Insights on PBL
Title of the 1st & 2nd Tri project :
GLC- Superheroes
Driving question:
"How can we contribute to improve the GLC-Giraldino identity?"
Click here to see my self-evaluation of the rubric for teaching practices, based mainly on my reflections about the first project I took part in with 7th graders.
In my view, a project doesn't start in 'stage 1', but instead...
It starts with the first thoughts on the excited and enthusiastic teachers in collaboration, followed by a revision following the 'critical friends' protocol by the rest of the community of educators, and develops through the students' perspectives, to end up with what should be the result of their own voice and choice.
What if this essay was about my beliefs on Project Based Learning (PBL)?
This is about my story, Mar Cano as an educator, and what I honestly believe about my personal experience on PBL in my first year at Gimnasio Los Caobos.
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Last August I decided to embark on this new adventure. I arrived in Bogotá and I was very enthusiastic to start working in this bilingual school because of the PBL project they are progressively implementing at a school level. I knew PBL is at the core of the whole curriculum, and I was eager to learn about the way it is being implemented, and the way they are transitioning from a more traditional educational style towards this active methodology. Besides, a few months before, in May 2019 I had enrolled the 'PBL Design Camp' training course in High Tech High, in San Diego (Los Angeles). I felt I had learned so much and my understanding of this methodology was much deeper that I was prepared to put all that into practice. Therefore, joining Gimnasio Los Caobos could be a great opportunity to try that, as I knew I would be in the right educational environment.
Let me go back in time a bit more… Before making up my mind for that move, in the last years I had been implementing PBL, mostly, at class level, I mean in my subject. I had carried out a project in high school (in 11th grade) which I felt very proud of, because for me it planted the seeds for a closer approach to PBL. That was called the DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) project, from which you can learn more in this link. Even more, I had worked on that from a researcher point of view, as this was part of my dissertation (TFM-Trabajo Final de Máster) and I had the belief that it could be one step further in learning by using that methodology, particularly in high school. Additionally, in the school I used to work in Barcelona the previous years I had experienced PBL from a cross-curricular approach in the Primary Stage. I was invited to join projects that the class teachers prepared and my job was to add value and carry out some tasks and prepare a product that was chosen by me, as the teacher of English as a Foreign Language. Well, I would say I have many years of experience of what could tell the difference between PBL as a dessert or as a main course.
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As I arrived in GLC, I was enthusiastic to start working on projects. In my case, as a 7th grade teacher, I was going to get involved. Amazingly, all the teachers involved in that grade had the opportunity to gather and discuss the project: Maths, Spanish, Science, Social Science, STEM, religion, and English. As the topic came up, I got super excited! It had to do with the GLC identity (a topic I had learned to look at from many different perspectives thanks to my first master’s) and the way it could be improved. Apparently, there were some stereotypes created on GLC students which seemed to need a turn into a more positive perspective. Once the project started, the general level of awareness on that theme among students puzzled me, and I loved learning more about it with 7th grade students.
As for that planning time, there was something that kept lingering on my mind… I wondered if we were all supposed to create individual and collective projects in our subjects, or we were going to do that as a true team... Moreover, when planning, I realized that every single subject seemed to appear in every single stage, from stage 1 to stage 5. I recall getting the message ‘I’m going to do this in my subject, and the product will be this one...’ Yet, in my mind there were several questions which came to my mind: do we all have to do an 'Affinity concept map', to apply the SPACE (Summarise-Process-Analyse-Connect-Evaluate) method, create a different prototype and end with different type of products? As I wondered… I felt confused about that and it has kept in mind for all these past months.
To my surprise, that reminded me, in some way, of those cross-curricular projects I had been involved ed in before in my previous years of teaching experience, where all the subjects could be involved and you could create one or another product in your subject. Anyways… ‘Mar’, I reminded myself ‘keep a beginner’s mind, listen, observe and join on board with that new team!’ After planning, we had the opportunity to do the ‘critical friends’ protocol to enrich our first drafts of the projects we had thought of. I was puzzled how the whole community of educators were involved in that protocol, what gave me the opportunity to share and collaborate with colleagues from all the sections beyond Middle School.
Once we started the project I was very mindful to follow each step one by one, and to use different formative assessments: affinity concept map, SPACE Method, Socratic circles, circle of viewpoint, their narrative text about their identity (past, present and future) and the thinking skill to generate creative solutions to respond to the driving question. As you can read, I was convinced that I wanted them to better thinkers by including visible thinking routines (Think-Pair-Share and Circle of viewpoints) and a thinking skill, generating original ideas skillfully. So, I did.
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As I followed those stages, I realized that every teacher was maybe in different stages. Besides, while we were generating original ideas and solutions skillfully so they could share their voice and choice, they had already thought of them in other subjects and were already creating products... It was then that I realized that something didn’t make sense to me. What if that thinking skill had been used before starting to create any products? Furthermore, in the end from the English class we didn’t create super products; however, I have the feeling that, first, the students got a deeper understanding of their own identities as GLC bilingual students and persons from multiple points of view; and second, they came up with alternative solutions which could have been transformed in more original products that combined some subjects in a blended way. Hence, I started reconsidering the role of English, or any other language, in PBL. What if language was embedded and had a key role in any single product they could think of.
This is the main reason why I looked for allies in this final project and see how I could collaborate with another teacher in the project so that the role of language was meaningful and had a purpose. In the end, I created some synergies with Gisselle, the science teacher, who had thought about the creation of a Time capsule. And so far… I can only say that we are working on it… In the near future I’ll share how that second experience worked, and if it resulted somehow better.
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Online Webinar: 7 Tech Tools for Supporting PBL (10th April 2020)
Title of the 3rd Tri project:
Pandemic and the transformation of the social fabric
Driving question:
"How to generate constructive actions that reflect what we are living?"
During the last trimester, the Covid-19 pandemic hit our professional, and personal, lives in a hard way. Yet, at the same time it gave us the opportunity to see the learning and teaching process in some other eyes and to approach PBL from another perspective: online PBL.
So there we went with all the teachers on board embarking on a new project! We decided to leave aside the project we had already planned in advance, and to start a new project from scratch, a project that faced the reality we were living. It was amazing to see how all the teachers in 7th grade agreed easily on that topic. We knew we had to do something about the extraordinary situation we had just started living at that time. This is why I believe all of us didn't hesitate to step into that project all together.
Step by step towards a change of true PBL mindset
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True PBL is not focused on subjects but on searching for a reply to a driving question where learning comes from the connections of different subject knowledge. Therefore, in the last project, the products 7th graders produced nicely gathered in an e-book created in Book Creator made me think we are still in the process to true PBL. Yet, there are a few attempts towards it as I could see some subjects put together.
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As I mentioned in the last paragraph of my first essay, I thought looking for allies would be a good idea, as it could offer students a different learning experience towards true PBL and a more meaningful use of the English language. At the same time, I remembered how in High Tech High PBL Design Camp, which I had attended in May 2019, they talked about creating projects where two subjects were intertwined and joined together. Otherwise, trying to work with many subjects at the same time was tough and not truly successful, especially when it comes to coordinating them. Indeed it was! Let me start telling you the story from the beginning…
As the third trimester was about to start, Covid-19 pandemic disrupted our ‘normal lives’. With the drastic change, all the teachers realised we had to adapt to the new situation… And that implied changing our minds about the project which had been previously planned from last year. I saw the need to do something concerning the new historical situation, and luckily, all the other teachers did as well. I believe that common goal guided us all and led us to a quick consensus on the need to approach this pandemic in the next project. As soon as we moved to virtuality and online learning, we zoomed, started planning and decided to share and discuss the new topic with the students. This is how we all got involved in that new adventure about ‘Pandemics and the transformation of the social fabric’.
Though the start of the new project was presented with all teachers and 7th grade students, after that launching, I started to work on it from the ‘English subject’ perspective as we as all the other teachers did from their subjects. This time I was clear I wanted to try the alliance approach, where I could work hand in hand with another teacher with the aim to offer another type of learning experience where the English language could be used meaningfully with a particular purpose. After learning about the different ideas proposed from the different teachers, I started to talk to the science teacher, Giselle, and joined her proposal of creating a Time Capsule, as a product which could remain as a legacy for future generations which may encounter another pandemic in the future... Wouldn’t it be more meaningful to do it in English, so people from all over the world could understand it and learn from that legacy? I even thought we could share it in Penpals, however, in the end there was not time to do that too.
In this process, both Giselle and I shared more and more and worked hand in hand: we planned together, shared our opinions and feelings on the students’ learning process, created material and posts in a shared Google Classroom, where both could follow the students’ progress and give continuous feedback. All in all, I honestly saw the value of working closely together with another teacher providing a more enriching opportunity to the students.
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It was then that I realised we had moved a step forward towards true PBL, where connections were made and where language was at the service of any other type of content. Moreover, the Time Capsule could include many different types of products the students could choose from, and students could use the English language and the new grammar points, like conditionals, which could be included to refer to both real and hypothetical situations from the past, present or the future.
Personally, I think that, even if the final product was presented by both teachers, the students had voice and choice: voice to say what it meant for them and the real value it could have, and choice because they could choose among the many different possibilities offered and, even more, others they could think of: letters, videos, photo albums, memes, collages, and many more options. Look at the 'Contemporary Student-Researcher Project' document we used (doc). This is how I could see how every student chose according to their preferences, interests and skills, and how some of them challenged themselves with demanding products, though some others decided to make the minimum effort. Interesting!
Another controversial issue I also realised was students’ collaboration: working in teams didn’t exactly mean working collaboratively. As many of the teams did, they created a list of items to include in the Time Capsule, and then each of them chose what product they would work on independently from the others. I was puzzled to see that! I heard comments like “I’ve already done my part”, “This student hasn’t presented their work…” My constant effort was to remind them to work collaboratively, and to encourage them to do it, helping and supporting each other not only in the making process but in the revision process as well. We encouraged them to use Google Docs or PPT shared with every member of the team. That made me realise how much room for improvement was left for teachers and students. In my case, even if we had agreed on the rubric for collaborative work and the rubric for presentations, for one reason or another, I realised we didn’t share them with students till the very end… I had the feeling we were more worried about students’ producing amazing products for them to show in the ‘Projects exhibition online day' than the real meaningful and deep learning. Once again I felt we had been carried away by the urgency and importance of showing wonderful products in front of families over the importance of sharing and reflecting on their learning process.
In any case, I hope my reflection on every single mistake I have made helps me to do it better the following time. To end, I noticed teachers are the ones guiding and showing the way to do things: if teachers don’t know how to work collaboratively, how can we expect students to do it? What are we truly showing them that they can learn not from what we say but from what we show them we do? This also makes me think that leadership when teachers are working together is key: a co-shared leadership that guides the team members to work collaboratively is essential.
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