Embedded Files
Key Concepts:
Unit planning is a gradual process that evolves throughout the unit and between years
Projects/Learning are messy - its ok.
Essential Questions as a potential throughline with grade level interdisciplinarity
Essential Questions that will foster inquiry, understanding, and transfer of learning are challenging to write.
Assessment should be clearly communicated to the students and flexible enough to encompass a variety of outcomes
Important Ideas to Remember When Planning
From BIE - PBL ...
is intended to teach significant content.
requires critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and various forms of communication.
requires inquiry as part of the process of learning and creating something new.
is organized around an open-ended Essential/Driving Question.
creates a need to know essential content and skills.
allows some degree of student voice and choice.
includes processes for revision and reflection.
involves a public audience.
Qualities of PBL from RMC Research Corporation
Students today are using online resources to create research reports. They are designing, critiquing, and presenting products using interactive technologies. Here are some guidelines and criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of problem- and project-based learning in your classroom.
Allows for a variety of learning styles
"Real" world oriented - learning has value beyond the demonstrated competence of the learner
Risk-free environment - provides positive feedback and allow choice
Encourages the use of higher order thinking skills and learning concepts as well as basic facts
Utilizes hands-on approaches
Provides for in-depth understanding
Accessible for all learners
Utilizes various modes of communication
Assessment is congruent with instruction, i.e. performance-based
Students are responsible for their own learning
Students have ownership of their learning within the curriculum
Projects promote meaningful learning, connecting new learning to students' past performances
Learning utilizes real time data - investigating data and drawing conclusions
The learning process is valued as well as the learning project
Learning cuts across curricular areas - multidisciplinary in nature
Teacher is a facilitator of learning
Student self-assessment of learning is encouraged
Essential Questions
From Wiggins and McTighe
Essential questions are “important questions that recur throughout all our lives.” They are “broad in scope and timeless by nature.”
Essential questions refer to “core ideas and inquiries within a discipline.” They “point to the core of big ideas in a subject and to the frontiers of technical knowledge. They are historically important and alive in the field.”
Essential questions help “students effectively inquire and make sense of important but complicated ideas, knowledge, and know-how — a bridge to findings that experts may believe are settled but learners do not yet grasp or see as valuable.”
Essential questions “will most engage a specific and diverse set of learners.” They “hook and hold the attention of your students.”
Essential Questions are NOT
simply lesson objectives reworded in an interrogative format.
posted on the board and changed each day to reflect the goals of the lesson.
answered that day.
Inquiry
Resources:
Buck Institute for Education - http://www.bie.org/ and http://www.bie.org/about/what_is_pbl
Unit Plans -
Reinventing PBL - http://reinventingpbl.blogspot.com/
How to Turn Your Classroom into an Idea Factory - http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/08/how-to-turn-your-classroom-into-an-idea-factory/
Teaching Students to See Quality - http://www.teachthought.com/learning/teaching-students-see-quality/
What If History - Unit Plan - Work Contracts, Graphic Organizer Examples
Planning/Tips
6 steps for planning a successful project - http://www.edutopia.org/stw-maine-project-based-learning-six-steps-planning
10 Tips - http://www.edutopia.org/stw-maine-project-based-learning-ten-key-lessons
Planning Docs - http://www.bie.org/tools/freebies/cat/planning_forms
Page updated
Report abuse