The Adventures of PBL

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?!

Rewind and Start Over

Rewind and start over.  This is what I would like to do with this past school year.  It undoubtedly has been the toughest year so far in my 17 years of teaching.  BUT, I am not going to focus on the negative and am actually looking forward to an exciting year for 2014-2015!

Three positive things about this past year that I want to mention are:

Technology!  I learned so much this year on different ways to incorporate technology, including many sites to make instructional videos.  Others apps or sites I used were Doceri, Nearpod, and Kahoot.  All great ways to help the kids interact more and stay ENGAGED (which was a big word this year)!

Activities!  I loved this year that I learned a variety of new activities.  Activities where I could take a worksheet and turn it in to get up out of your seat activity.  I also learned a lot of Kagan strategies and used foldables.

Flipped Classroom!  This year I did a lot of experimenting with how to use the Flipped Classroom model.  I created multiple videos using my Ladibug, ScreenChomp, Educreations, and Sophia.  All were great, each having their own pros and cons.  I found Sophia to be an excellent platform to park all of my videos and put other information for the students to use.  My classes did the traditional Flipped model where they would watch the video at home, take notes, then we practiced in class.  We also watched the videos in class individually on chromebooks or Ipads and then the students would start on their assignment.  Both methods worked great and 95% of the feedback from the students was positive.  Behavior problems also significantly dropped when using the Flipped model.

Starting Over

So what's new for this year?  Project Based Learning (PBL) using the Engaged! Learning Model (ELM).  My classroom now has tables and chairs, which is how I started 17 years ago with cooperative learning, and I am diving in ready to take on "Education 3.0"!  I am glad that I learned so much about technology and Flipped classroom this year because both are going to be a perfect tie in to the ELM.

STAY TUNED FOR PBL PROGRESS....

Just a sampling...

Wow!  What a busy and fast year this has been!  I am working every single second at school and I know what I'm doing is still not enough.  My blog has been neglected for about six weeks so I wanted to take the time to show off some cool activities we have done in class. 

First off is a Kagan activity.  Our school has done two trainings on Kagan activities and I am trying hard to implement a few each week.  This one is called Quiz-Quiz-Trade and we used it to review our math properties.  The students loved it and it only took about 5 minutes.

Our second activity we tried was a gallery walk.  I had my students write examples of the different math properties on a sticky note for homework.  We then placed them all around the room under the correct property.  The students spent about one minute at each station reviewing the examples and identifying any that were incorrect.

The last activity I want to share was "Pass the equation".  Students sat back to back and passed around a worksheet with four equations.  Everyone had a paper and had to start the problem from where their teammate left off.  The students realized how important it was to show their work and to show it neatly!