Meeting Students' Needs

I am interested in writing about a couple of components of the first article on flexible grouping, and am struck by the "art and science" analogy the authors use to describe how teachers need to differentiate instruction.

When I am creating the group assignments I will need to go back to my student questionnaire responses from the first day of school, and I will have to assess the value of placing like-minded students in the same group. Do I want all of my "love social studies" respondents to be in one group, or shall I place these students in several different groups to spread the love around as it were? Similarly, do I want to place my "social studies is not my favorite" students to be spread around as well? My initial thought is to spread these students around.

The authors tend to think that like-ability students should be spread around in various groups rathar than placed on one group. I will go and check the district's resources on middle school grades and testing events to ensure that I have placed varying abilities around the groups in each section of the course.

One thing I can do in the class to ensure that groups have varying abilities and interests is to have the students complete a writing piece before placement. I would be able to estimate the writing ability from a formative assessment such as this.

Authenticity is a big component of PBL according to the authors. We have had some experience writing authentic performance tasks from our school's usage of common core persuasive writing assignments in the last two years. I prepared a huge performance task assignment base on Argentina's Peron family for history class a couple of years ago, so I am familiar with creating performance tasks. The PBL requirement of a "product" is quite similar to the performance task assessment in common core. I will lead the students toward creating their deeper-connection  end task "product" as the authors indicate. Working to meet the needs of each student is the prime goal of the PBL differentiated instruction, and providing an authentic assessment is the tool to ensure that each child's needs can best be met.

In the second article about Oakland Elementary, I am struck by a couple of pieces of information. 

The authors write that Rome wasn't built in a day and the process of laying a brick at a time was arguably more important than the end result. This reminds me of the conversation I had with my PLC when we met with Mr. Winney, our Freshman Academy AP. 

When I explained the PBL to Mr. Winney. I let him know that in PBL while the standards are important the process of reaching the standards is just as important, the process being the way in which the students learn the soft skills that are essential to the "Profile of the South Carolina Graduate," and the 4 C's. "Students must extract information to communicate their own personal understanding in an original way," as the authors said, was the essence of what I told Mr. Winney. He understood and agreed that World Geography is a good place to undertake experimental learning processes such as via the PBL format.

I also met later with our building CRT Mrs. Jenny Norris and explained to her about what our PLC is working toward in terms of authenticity and PBL. She agreed with Mr. Winney's idea that 9th grade social studies is a great place to begin the process of setting PBL as a building priority for instruction. 

The authors of the piece talk about establishing and re-establishing  goals for the school's continuous improvement. Implementation of PBL can, for Woodmont HS, be part of the SIC program, and I am reminded that I still need to contact the leaders on this committee at our school.

As a side note about schools that are implementing PBL, I want to acknowledge Monarch Elementary, which like Oakland may be transformative. Our neighborhood happens to be zoned for Monarch Elementary's geocode group in Greenville County. The word has gotten around that Monarch is a wonderful school, and now many many families with young students are seeking too enroll in Monarch. The only real way in which a family can do this is by buying a house in the geocode that attends the school. Thus, demand for homes in our neighborhood have skyrocketed with a resulting price increase for homes in the neighborhood! PBL is paying off for our neighborhood! And the realtors in the area sell the Five Forks area as a Monarch geocode! Funny, isn't it? I love it, and I hope when my husband and I downsize in a couple of years it pays off for us! PBL rocks! I hope that eventually people want Woodmont HS because of the PBL instructional format as well!