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Deep Dive
Habitats, baking blogs, shoebox theater: The projects capping the COVID-19 school year
Teachers dedicated to the project-based approach have found that with
remote learning, “there’s a larger range of what you’re willing to work
through.”
Linda Jacobson
June 1, 2020
Ashley Jenkins’ kindergartners were just about to receive a visit from
a petting zoo when their school closed because of the coronavirus. The
special event was the kickoff for an animal habitat project usually
conducted in class.
Jenkins, who teaches at the BIA Charter School in Norcross, Georgia,
was planning on spending a week discussing mammals, birds and other
animal groups. But now removed from her students, she had to adapt by
creating a slideshow with a voiceover and reimagining how she could
build the same knowledge for her young students that they would have
gained at school.
“Even though the way we delivered content to students changed, the end
goal of the project did not,” she said. “As a teacher I had to get
creative and think about how I would [turn] these activities that I
planned on making hands-on in class into something that students could
access at home.”
Students watched BrainPopJr. videos and took virtual field trips to
zoos to see actual habitats. Jenkins also used “choice boards” to give
students — and parents — some direction on how to plan the projects.
“I really stressed to them that they did not have to go out and buy
supplies,” she said. “They could use whatever they had at home, or even
draw or use technology to create their habitats. One student used all
materials from outside in her backyard.”
'The puzzle' of how to end the year
There are teachers and schools that have long been dedicated to a
project-based format — tying required content to larger themes,
authentic experiences and students’ own interests. But some experts say
this upended school year especially lends itself to open-ended
assignments that require students to use some creativity and can even
stand in place of a canceled assessment.
“They are tailor-made for teachers grappling with the puzzle of how to
end the school year in an engaging and productive way,” American
Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said about the
union’s Culminating Capstone Projects, posted this month on its Share
My Lesson site.
And in just a week after the projects were posted online, they had been viewed or downloaded at least 10,000 times.
Others say the approach should be part of how educators redesign
instruction this fall when students might be spending far more time
learning outside of the classroom.
“The new opportunity that someone will figure out in the next two years
is combining the benefits of robust asynchronous content with
project-based learning,” Tom Vander Ark, CEO of Getting Smart, wrote in
a commentary last week.
New Tech Network, a project-based school model that has spread to 200
schools nationwide, has received increased interest in recent weeks
from districts and schools “communicating with greater clarity a strong
‘why’ for starting schoolwide project-based learning now,” said Kristin
Cuilla, the network’s senior director of district and school
development. “This sense of urgency reflects the shift in skills —
agency, communication and collaboration — districts and schools realize
students must have to be successful, especially when learning at home.”
In addition, PBLWorks, a nonprofit that provides professional
development on the project-based approach, has also seen strong
participation in its webinars. John Larmer, the editor-in-chief at the
organization, said if students are rotating in-school attendance in the
fall, as many re-opening plans have recommended, “doing PBL when
they're home would make total sense.”
‘A little more weight’
Usually at this time of year, Juli Ruff, a 9th grade humanities teacher
at the original campus of the High Tech High charter school network in
San Diego, is guiding her students through three phases of the Forces
of Change project.
First, they conduct research on people who have contributed to positive
changes in the world. Then, they volunteer as part of local
organizations — that’s the part disrupted when schools closed.
And for the final element, they are usually designing something that
benefits the school community. Past examples have included a student
creating an app with a virtual tour of the school, or another inviting
top administrators of the network to talk to students about their
positions. Projects usually involve other skills, such as essay writing
or literary analysis.
Teaching from home, Ruff at first focused on providing students as much
of a routine as possible, with a daily assignment and a deadline.
Instead of taking the view that learning during a pandemic was
overwhelming for students, she picked up that they were bored and
needed “a little more weight to carry.”
In addition to having them analyze the short story “The Lady, or the
Tiger?”, Ruff redefined the third phase of the project to focus on
something beneficial that students could do at home. One planned to
create a baking blog. Another pitched soccer instructional videos, and
one girl proposed reading daily Bible passages to her grandmother, who
hasn't been able to get her new eyeglasses prescription, over the phone.
The students also have to submit a Google slide or other evidence of the work that went into their project.
Ruff said she agrees some students might need additional emotional
support depending on how their family has been affected by the
coronavirus, but “we need to not lament that life threw us a curve
ball. We have to learn to hit a curve ball.”
Competing pressures
There are also reasons, however, why schools might now be less inclined to pursue project-based learning, Larmer said.
The first is school districts are headed into a financial stretch that
could be worse than the Great Recession, which could impact
professional development opportunities. The second, he said, is “some
states and districts might think it's time to go ‘back to basics’
because that's all they think teachers can do, given the unsettled and
new reality,” or because students will need to “catch up on missed
time.”
A significant study on project-based learning in science, however,
showed the approach “can help close the learning gaps among students of
underrepresented demographics in STEM courses and level the field
between girls and boys,” according to a summary of the study. Students
using the project-based materials “outperformed students in the
comparison curriculum on outcome measures that were aligned to core
science ideas and science practices,” the researchers wrote.
Even so, trying to recreate a project-based assignment students could
successfully complete at home left even committed project-based
educators with some doubts.
When schools closed, 8th-graders in Mandy Stracke’s project-based
history and English language arts class were in the middle of a
"Fulcrum of History" project and considering the question: In what ways
have the drivers towards and facets of war changed or remained the same
in the modern era?
For ELA, they were using “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” and
in history, they were studying the Civil War. She decided to offer her
students the choice of either a traditional or project-based track
because she felt constrained by having a two-hour time limit with them
each week.
“I should have stuck to what I believed in … and just offered the
[project-based learning] track. Now that we are in the middle of the
project, I know that we could have made it work,” said Stracke, who
teaches at the New Tech Network-affiliated Lobo School of Innovation at
Quimby Oak Middle School in San Jose, California.
In school, they would have been creating a museum exhibition for other
students to view. For distance learning, Stracke substituted a “shoebox
theater” or a piece of artwork. Shelter-in-place journals and book talk
videos were also elements of the assignment.
At Roger Bell New Tech Academy in Havelock, North Carolina, teachers
were in their first year of implementing a project-based approach.
While some teachers had to end their projects when schools closed,
others were able to adapt them to be completed at home. Fourth-graders,
for example, continued their Improving Our Skies project, focused on
the history of flight and technological innovation, by creating videos
on force and motion to show their understanding, said Caroline Godwin,
a curriculum coach at the school.
Math teachers also introduced some real-world projects. Fifth-graders
met with an interior designer over Zoom and were challenged to measure
their rooms, plan a budget and then redesign their own spaces.
Teaching skills that ‘stick’
Teachers say the same factors that influence students’ completion of
traditional assignments during distance learning also apply to
projects. Some families lack reliable internet, which, Jenkins said,
makes it hard to check in on their progress.
As in the classroom, there is also a wide range in how many details
students will add to their projects or how thoroughly they will try to
demonstrate what they learned. “Some students kept to the minimum,”
Stracke said, “while others went out of their way to hand-sew costumes
for handmade characters in order to truly re-create that scene.”
Godwin notes another limitation in transitioning projects to remote
learning is some students lacked familiarity with iPad apps. Next year,
she said, teachers will take a more "blended approach" to projects to
give students more practice with apps "used to research, collaborate
and create products."
Jenkins said having the students work on their habitats at home gave
them some practice in “planning and creating and maintaining their own
work schedules. These are skills that hopefully will stick with them in
the future.”
A review of research on project-based learning, conducted about 20
years ago, suggested students often have difficulty in “self-directed
situations,” such as managing their time, initiating the questions
their project will answer and using the right technology. While
students are far more skilled with tech tools today, the authors wrote
for project-based learning to be effective, it’s important to build in
“a range of supports to help students learn how to learn.”
Stracke said she also noticed students who are usually quiet in class
“are now regular contributors to our online video call sessions.”
She added she’s now thinking about “how to up my PBL practices to be
closer to gold standard, but also to revamp my thinking about how to
approach the different parts of the project path, looking toward a
future where we may or may not need to blend distance learning with
in-person learning."
Remote learning “changes the way the projects can look,” Ruff said.
However, she added it’s “important not to lower the bar, but to have
extra compassion. There’s a larger range of what you’re willing to work
through.”
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