by Andrew K. Miller | Jul 7, 2014 | Blog, Edutopia
This post originally appeared on Edutopia, a site created by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, dedicated to improving the K-12 learning process by using digital media to document, disseminate, and advocate for innovative, replicable strategies that prepare students. View Original >
I wrote a blog about one of the pitfalls of personalization for the ASCD Whole Child Blog. Specifically, that pitfall is the lack of engagement. With all the focus on personalization through time, pacing, and place, it can be easy to forget about the importance of engagement. No matter where students learn, when they learn, and the timing of the learning, engagement drives them to learn. When we factor all the pieces of personalization together, we can truly meet students where they are and set them on a path of learning that truly meets their needs and desires. Project-based learning can be an effective engagement framework to engage students in personalized learning.
Moving Past “Course-Based” PBL
Due to the antiquated restraints of the education system, most educators are forced to implement PBL in a “course-based” manner. This means that the project occurs within the traditional discipline structures, where there may be integration, but learning is framed within grades and competencies. In addition, start and stop times, driven by the Carnegie unit, force teachers to start and stop a project for all of their students around the same time. What if PBL wasn’t held to antiquated rules of time, space, and discipline constructs? In that ideal situation, students could be engaged in personalized projects.
Student-Designed Projects
Students at Phoenix High School have been engaged in a model similar to the one I’ve described. In it, students design their own driving questions and select the 21st century skills they want to work on, as well as the content learning objectives. They select and design their own products to show their learning in a true commitment to performance assessment. They decide on due dates, benchmarks, and the authentic audience of the work. There is also a heavy push toward community impact and work outside the four walls of the classroom.
My PBL colleague, Erin Sanchez, (formally Erin Thomas), created an amazing graphic of this continuum that shows the power of PBL truly aligned to the learner. As teaching colleagues, we did our best to implement personalized projects for students, and we experienced many of the same challenges faced by teachers who attempt to do this. However, we also saw the payoff: engagement! When students are truly in the driver’s seat of their learning, the impact of their work and the learning associated with it can be powerful!
Role of the Teacher
When teachers move toward personalized PBL, their role continues to shift, just as it does when teachers move traditional instruction to “course-based” PBL. While still involved in the design process, they also serve as advisors. Teachers frequently use question techniques to help students focus and crystalize their projects and project plans. They coach students in creating effective driving questions and student products. They’re still involved in frequent formative assessments, but instead of planning all instructional activity for the students, they help students plan it themselves. In addition, teachers help students select standards and learning targets that will align with the project and products. Teachers at Phoenix High School, for example, help ensure that all standards are targeted for a year, but do not limit the standards that students may want to hit in a project. Here the teachers create and facilitate the infrastructure for the learning rather than designing the PBL projects themselves.
Not every teacher may be ready to jump into this type of personalization. To make it work, they’ll be required to adopt a different teaching role. They’ll need strong management skills and a commitment to disruptive innovation. In addition, the current constructs of the education system may hold us back. What if we could make this dream of personalized PBL a reality? I say that we work toward it, creating a push on the system that demands change in the education of our students.
by Andrew K. Miller | Jun 13, 2014 | Blog, Edutopia
This post originally appeared on Edutopia, a site created by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, dedicated to improving the K-12 learning process by using digital media to document, disseminate, and advocate for innovative, replicable strategies that prepare students. View Original >
I know that many project-based learning teachers are fearful of fully embracing PBL due to the expectations around standardized testing. We need to honor that fear, because it’s not coming from a bad place. Why do we worry? Because we care about kids! Many of our kids are held accountable by the standardized tests they take. From Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate to end-of-course and graduation exams, we want to make sure that our students are successful. But how do we avoid the pitfall of only teaching to the test?
The Good News
Edutopia recently released a study that showed the success of PBL projects in AP government classes. These projects were deployed in two school districts that were different not only in terms of place, but also socio-economic status and demographics. Students who took the PBL course generally scored higher, especially in the areas that called for deeper understanding, where the knowledge is applied in performance tasks in the exam. This makes sense. PBL, with its emphasis on depth rather than breadth, creates learning that “sticks.” We remember learning in a context that is relevant and connected to the real world.
AP is Changing
CollegeBoard has released the major changes and a timeline for these changes on their website. A couple of key points they make around these changes are:
Greater emphasis on discipline-specific critical thinking, inquiry, reasoning, and communication skills . . .
Rigorous, research-based curricula, modeled on introductory college courses, that strike a balance between breadth of content coverage and depth of understanding.
Here we can see how 21st century skills, a major component of PBL, are being leveraged and honored in the revision. If we take the appropriate time to scaffold and assess these skills in our PBL class, we are preparing our students for the AP exam, no matter the content. Also, PBL does demand content knowledge, as we want students to learn the content in depth and apply in relevant context. In addition, multiple-choice questions are being reduced in the exams, with a greater emphasis on questions that require deeper thinking.
AP Classroom PBL Tips
Embedded AP Assessments
I wrote a blog on a similar topic about embedding standardized testing stems in a PBL project. For AP, it is very similar. The AP exams from the past are released, and teachers can continually go back and steal practice material from these exams. Instead of doing practice AP exams outside of a project, use parts that are relevant to the project. Find test questions to apply toward whatever content you might be targeting. These could be multiple-choice questions for a quiz on Friday or an essay question as part of the project. This will not only prepare students for the exam, but also give you great formative assessments to know how students are doing and adjust instruction as needed. Additionally, it includes the “test prep” within the context of a meaningful project.
The Meaty Content
As teachers look at past exams, they should analyze the tests for the content that is often tested or is worth a large part of the exam. We want this specific content to stick, perhaps more than other content. PBL can help the learning stick for these areas of the exam. It’s similar to power standards, where teachers target learning objectives that are heavily assessed, complex, and perhaps challenging. PBL projects are rigorous and complex, and can provide a great space to hit these major content areas of an AP exam.
Target Critical Thinking
We all want our students to be critical thinkers, and much of the AP exam requires a heavy deal of critical thinking, especially with the changes that are occurring. AP teachers should be focusing on the critical thinking skills needed as well as on the AP content itself. By doing this, teachers are preparing students to navigate critical thinking questions, tasks, and prompts regardless of the content they encounter on the exam. Consider using this rubric from the Buck Institute to support students in building their critical thinking skills.
Hopefully these tips will help teachers design and implement PBL projects that help students learn important content within the AP framework and the skills needed to access the AP exam itself. The AP exam is changing, and students are finding success on that exam through PBL projects. We as educators can support our AP students by creating learning that sticks through PBL!
by Andrew K. Miller | May 19, 2014 | Blog, Edutopia
This post originally appeared on Edutopia, a site created by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, dedicated to improving the K-12 learning process by using digital media to document, disseminate, and advocate for innovative, replicable strategies that prepare students. View Original >
Although the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have not yet been fully implemented, more and more states are signing up as early adopters. The NGSS call for a conceptual shift in teaching and learning. Along with traditional subject matter, science and engineering are now integrated into the standards, and students will learn about the principles of engineering and engage in the engineering design processes.
In addition, many concepts are cutting across content. For example, the concept of “systems and system models” is used in the exploration of nuclear energies as well as ecosystems. Also, scientific and engineering practices are aligned multiple times with the disciplinary content. The NGSS calls for a deeper understanding and application of content. The focus is on core ideas and practices of science, not just the facts associated with them. This is a great opportunity for project-based learning, because not only can PBL align to the shift in pedagogy, it can also enhance what the NGSS demand.
The Alignment
Just as the draft NGSS calls for deeper understanding and application of knowledge, PBL demands the same — in-depth inquiry into the content. When teachers design PBL projects, they choose to focus on power standards, or standards that usually take significant time to teach and focus on depth, not breadth. The NGSS will be a similar kind of standards, and thus easily used when designing PBL. In fact, a teacher designing a PBL project might target one of the crosscutting concepts, something that permeates the entire year of content. This is no more evident than the NGSS App available on iTunes. Take a look at the Grade Four Earth Systems Standard:
Identify evidence from patterns in rock formations and fossils in rock layers to support explanation for changes in a landscape over time.
This standard focuses on explanation of changes — not just identifying them, but using them to think critically about the content. In fact, the NGSS app provides an “Assessment Boundary” that says: “Assessment does not include specific knowledge of the mechanism of rock formation or the memorization of specific rock formations and layers.” This is about depth, not rote memorization, which is ripe for a PBL project. In fact, the clarification statement of this standard highlights possibilities for a PBL project:
Examples of evidence from patterns could include rock layers with marine shell fossils above rock layers with plant fossils and no shells, indicating a change from land to water over time; and a canyon with different rock layers in the walls and a river in the bottom, indicating that over time a river cut through the rock.
Being a Scientist
Most state science standards were linked to the scientific inquiry process. The NGSS continue to honor this as a key component to science education. Dimension 1 of the NGSS focuses on practices which “describe behaviors that scientists engage in as they investigate and build models and theories about the natural world and the key set of engineering practices that engineers use as they design and build models and systems.” Embedded throughout standards is language where students must “use evidence,” “make observations,” “ask questions,” “combine information,” and “apply scientific ideas,” to name just a few. All of this language focuses on the art of being a scientist to learn the content. PBL calls for students not only to be scientists, but also citizen scientists investigating real-world scientific problems and challenges to make an impact. Like the NGSS, PBL focuses not only on the content of science, but also on the content of being a scientist.
STEAM PBL
I wrote about this in a recent blog. As we notice the new engineering focus of NGSS, we might consider design challenges, a key component of science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) education. However, design challenges are not necessarily PBL by default. One can take a design challenge, add some PBL-essential elements to it, and make it into a PBL project, yet there are some components that must be added to make it a true PBL project. In the example from my previous blog, students made recommendations for retrofitting a local bridge and presented this information to city officials and engineers. Yes, the product might be a bridge design, and yes, students might engage in a toothpick contest along the way. The difference is that the work goes outside the four walls of the classroom and is actually an authentic situation where students are engaged in real-world work. As the design process and other components of engineering are leveraged in the NGSS, PBL projects can be designed to teach and assess these standards.
The NGSS will be successful only if we give students the learning models that call for the rigor and depth they demand. Not only is PBL ready for the challenge, but it can create deeper engagement with the content, where students’ deeper learning in the classroom makes them real scientists and engineers of the real world.
by Andrew K. Miller | Apr 24, 2014 | Blog, Edutopia
This post originally appeared on Edutopia, a site created by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, dedicated to improving the K-12 learning process by using digital media to document, disseminate, and advocate for innovative, replicable strategies that prepare students. View Original >
Standardized testing is one of the “lighting rod” issues in educational policy debates. Whether it’s a group of teachers boycotting a test in Seattle, districts across the United States tying teacher evaluations to test results, the new PARCC or Smarter Balanced Assessments being implemented, the ranking countries with PISA scores, or the SAT trying to revamp itself, the debate and topic of standardized testing simply will not go away. So what is an educator to do? With all these forces in play, whether at the district or federal level, it can be disheartening and daunting for an educator to create learning in the classroom. With all the changes, there is always pressure to teach to the test. But I think we can do better.
Encourage Higher Order Thinking
Standardized tests hit a huge range of depth of knowledge or cognitive levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Often a prompt may just be focusing on recall or comprehension, or inference at best. There might be some more critical thinking prompts, but those won’t necessarily dominate the standardized assessment. I believe that we, as educators, should be aiming higher, beyond what a test demands. When we aim higher, we are preparing our students for more than a test — we’re preparing them for 21st century skills paired with content.
To do this, educators need to make sure that the assessments and projects they assign their students are rigorous and focused on depth of knowledge and/or higher levels of Bloom’s. To get there, students will indeed have to do the lower levels of thinking, but we can’t just stop there. Instead, the lower level thinking should serve as scaffolding for higher order thinking. Let’s aim higher than what a standardized test might ask of our students, ensuring that they’re not only ready for the test, but more than ready for college, career and life!
Embed “Test Prep”
Instead of wasting everyone’s time prepping for the exam right before it happens, embed test prep into your daily instruction. Try to make it a meaningful assessment tool while still practicing for the test. For example, you can look at the standardized test to find the stems. Steal these stems and use them to create formative and/or summative assessments for a more engaging project or unit. These might be short-answer or multiple-choice questions, or longer essay-like questions. As a teacher, these small, low-stakes, test-like questions can help you effectively check for understanding. They also help your students become familiar with how the standardized test will look and what it will feel like. Don’t forget to be transparent — show your students how this will be like the standardized test, but also explain why you are using these questions in your instruction.
Error Analysis for Reflective Instruction
Error analysis is an excellent and intentional way to look at the student performance data for patterns and trends, and then use this data to prepare for instruction in an upcoming unit, whether that is a unit next year or next week. Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey, two of my favorite education authors, articulate the process in “Making Time for Feedback,” an article that appeared in Educational Leadership.
So how does this fit in with standardized tests? Standardized test items should be aligned to a standard, which means the data is disaggregated into these different performance areas. Once students have taken the standardized test, the data is given back to the teacher, and the teacher should be looking at it to make informed decisions on instruction. In this case, it is often for the next year, but the data might also inform remedial instruction. Regardless, teachers can aim beyond the standardized test as just a summative assessment, and instead use it as a tool to reflect upon instruction and meet the needs of individual students.
Instead of just viewing standardized testing as “scary beast,” we can do our best not only to make it useful through error analysis, but also to prepare students for it in meaningful ways and with instruction that’s better than just test prep. We don’t need to be focusing on test prep — we need to be focusing on our students and effective instruction!
by Andrew K. Miller | Mar 19, 2014 | Blog, Edutopia
This post originally appeared on Edutopia, a site created by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, dedicated to improving the K-12 learning process by using digital media to document, disseminate, and advocate for innovative, replicable strategies that prepare students. View Original >
Being a mentor teacher to a teaching candidate is quite a privilege and honor, as you are integral in nurturing and helping that new teacher to reflect and improve upon his or her instruction. I recently reached out to fellow mentor teachers and asked them about their advice and best practices, not only for teacher mentors, but also for new teachers in the field. Here are some great quotes and points from these practicing mentors.
For New Teachers
Make Relationships with the Right People
Ted Malefyt is a middle school science teacher for Hamilton Community Schools in Michigan. He has a passion for project-based learning that creates relevant learning. He tells us to “build working relationships with the forward-thinking teachers who are excited about being a life-long learner.” I remember that, when I first started teaching, there were some teachers who were often negative. I chose not to align with them, as I knew it would not help me nurture myself, nor remain hopeful about education. It’s important to find colleagues that, although they may challenge you, still have the best interests of students at heart, and are hopeful about their roles as teachers. Build relationships with reflective, life-long learners to become one!
Make Sure You Really Want to Teach
Heather Anderson is an English and Spanish teacher at the Health and Sciences High and Middle College in San Diego, California. She has expertise in gradual release of responsibility, close reading and text-dependent questions. She echoes a core belief that I think all potential educators need to consider — make sure you really want to be a teacher. “First and foremost, make sure that this is the career for you. I think that many beginning teachers have a sense of grandeur that does not meet the reality of the classroom. Make sure you visit schools before you student teach. We learn a lot of theory in our classes, but the actual implementation and day-to-day grind of teaching is very different than those courses you took in college.” I really do agree with the advice to visit schools before jumping into a program. Set up interviews or coffee with a teacher friend and ask great questions.
For Mentor Teachers
Be Patient and Compassionate
As a veteran teacher, it can be hard to remember what it was like as a brand new teacher, or one considering jumping into the profession. Sometimes we focus so much on the technical side of becoming a teacher that we forget the social-emotional component. Heather reminds us, “New teachers are eager and passionate. They are also extremely scared and delicate. They need someone that they can trust. They need someone that they can celebrate with and also someone who will let them express their fears and concerns.” Give new teachers the benefit of the doubt, be honest in feedback, and give time for improvement. After all, we were all there at some time.
Nurture Unit and Lesson Design
Sometimes we focus too much on delivery of the lesson rather than the design of the lesson itself. As mentor teachers, seek opportunities to let teacher candidates design or co-design lessons and units. I wrote about this belief in a previous blog. Ted says, “Providing as many opportunities as we can to design and create for the classroom is very important in changing the culture of education.” I couldn’t agree more.
For All Teachers
Become a Reader
I was not much of a reader when I first entered teaching. I think it was because I was “forced” to read material that I didn’t find relevant. However, the more I looked for great books on education or got recommendations from colleagues, the more I was able to re-find that love of reading. As Ted says “I also highly recommend becoming an avid reader of books that deal with everything from education to innovation and creativity.” There are so many books on education out there. Find something that works for you and that will push your thinking. It will help to keep you energized and model life-long learning for your students.
“Fail Forward”
Almost all the mentor teachers I talked to reminded me of a phrase I use often, to “fail forward.” They expressed that all mistakes they made were part of the journey. As Heather says, “Teaching is a dance. You change your style and movements depending on your partner. With each student and each classroom dynamic, you, in essence, have a new partner.” We all have good days and bad days, but every day we touch the lives of children, and we can learn from these moments to improve education for all.
Leverage Social Media
There is so much that social media has to offer teachers, both experienced and new. Build your PLN, participate in Twitter chats, read blogs and find resources. There are great ideas out there, and we can support each other. Consider sharing your ideas in a blog as well, if you’re comfortable putting yourself out there.
I would love to hear more from mentor teachers, both in terms of the role they play and their advice for anyone considering the teaching profession. I believe that, although there is a formal mentor teacher in the student-teaching phase, we are all mentor teachers, and we have much to learn from each other.
by Andrew K. Miller | Mar 14, 2014 | Blog, Edutopia
This post originally appeared on Edutopia, a site created by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, dedicated to improving the K-12 learning process by using digital media to document, disseminate, and advocate for innovative, replicable strategies that prepare students. View Original >
It’s been many years since I went through my teacher certification and student teaching, and wow! A lot has changed. And yet, there are still some stories of the journey to become a new teacher that remain the same. I recently reached out to my alma mater to speak not only with old professors, but also with current teacher candidates to ask them what it has been like for them.
Certification
There is a new teacher certification, the edTPA, that is being used in many states. It is a high-stakes exam that requires teachers to plan for engaging students and reflect on practice, and it focuses on intentionality of that plan. I had a similar assessment, which was more of a performance assessment of my teaching that included unit plans, reflection, and observations by a teaching supervisor. However, the edTPA is a writing exam, and not really a teaching exam like the National Board certification assessment.
There are also some other pieces that make educators skeptical. It is a privatized exam through Pearson, costs $300, and is scored outside of the context of the teaching practice. In other words, the people scoring the exam are not familiar with the context in which the teacher candidate is teaching. In a blog last year, Diane Ravitch summarized these and many other concerns about edTPA. Amy Ryken, Professor of Education at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington (my alma mater), also mentioned that smaller schools seem to be doing fairly well with this assessment, while larger schools are struggling. In fact, she has this to say:
For the past two years, our faculty scored our candidates’ TPAs, and our scores were consistently lower than Pearson’s scores — meaning that Puget Sound already had a higher standard for our candidates.
Teacher candidate Madeline Isaacson echoed many of the positive thoughts and concerns about the edTPA. She currently is K-8 candidate.
For years, the art of teaching has been within the confines of the four walls of the classroom, and I see the TPA as an opportunity for collaboration within the profession and inducting novice teachers into a professional community where reflection and experimentation are normal. However, I also find the enormous workload inhibits my ability to fully take over planning and teaching in my classroom. The university has adjusted its student teaching plan to the enhanced model, which has elementary candidates take over one core subject and one other subject at a time to support the time commitment of the TPA. Due to not being able to commit the time to taking over full days, I often still feel like a student and not a learning professional.
During my own student teaching, I was able to take over the entire day after a gradual release. I too am disheartened to see that this was no longer the case.
Student Teaching
I also reached out to Grant Ruby, a teacher candidate for secondary mathematics education. Like many of us, he was inspired by a great math teacher to pursue a career in teaching, and he also comes from a family of educators. He articulated many of the same challenges that all teachers go through, and reminded me of my challenges when I first started teaching (what I like to call baptism by fire).
I feel that I am facing two large challenges. Neither is more important than the other, as they go hand in hand. One is lesson planning and bringing activities to the classroom that are inquiry based. Rather than giving my students definitions and practicing problems repeatedly, I want them to explore mathematical concepts and come to their own conclusions before introducing the core definitions or theorems. This can be tricky with students who struggle with some of the basic concepts of algebra. My other main struggle is part and parcel of student teaching: classroom management. By this I mean both working to keep students engaged with the lesson and behaving in a non-disruptive manner, and involving all students in the learning process.
During his candidacy, Grant has a structure that many are familiar with. He has a mentor teacher who has really helped him by observing and giving specific feedback that has pushed him. He can also rely on a cohort of teacher candidates to reflect with and collaborate regularly. I remember how important it was to have colleagues to work with, professors that are nurturing and available, and an awesome mentor teacher, Keri, with whom I still keep in regular contact.
Aspirations
Grant and Madeline inspired me with thoughts about what it means to be a great teacher, and really showed me that we can always learn from each other, regardless of years of experience in education. Madeline said:
As an organizer of students’ learning, I want to create a learning atmosphere that radiates diversity and facilitates high academic achievement for all students. I will place students at the center of learning and turn their personal interests and strengths into opportunities for academic success.
And Grant said:
I believe a successful teacher is one that can awaken the curiosity of their students, illustrate the intrinsic value of the subject matter, and foster understanding rather than memorization.
Teachers, what are your strongest memories from your training period? And candidates, does your current experience match Madeline Isaacson and Grant Ruby’s observations? Please share in the comments section below.
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