-based and fluid. Narrow criteria, restrictive rubrics, and other traditional artifacts of 'school work' can stifle inquiry at this point of the learning process. The teacher's role at this point in the learning process is focused on resources, modeling curiosity, and cognitive coaching.

Tone: Open-minded, curious, unburdened, playful

Student Indicators: actively skims a variety of media, follows curiosity, responds with awe, dwells with certain media depending on curiosity or perceived utility; seeks out peers for ideas and resources

Teacher Indicators: models curiosity, thinks-aloud when interacting with disparate media, asks probing questions, withholds evaluative statements, provides exemplars, monitors and encourages student thinking habits

Apps: FlipBoard, Pocket, Podkicker, Zotero

Appropriate Questions: What sources of information are available to me? What do others around me know? What's worth studying? What possibilities, problems, or situations tend to interest me? What types of experiences, perspectives, and data are available to me? When am I at my best?
Big Idea: Summarizing, paraphrasing, and categorizing learning with teacher or expert support.
This happens by analyzing data, identifying and clarifying misconceptions, and otherwise 'getting a feel' for the scale, nature, and possibility of selected topics of inquiry.

After skimming, reading, watching, and otherwise interacting with a variety of media, this stage of the inquiry process is centered around students clarifying both their own thinking, and the nature of 'things' around them: ideas for projects, scientific challenges, opportunities for revision, need for design thinking, a new scale to tackle persistent problems, etc.

Thinking patterns are both inward and reflective, and outward and communicated. In that way, students both reflect on their own knowledge, while beginning to identify possible pathways forward.

Tone: Slightly more focused, reflective, independent, cautious

Student Indicators: Paraphrases understanding in familiar language; resists looking for 'answers' and 'solutions'; distinguishes between fact and opinion; evaluates the credibility and relevance of sources; focused on possibility

Teacher Indicators: offers non-evaluative and frequent feedback; provides relevant graphic organizers and other ways to 'frame' student thinking; asks probing questions that focus on student thinking: what they know and why they think they know it;

Appropriate Questions: What's the big picture here? What are the pieces and how do they fit? What's accessible, and what's not? What's possible? Am I missing critical data, perspectives, or opportunities for collaboration that could further clarify my thinking? What do I seem to understand, and how do I know?
Apps: MindMeister, WordPress, Quora, reddit Big Idea: Asking questions to drive continued, self-directed inquiry
The questioning phase is a critical phase of the inquiry-based learning process, if for no other reason than misunderstandings, lack of organization, uneven confidence, or an inability to see the 'big picture' surface here more clearly than other phases.

Students and teachers alike must also be able to trust the nature and patterns of inquiry that are often recursive and iterative: They often move back and forth between phases, and new skills and understandings can be obtained in frustratingly small increments. Inquiry-based learning is more about the process, tone, and instincts of learning than other 'tidier' academic forms, which can require both students and teachers to adjust their measures of progress, quality, and success.

Tone: Creative, confident, interdependent

Student Indicators: Curious, precise with questions, self-monitoring, big-picture thinking, little-picture application

Teacher Indicators: models questioning, thinks-aloud in revising irrelevant or otherwise flawed questions; models use of concept-mapping tools to analyze thinking; hosts QFT sessions and Socratic seminars

Appropriate Questions: What's worth understanding? Where are my knowledge gaps? What is both within and beyond my reach? What have I done in the past that can help me in this situation moving forward?

Apps: Evernote, MindMeister, twitter, Quora, reddit
Big Idea: Designing an accessible, relevant, and curiosity-driven action or product to culminate and justify inquiry
At this final stage of the inquiry-based learning process, learners are focused on design.

Design of solutions to address problems within a manageable scale

Design of logical and curiosity-based applications of current understanding

Design of next steps to extend their own learning pathway

Tone: Creative, restrained, calculating

Appropriate Questions:What now? What audience makes sense for this research? Where can I do 'good work'? What would be 'cool'? What have others before me done?

Apps: Posts, Mextures, Inkist, Google Drive, DesignPad, Foldify

Student Indicators: Clarifies thinking, busy, self-directed, uncertain but efficacious, follows curiosity

Teacher Indicators: Creates 'conditions and means' for collaboration; i dentifies areas for revision, reflects back on entire process (i.e., "how we get to this point")
4 Student Questions For Post-Phase Reflection
After the inquiry-based learning process is 'finished' (for the purposes of classroom work, publishing, grading, etc.), it can be helpful for students to reflect in the inquiry-based learning process through questions such as:

What skills did I depend on?

What do I now understand more deeply, and how do I know?

If I had more time or resources, what else could I have done?

What is the role of inquiry in learning?
4 Phases of Inquiry-Based Learning: A Guide For Teachers; image attribution flickr user woodleywonderworks and usgahumphreys

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4 Phases Of Inquiry-Based Learning: A Guide For Teachers

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The phases of inquiry-based learning can vary depending on context but generally include Interacting, Clarifying, Questioning, and Designing.

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Problem based learning and inquiry based learning are alike in that students apply their knowledge to research, investigate, and solve a problem. In an English class involving a novel that has a problem then having students create a padlet to help them brainstorm how to solve that problem within the novel. Attached is a file that goes further in depth on how effective Problem-Based Learning is within a classroom.

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Project-based learning can allow students to demonstrate his or her capabilities while working on project as groups. Below is attached an article that an English teacher wrote based on Project- Based Learning. In the article Veronica Buckler says, "When planning projects for the students, it’s really about engaging them in today’s world." To include project based learning in my class I want my students to be challenged in their thinking to be able to form their own opinions and ideas.

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By: Veronica Buckler, High School PBL Facilitator

Columbus Signature Academy New Tech High School

Columbus, IN
@bucklekat13
The root of Project Based Learning is the authenticity of the content. This is true in any subject area and in any classroom. When a teacher finds a way to show the students that what they are learning directly ties to something in "real life" the students are that much more engaged and purposeful in their learning. When our classroom launches our garden and feast project, students know exactly why we are learning the content and how they may use it in the future. When it comes to an English classroom, authenticity and PBL fit naturally.

Even before I started at CSA, my teaching practices had started to move towards PBL practices like community partners, student-driven lessons, and a culminating event/product that served a purpose. However, it may seem daunting to fully shift a classroom from traditional means of language study to a project-based, student-driven classroom without any guidance. Some of the struggles may come from the need for basic grammar lessons or even the idea that classics need to be taught. Another challenge could possibly be finding the authenticity in the lessons a teacher already uses. Either way, once an authentic outcome is developed, all of the pieces fit in according to the students' knows (what students already know about the subject/topic of study) and need to knows (the questions students have about the subject/topic of study). By letting the students drive the content, a teacher is better able to facilitate the necessary learning to accomplish real-world tasks. Through using specific structures in each project that reinforce the basic ELA standards, project-based learning brings an English Language Arts classroom to the next level in terms of engagement, application, and authenticity.

Each project in our integrated Global Science Perspectives (Environmental Studies and English 9) course follows a basic structure which ensures that English content is included. GSP, as it is known, is a combination of English 9 and Environmental Studies which focuses on topics that range from the environment to community involvement to city planning. In every project, students have either a choice of novels to read, or they are given nonfiction information and argumentative writings. A large written piece is assigned, along with daily writing assignments, which also prompt grammar lessons according to workshop requests. There are always discussions about the readings to work on reading comprehension and application of specific themes. Here are five projects we've done in GSP that incorporate English standards into an authentic product.

The first project of the year for my classroom is a "get to know you" type, while also gently introducing the students to a project-based learning (PBL) format. Titled " A Walk in the Woods ", students are challenged to find a memory connected to nature that made an impact on their life. Using this memory, they will write a narrative story in the style of a memoir. To demonstrate what a nature memoir is like, we give them a choice of four different memoirs to read and explore. This past year we offered A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson , A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah , The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls , and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer . Throughout the project, we have workshops focused on observation skills, storytelling, writing dialogue, plot, and character development. We hold a literature circle discussion every week, and quiz students on their reading comprehension weekly, too. Our goal for an authentic outcome is for the students to learn how to reflect on their lives, learn from previous experiences, and share their stories with an audience in a format similar to The Moth Radio Hour , a radio program that showcases storytelling through the life experiences of everyday people.

Our next project of the year focuses on our school garden and World Food Day in coordination with National Farm to School Month . Each group is assigned a plot in the school garden to grow their choice of vegetable. They are then asked to research a piece of the larger topic of sustainable food, as well as the care and maintenance for their crop. In years past, their informative or argumentative essays have been published in Farm Indiana , a monthly insert in our local newspaper. Everyone reads Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman , a novel about how a community garden can bring a diverse group of people together, and some of our advanced readers will tackle The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan , which is a journalist tracing four meals from the farm to the table. Our fall harvest is then used to throw a feast for our community where students cook the food, provide demonstrations, or inform the audience on sustainable living.

During the second semester, we launch our Dystopian Masterpiece Theatre Project. We use this project as an introduction to theatre, as well as practice in verbal and nonverbal communication. Each group will write their own five-minute dystopian themed skit and perform it at a local theatre run by our community partner, Robert Hay-Smith . We review plot again, discuss character development, and introduce irony and the strange twist. Students get a choice between four different dystopian novels: The Circle by Dave Eggers ,, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood , and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins . We also supplement with short stories by Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, and Kurt Vonnegut. Through this project, students explore ways literature is used to criticize society and affect change, as well as how to be a more effective communicator.

Our last project of the year is one of the most favorite freshmen projects at our school. The mock trial project focuses on a key legal, social, environmental, or moral issue that is relevant to that year. In the past, we have hosted mock trials over the use of Native American culture as mascots, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and sanctuary cities. Students audition for a role in the court case, such as the judge, the defense team, witnesses, or the jury. They then prepare for their part through research, persuasive writing, informative writing, or practice listening and note-taking skills. As with other projects, we offer novel choices that highlight similar themes with the case. For our sanctuary city project, we read Little Bee by Chris Cleave, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah , The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini , and . All of these novels focus on characters that must escape violence and sometimes persecution, becoming refugees and immigrants. This project focuses on research and argumentative writing. Students are asked to not only understand their side of the argument but to be able to respond to the other side. Our judges work on taking on more authority during the project, while our witnesses get to work on improvisation and acting. The members of the jury have a chance to develop stronger observational skills, while also learning how hard it is to be unbiased and objective. The best part of this project is the fact that our county courthouse gives us the use of one of their courtrooms for the whole day.

Having PBL in an English classroom has really opened up my understanding of the application of language arts standards in the real world. We really have a chance to introduce a wide range of topics and skills to our students through the flexibility of our standards. When planning projects for the students, it's really about engaging them in today's world. It might take retiring some of the classics while digging for a different classic or a more modern novel. It might be rethinking the purpose of the assigned essay, but in the end, project-based learning (PBL) allows facilitators and students to find a more engaging and purposeful dive into English Language Arts. So start exploring your community and identify those authentic problems that your students can take charge of with excitement.

Veronica Buckler is an English and social studies teacher at Columbus Signature Academy in Columbus, IN. She is a five year teacher, with three of those in PBL. Veronica's favorite part of facilitating in a PBL environment is the creativity and ingenuity displayed by her students as they work through and complete projects in multiple ways.

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Tagged: English, project based learning, 2019 Jan.-May

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English in a Project Based Learning Setting - Magnify Learning

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By: Veronica Buckler, High School PBL Facilitator Columbus Signature Academy New Tech High School Columbus, IN @bucklekat13 The root of Project Based Learning is the authenticity of the content. This is true in any subject area and in any classroom.