PBL at hill

Our PBL Path

The proposal submitted last year provided direction for the development and implementation of the project based learning at Discover at Robert T. Hill. Six weeks after we presented our plan to transform Hill, like the rest of the world, we were forced to teach virtually. Like the best educators always do, we adapted to make PBL a foundational piece of every student’s education at Hill.

Support from 2 Rev

Under normal circumstances, the hope would be for a sizable number of early adopters in Cohort 1. However, the three teachers who fully committed to the development and execution of the projects made a significant impact in not only the learning of students, but their ability to connect with students and facilitate their learning. These three early adopters were Michael O’Connor (6^th Reading/Language Arts), Saul Quirino (6^th World Cultures), and Ellyn Stroud (8^th Reading/Language Arts).

The recorded statements from the At This Moment I Am Video PBL Exhibition Live Presentation which was broadcasted to an authentic audience of community stakeholders on Instagram Wednesday, 12/16/20.

With the previously awarded funds, we were able to hire 2Revolutions to guide our process of implementing Project Based Learning. Cohort 1 has been meeting weekly, for nearly 5 months, to plan, develop, and implement their projects. The first Cohort greatly benefitted from their support, as well as the support from Dallas’ own Personalized Learning department.

Cohort 1 Projects

In order to provide students with a learning experience that maximizes the hard and soft skills necessary to be successful at our campus, high school, and beyond, we developed the 4 core competencies: Investigate the World, Develop Empathy, Communicate Ideas, Take Action.

Cohort 1’s projects embody two core competencies, at minimum, while leveraging appropriate TEKS to build both academic, social, and emotional skills.

Project: At This moment I am

Mr. O’Connor’s project, At This Moment I Am, had students reflect inward and investigate their identities. Reading and analyzing excerpts from novels, short stories, poems, and nonfiction articles about how identity is explicitly and implicitly understood in the world guided students through discussion, quick writes, and ultimately authoring a statement that explains their identity. As sixth graders, this project helps develop empathy and communicate ideas as an avenue to then investigate their world and take action to solve problems they see.

Through Project Resist, students wrote comics and graphic novels to raise awareness about their issues. These original works serve as a critical commentary on issues such as police brutality, religious discrimination, immigrants' rights, and more. Currently, students are designing Instagram pages to promote their work and inform the community about their issues.

Project: Resist

With a year of PBL experience under her belt, Ms. Stroud decided to implement a fully project-based curriculum for her 8th Grade students. The course is called "Literature as Resistance." Each student has picked a resistance focus, a social injustice which they hope to address through original writing throughout the year. Each unit invites students to explore a new genre through deep text analysis of a mentor text. As a final project for each unit, students use genre-specific literary elements to create an original piece of literature focused on their resistance issue.

Students have written dystopian stories, comics, and poems related to their chosen injustices.

Project: Broken Laws

Mr. Quirino’s project, Broken Laws, enabled students to investigate their world by critically examining laws that do not protect or empower and have a negative impact on various populations. His students researched Laws, created arguments for their revision, and are in the process of drafting amendments to those existing as to improve their equity.

Data Takeaways

The more relevant and engaging framing of skills were not the only change to occur after completion of the project. Both Ms. Stroud and Mr. O’Connor discovered significant movement in their data from Common Assessment 1 to Common Assessment 2. The chart below outlines the growth.

Arguably, the important takeaway from the first round of projects are found in the results from Common Assessment 2. Ms. Stroud’s students demonstrated a significant increase in Meets (+14%), highlighting that the engagement and relevance of her project was able to meet and grow students from their current academic skill level. Mr. O’Connor’s students displayed significant growth with a 17% increase in students that scored Masters on Common Assessment 2. While they were only Pilot projects, but teachers’ use of project based learning reinforces that with relevant materials and thinking that stems from design and problem solving. students’ build academic skills and can demonstrate that improvement on snapshots of data, standardized tests, as well as have a process and final product that exemplifies their authenticity and a connection to their community.

The success of Project Based Learning is not only evident in the assessment data, but in the change in student perceptions. After completing the project, students were aligned to the four core competencies and more empowered as advocates and learners.

Model UN

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) provide a framework to help students understand the world around them. By incorporating them into our projects, our goal is to make their education relevant. From Cohort 1, both Broken Laws and Resist projects align to UN SDG 10 (Reducing Inequalities) and UN SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions). In semester 2, Cohort 2 of PBL will give more students a change to develop the competencies needed to address the UN Goals. In addition, a group of students will participate in Model UN virtually with DISD.

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