PBL Project Design Focus When designing a PBL Project, your focus is to teach students academic content area knowledge and skills drawn from district or state standards. Your project also focuses on building students’ ability to think critically, solve problems, collaborate, and communicate (3Cs), which are the 21st Century skills students need to prepare for life and work in today’s...
Scope First PBL Project needs to be modest in scope to achieve the best result. Andrew Miller stresses that if you are just getting started with Project Based Learning, “Don’t Go Crazy”. Miller’s article “Getting Started with Project-Based Learning (Hint: Don’t Go Crazy)” suggests a few things to consider if you are just started with PBL: Limited Scope: Try to focus on two or three priority...
3 Ways Building Mistake Tolerance Carl Slater, author of Nurturing Mistake Tolerance in the Classroom article, suggests 3 ways to build mistake tolerance in the classroom by: Use Jigsaw Activities Guide students to Get the GIST Actively Model Critical Thinking Slater points out that “Teachers can help students get over the fear of making a mistake by showing them that errors are just a part of...
What is SCRUM? Why I Scrum: Using a Project Management Tool for PBL SCRUM tools support Scrum ceremonies, including planning sprints, keeping track of daily work, refining backlogs, and using data from the past to keep improving. When people work together on these tasks, Scrum tools help them stay focused by connecting the work to its value. If you are a teacher who works on projects with...
Explore Project Idea To explore a project idea, you need to develop an idea by looking at places to start turning your wheels, according to PBL IN Elementary Grades book. The information for project ideas is from the following in this blog: PBL IN THE ELEMENTARY GRADES Step-by-Step Guidance, Tools and Tips for Standards-Focused K-5 Projects book suggests to look at the standards. Trevor Muir...
What is Unconscious Bias? Unconscious bias is also called implicit bias—a type of social cognition that occurs below the surface, making it harder to detect as defined by Huda Essa, author of the book The Consciously Unbiased Educator. Essa cites social scientists who believe unconscious bias can develop as early as age 3 (Flannery, 2015). They are often undetected and may even contradict a...
Rigor in Project Based Learning Seeking Rigor In PBL What is Rigorous Project Based Learning? Robert Marzano presents a way to design projects that emphasizes the enhancement of students’ options. He uses structures that provide clear pathways to rigor from his book Understanding Rigor in the Classroom. The goal of Project Based instruction is for students to design their own projects...
Self-Efficacy with Student Agency Agency is a composite set of essential skills researchers refer to, as self-efficacy, planning, and acting, reflecting on learning, and having a growth mindset are important to long-term student success. This is explained in the book, Teaching Kids to Thrive, by Dr. Debbie Thomas Silver and Debra Stafford. Dr. Silver and Stafford cite educators and researchers at...
How Does Project Based Learning Work? Planning Steps of PBL Three planning steps of PBL are Step 1: Plan with the End in Mind, Step 2: Plan the Assessments, and Step 3: Plan the Teaching and Learning. These three planning steps are according to Ross Cooper and Erin Murphy, authors of the book Project Based Learning Real Questions. Real Answers. How to Unpack PBL and Inquiry. In this blog, I will...
Depth of Knowledge (DOK) Definition How much students need to know, understand, and be aware of what they are learning is called their “depth of knowledge.” This helps them find answers, outcomes, results, and remedies and explain them. It also says how much students are supposed to use and apply what they have learned in different schools and real-life situations. This definition is from...
Burn This! Why the D.O.K. Wheel Is Inaccurate Misconceptions of Rigor and Depth of Knowledge Seven misconceptions of rigor and depth of knowledge and they are: Misconception 1. All students can’t think deeply; all students shouldn’t need scaffolding to support deeper thinking. Misconception 2. Depth-of-knowledge levels should function as a taxonomy. Misconception 3. You can equate verb...
Building a Belonging Classroom Student Sense of Belonging Strategies How to Build a Strong Foundation for the Year Student Sense of Belonging strategies are Reflections of Self, Quick Checks, 2 x 10 strategy, Kid watching, and Student and Family Inventories. These 5 strategies are from authors Colleen Urlik and Rebecca McKinney of Accelerating Learning For All Equity in Action. These strategies...
Learner Strategies Defined According to O’Connell and Vandas, learner strategies are the plans or actions that help you learn faster and can be used in other learning situations. How do teachers help their students come up with ways to learn? This post will show you how. Why Is It Important? For kids, the most important part of learning is to teach them how to learn better and find the...
Design Learning Experiences 3Es in Designing Learning Experience How do you begin to design a meaningful learning experience for students? Andi McNair, author of A Meaningful Mess, suggests 3Es: Engage: How can students be engaged in ways that will make them want to learn? Experience: What experience can be designed to give learners a reason to invest in their learning? Empower: How can learners...
Table of Contents Identity and Agency Defined Identity refers to our comprehensive understanding of our own features, our self- perception in relation to others, our perceived abilities, and our recognition of our weaknesses, as stated by Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and Dominique Smith, the authors of the book “All Learning is Social and Emotional”. Authors define Agency as the capacity...
Identity Safe Classroom Identity Safe Classrooms are, according to Dorothy M Steel and Becky Crohn Vargas, “those in which teachers strive to ensure students that their social identity is an asset, not a barrier to success.” Shane Safir, author of the article “Fostering Identity Safety in the Classroom“, notes that such classrooms students feel safe, included and valued...