Inquiry-Based Learning

A Step-by-Step Guide to Project Based Learning in a Virtual World

I hope everyone’s doing as well as can be given current circumstances.

This past weekend I created a free eBook (link below) by synthesizing content from the upcoming book I’m writing with Erin Murphy, Project Based Learning. Real Questions. Real Answers. – Unpacking PBL and Inquiry.

This eBook was created while considering the current circumstances of students and educators. It makes PBL as intuitive as possible without sacrificing what makes this student-centered approach unique.

A Step-By-Step Guide to Project Based Learning in a Virtual World

If you use this resource with your students, I’d love to hear your story!

Thank you for all you do. And, of course, please feel free to share the eBook on social media.

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PBL Problems: I Don’t Know What to Do While the Kids Are Working #RealPBL

By Ross Cooper Leave a Comment

Before the summer hits, Erin Murphy and I will be releasing our new book on project based learning, Project Based Learning. Real Questions. Real Answers. – Unpacking PBL and Inquiry. To say we’re excited about this release is an understatement. And, more information to come! #RealPBL

In the meantime…Over the next month or so, I’m releasing a five-post miniseries, PBL Problems, which addresses some of the problems I had when implementing project based learning, as well as some of the problems other educators have had and/or continue to have.

Here’s a look at the five posts/problems, all of which will contain excerpts from the new book.

All of my students are creating the same exact product.
My students aren’t getting along.
I don’t know what to do while the kids are working.
My students aren’t learning what I needed them to learn.
Project based learning is so different from all my other teaching.

I Don’t Know What to Do While the Kids Are Working

One of the beautiful things about project based learning and inquiry are the opportunities for students to uncover new content on their own. Through exploration and problem solving, children make truly remarkable discoveries (many of which teachers will not foresee). We should not, however, assume students will naturally bump into all of the information we want them to learn. A teacher once told Erin he could not bring himself to embrace inquiry because he is “really good” at direct instruction. He believed his ability to tell stories and interact with students was his professional strength. Erin valued his transparency because it led to an honest conversation. Who ever said project based learning was void of storytelling and direct instruction? After all: Students can’t think critically about nothing.

Students can’t think critically about nothing. #RealPBL Click To Tweet

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PBL Problems: My Students Aren’t Getting Along #RealPBL

By Ross Cooper 1 Comment

Here’s a look at the five posts/problems, all of which will contain excerpts from the new book.

All of my students are creating the same exact product.
My students aren’t getting along.
I don’t know what to do while the kids are working.
My students aren’t learning what I needed them to learn.
Project based learning is so different from all my other teaching.

My Students Aren’t Getting Along

Student collaboration is a cornerstone of any thriving classroom culture, but collaboration can break down when students have differing ideas or opinions. At this point, students typically decide to “divide and conquer.” But collaboration is not defined by slicing up a workload and then smashing together independent pieces into a final product. Collaboration, not to be confused with group work, is an interdependent give and take, where the collective progress of the group improves the overall body of work.

The Job Outlook 2020 survey lists “ability to work in a team” as the second most sought-after attribute in prospective employees. Accordingly, this is a skill we should be teaching our students, both proactively (before projects, and before disagreements occur amongst students) and reactively (during projects, when issues arise).

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PBL Problems: All of My Students Are Creating the Same Exact Product #RealPBL

By Ross Cooper 3 Comments

Here’s a look at the five posts/problems, all of which will contain excerpts from the new book.

All of my students are creating the same exact product.
My students aren’t getting along.
I don’t know what to do while the kids are working.
My students aren’t learning what I needed them to learn.
Project based learning is so different from all my other teaching.

All of My Students Are Creating the Same Exact Product

While formulating our ideas during the planning of a PBL unit, we can rely on the three tracks of project based learning, which range from most restrictive to least restrictive. We can think of these tracks as a gradual release of responsibility, starting with Problem Track and ending with Open-Ended Track:

Product Track – All students create a product(s) or contribute to an event, but there’s flexibility regarding how this is done so students can exercise their creativity to own the process.
Problem Track – The project starts with a problem (usually, real world) that is either given to students or found by students. This approach is often referred to as problem based learning or challenge based learning.
Open-Ended Track – Students are presented with the project’s High Impact Takeaways (also called enduring understandings), learning targets, and possibly an Umbrella Question (also called essential questions or driving questions), and told they can demonstrate their knowledge however they’d like (with maybe a bit more direction provided).

One track isn’t necessarily “better” than the other. For any given project, the track we choose to use can depend on our specific context. For example, even when we (and our students) are comfortable with the open-ended track, depending on what we want to accomplish, it can still be appropriate to use the product track. And yes, more than one track could be tackled during a PBL unit – students debating an issue (product track) in the midst of solving a problem (problem track) – but one track tends to predominantly drive the unit as a whole.

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4 Keys to Student Self-Assessment

By Ross Cooper 2 Comments

At T. Baldwin Demarest Elementary School in Old Tappan, New Jersey, we’re in the middle of a two-year process of implementing Writing Pathways across all grade levels. More or less, Writing Pathways is an assessment system that works hand-in-hand with the Writing Workshop framework, and the system will help us to better align our writing instruction, horizontally and vertically.

In addition, whenever we’re dealing with assessment, student self-assessment should be our endgame for the purpose of students owning the learning as much as possible.

As John Hattie tells us in Visible Learning for Teachers:

…the greatest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and when students become their own teachers. When students become their own teachers, they exhibit the self-regulatory attributes that seem most desirable for learners (self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-assessment, self-teaching). Thus, it is visible teaching and learning by teachers and students that makes the difference.

That being said, taking into consideration Writing Pathways and my work with project based learning, here are what I believe are the four keys to student self-assessment.

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Project Based Learning: Six Hours of Professional Development (a free mini-course)

By Ross Cooper Leave a Comment

Last spring, as part of a professional development series organized by Tom Marshall (an Elementary Principal in Paramus, New Jersey), I facilitated three two-hour sessions on project based learning (PBL).

Below is an outline of the five activities that were spread out across the three sessions. In six hours total, the goal was to start with an introduction to PBL and then finish with participants feeling at least somewhat comfortable in designing their own projects. (Yes, we packed in a lot.)

There’s enough here for individuals or groups to work through these activities (or versions of them) on their own, as if it’s a self-paced PBL mini-course. Also, keep in mind, about 10-15 educators took part in the professional development. So, if you plan on using these activities to facilitate learning in your own school or district, some adaptations could be necessary.

———

Session 1 of 3: What Is Project Based Learning?

Activity 1: What’s the difference between projects and project based learning?

Directions

In small groups, claim a column on this spreadsheet (which you’ll need to copy in order to use) and ask as many questions as you can related to the above graphic and the differences between projects and PBL. Your questions should be recorded in the blue. (10 minutes)
Transfer your three most important questions from your blue to your red. (5 minutes)
Group discussion based on everyone’s red questions

Resources

Activity 2: What are the essential elements of project based learning?

Directions

Read, Buck Institute’s Gold Standard PBL: Essential Design Elements.
In different small groups, using this spreadsheet (which you’ll need to copy in order to use), rank the seven essential design elements from most important to least important (column B). For each ranking, provide justification (column C).
Group discussion based on everyone’s rankings

Resources

What are your next steps?

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Four Reasons to Tackle Flexible Learning Spaces

By Ross Cooper 1 Comment

Since this past January, I’ve been the Elementary Principal of T. Baldwin Demarest Elementary School (TBD) in the Old Tappan School District. And, as I’ve previously detailed in my blog post – Flexible Learning Spaces: The Start of Our Journey – one of our first initiatives involved flexible learning spaces. In short, every teacher was given money to spend on furniture for his/her classroom.

Why Every Teacher?

Yes, every teacher had the option. This idea probably sounds a bit unconventional, as most initiatives begin with a pilot group that paves the way, making it easier for late adopters to follow. However, in this instance, due to certain constraints (timing, budget, etc.), I believe it made more sense to let everyone jump on board, which has its upsides. As Prakash Nair announces in Blueprint for Tomorrow, “Indeed there is evidence that reform efforts focused on improving the capabilities of individual teachers are less effective than those that engage teachers collectively.” There is value in everyone moving in the same direction at the same time while learning from one another and continually refining their work (or learning spaces) as necessary.

Why the Classrooms?

I also played with the idea of taking a look at other parts of the school, such as (1) furniture that would allow for students to more comfortably work in certain sections of the hallways, and (2) rethinking the area right outside the main office, which is what is first encountered when entering into the building. However, it didn’t take long to realize all of these changes would have been too much too soon. And, if we’re going to start anywhere, it makes sense to start with the classrooms, as this is where students and teachers spend the majority of their time. In The Third Teacher, John Stanford, the late superintendent of schools in Seattle, tells us, “The victory is in the classroom.”

Now let’s take a look at four reasons why we prioritized flexible learning spaces.

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How Do We Assess (And Possibly, Grade) Project Based Learning? #HackingPBL

By Ross Cooper 2 Comments

Last week, Erin Murphy and I facilitated a two-day project based learning (PBL) workshop for an inspiring group of educators from Madison City Schools, Alabama. As part of the workshop, we spent some time focusing on what assessment (and possibly, grading) can look like within the context of PBL.

When discussing this topic, it’s first and foremost important to keep in mind there is a difference between assessment and grading. Whereas the goal of assessment is to improve student learning, grading (or a grade) is generally used to evaluate current level of performance.

Should Projects Be Graded?

In short, the answer is a resounding “No!”

Project based learning experiences should call for a great deal of student critical thinking and creativity. And, research tells us that “carroting and sticking” these types of skills isn’t just ineffective, but detrimental.

Pause for a second and watch this Daniel Pink TED Talk, The Puzzle of Motivation, which is based on his book, Drive. Or, if you are in a rush, just watch from 1 minute 30 seconds to about the 7-minute mark. And, if you really don’t want to watch the video, here is the take-home point for this segment:

If-then rewards work really well for those sorts of tasks, where there is a simple set of rules and a clear destination to go to. Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus, concentrate the mind; that’s why they work in so many cases…But for the real candle problem [a problem that requires creative problem solving], you don’t want to be looking like this [tunnel vision]. The solution is on the periphery. You want to be looking around. That reward actually narrows our focus and restricts our possibility.

Pink also makes it clear this experiment is not the exception to the rule: “What’s interesting about this experiment is that it’s not an aberration. This has been replicated over and over again for nearly 40 years.”

Looking back on my work as a fourth grade teacher, I can draw a straight line from Pink’s work to my use (or misuse) of grades as the carrot and the stick. The more I engaged my students in project based learning, the more I realized that grading the actual project was not only unnecessary, but potentially harmful.

If Not Grades, Then What?

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Flexible Learning Spaces: The Start of Our Journey

By Ross Cooper 2 Comments

Over the past few weeks, my teachers and I have been exploring flexible learning spaces. And our goal is to hit the ground running with implementation at the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year. (Of course, we can experiment when our supplies arrive before then.)

Here’s the email (slightly modified) that officially began this movement. It was sent out about three weeks ago.

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Hacking Project Based Learning – Free Online Course! #HackingPBL

By Ross Cooper 9 Comments

This post was written by Erin Murphy and was originally published on her blog.

Ross: What do you think about writing a book on PBL?

Me: I think you’re crazy.

Ross: Just think about it.

If I’m being honest, I tried not to think about it. Unfortunately, the idea got stuck in my head. At first I fixated mostly on my failures: terrible rubrics, lengthy directions, displays of content rather than displays of learning, and the list could go on. Eventually, my stream of consciousness turned to the solutions I created (often times through a conversation with Ross), and then my wheels really started spinning. The true tipping point, however, came later in the week, when I bumped into a former student. She approached my family and me, while we were waiting to be seated at a restaurant, and said, “I was JUST telling my parents about the time you let us save those plants in the school garden from that fungus!”

Nine years.

This learner was in my class nine years prior.

Well, that really got me thinking. If experiences in my classroom held up to the test of time, maybe I did have something to write about after all.

Writing Hacking Project Based Learning: 10 Easy Steps to PBL and Inquiry in the Classroom was just as much about the failures as it was the triumphs (in fact, the failures probably had a greater impact). Mostly, though, it was about the kids. For us, this book is about sharing a clear framework for implementing PBL, with the ultimate goal of creating more educational experiences worthy of conversation after nine years.

This last year has been a whirlwind. Ross and I could not have predicted the positive acclaim that has surrounded our first book. Our work has connected us with opportunities, adventures, and people for which we are endlessly grateful. We continue to learn and grow with each moment, each interaction, and to show our appreciation, we want to offer you a Hacking PBL Birthday Gift!

We have compiled our favorite resources into an interactive online course, and we are giving it to you FOR FREE.

Thank you for joining us on this journey and for adding to the PBL conversation around the world!

We appreciate you.

Here’s what’s included…

Over 65 additional resources, organized by hack/chapter, to help you take off with project based learning – plus an introductory video for each hack
eBook Add-On – Contains 10 blog posts, each an extension of one of the 10 hacks/chapters from Hacking Project Based Learning
eBook: Sweet Spot Directions – Tips and authentic examples for how to deliver your project based learning directions in style
Project Planning Template – The easiest way to make project based learning a reality for you and your students
Hacking PBL 101 Slide Deck – An outline of the book, in slide format, that is ideal for project based learning professional development
Theory to Practice Book Study Guide – 3 professional learning options for facilitating a Hacking Project Based Learning book study
Question Cards – 36 questions to get you started with your discussions – 3 per hack/chapter, plus the introduction & conclusion
Posters – 8 posters featuring some of our favorite quotes from Hacking Project Based Learning
And more!

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