So today I looked back at my blog that has pretty much come to a complete halt. That right there should tell you what this year was like. I know anyone who reads my blog is wondering how project-based learning went and maybe this is what I would say "the road to success is never easy."
Difficulties
As I reflect back here are the top 3 major obstacles that we faced.
1) Getting all of our team on board. Very simply, if your whole grade level team is not on board, don't do it. This is especially if you are in a school where you must plan together and more or less being doing the same thing.
2) Training our students how to learn from videos. We think that young people are more inclined to using technology and use it for all purposes, but some are not yet to the point of being independent enough to go solo on their learning. (I am happy to say though that by the end of the year they were ASKING for a video resource!)
3) Finding the time to actually complete a finished product. We had very few projects where the actual product was completed. We did the learning, but we did not give the students enough time to complete the product.
Successes!
When had many successes, starting with we all survived and our students' scores compared to last year went UP! We also closed several achievement gaps in our student subgroups. Here are 3 more successes.
1) Students TALKED and not about what they were doing that weekend, but about MATH! Our math instructional specialist do a survey and found that in classrooms around the district 93% of the talking was done by teachers, BUT she pointedly said this did NOT apply to our PBL classrooms! By the end of the year, it was a Hallelujah moment seeing how our students would immediately go into a round robin discussion.
2) Students recognized that they didn't have to learn just from the teacher. They recognized that they actually liked learning from their peers and they could learn from video resources! Like I said above, they even ASKED for the videos!
3) Students learned the importance of collaborating and autonomy. They've learned early on how important it is to pull your weight in a group and how it feels when someone else doesn't pull theirs. When was the first time you learned this..it probably wasn't at 13 years old?!
