Educator Competencies

Cognitive--Need to Know

As a first year teacher of Project Based Learning I need to make sure that I am clearly defining my project to the students and what I expect them to get out of the project.  This involves presenting the SC standards in a way that students understand what is to be learned during their PBL process.  A standards wall is a wonderful way of getting this information across to students and also gives students ownership over their learning by allowing them to provide artifacts for the standards wall.  

When I presented the project to the students, I thought I did a decent job of explaining the project.  Students were excited to be in control of their own learning.  I soon realized that I needed to provide them the project hook so they could reference this along the way.  There were many repeated questions about what had to be done.  I am not sure if this is because we do an alternating block schedule or their lack of attention to recall the details.  By providing them the project hook in Google Classroom, I believe this will work better for the next project.  

As a grade level, math teachers are working on justifications and critical thinking skills for our Student Learning Objectives.  This skill is necessary as we build our 21st skills in our students.  By allowing students to grow in their communication skills in mathematics and by allowing students to see how to constructively criticize and debate answers will give them the skills to communicate their understanding and their ability to critique others positively.  

The cognitive domain also stresses identifying students misconceptions as they arise and intervening with students to scaffold their understanding.  Some student misconceptions about sales tax became prevalent during this project.  Some students struggled to convert the percentage to decimal when calculating their sales tax on the grocery items.  This was solved by a mini lesson for those that needed the help.  The mini lesson allowed my students to actually calculate some of the sales tax on their items giving them the confidence to figure the rest on their own.  By allowing students to use their own grocery items instead of a preset problem encouraged more to actually come for the mini lesson and not feel it was not worthwhile to their final project.

Promoting community involvement is key to having students provide a quality project.  I did not have the public audience at the time of their presentations.  I am hopeful that I can set this up for the next project allowing students to have more ownership in their final project.  

My final comment about this domain involves the giving feedback.  More practice needs to be modeled for my students so they understand that providing quality feedback can make a project better and is not a bad thing.  Feedback and revamping is what we do in real life when creating ideas and building products.  

I, personally, realize that I need to work on my communication skills with students.  While I think that I have explained what is to be expected and what is needed, I need to constantly be checking in with my students to ensure that all in the group understand the expected outcome.  Overall, my first project gave me much room to home my PBL skills to create a better next project and to re hone this project for next year’s students.  The next time I do this project and if possible for the next project, I will have my students present the beginnings of their research to allow all to give quality feedback, to ensure they are starting on their right path and to correct any misconceptions about the direction of the final project.

Intrapersonal--Need to Process

By starting my next project with the opportunity for feedback, students can learn from their failures and be able and willing to correct their mistakes and their misconceptions.  This will allow all students to see and understand that failing the first time is a part of life and having the perseverance to keep going is what allows us to be successful.

I decided on the groups after getting some feedback from my students on who they  could not be successful working with.  I neglected to consider students who still would not work and how that would affect the group.  (I did allow some groups to break apart since they were not being productive as a group.)  While all my groups were not as successful working together as I wished I was pleasantly surprised by the adaptability of other groups.  They worked quite well together dividing up the work and allowed students to shine in the skills they had.

Many of the students I have this year come with an ADHD diagnosis.  While not all have accommodations, many need personalized feedback to help them be successful.  It has amazed me the number of times that I need to refocus students during a 90 minute class period.  Providing projects for their learning has allowed me the opportunity to conference individually with these students to praise them and give them suggestions for coping with their attention deficit.  By being able to conference with students I believe this helps me to build relationships with more students than I typically would during previous years.  This allows students to believe in my buy-in to their education.  This also allows students to better understand and be able to develop long term coping skills which will help them become lifelong learners.  This will hopefully allow them to believe that they can strive towards furthering their education and becoming successful in their chosen professions.  By struggling now and learning coping skills they can strive for their personal growth.

Interpersonal--Need to Relate

All the groups were set up to heterogeneous groups. When allowing students to have voice and choice in deciding to break apart groups, it allowed them to realize that together they could not be successful but apart they could have a successful group.  While students do need to be able to work with all, this was an important real life skill knowing that sometimes groups need to split to complete a task.  Although conflict resolutions were attempted, the turnaround on this project was very short to work successfully through them.

The groups shined as they became believers in what others can do and they also stepped up when they realized that not all could do the same type of work.  I have students who do not bring their computers home for various reasons so it was more difficult for them to do the investigation during the project.  Others in the group volunteered to do the research and allowed the ones without computer access to do other tasks for the project.  Equal work but not the same work was highlighted as students brainstormed how to stay on task with their project.  This is also a real life skill for students to learn as they begin understanding how to interact with others and how to accomplish their tasks.  By allowing students to decide in their groups who would do what task allowed them to stay focused and on track to meet the group goal.  

Instructional --Need to Do

There were several reflection prompts along the way to gain student understanding and to allow students to ask for help from me as their teacher and also from their peers in the classroom.  

As I progress through my PBL learning, I realize that I need to work the entire project through to make sure it flows seamlessly for my students.  This project made me realize that not all prices could be found online and a grocery store visit needed to be part of some groups research.  This was the only way to allow them to stock their shelves with items they were interested in.

The next project I will be allowing my students to pick their own groups to see if they can still be successful when working with their friends.  This will also allow those that want to work alone to have that option.  My school has a high number of students on the Autism spectrum and not all of these were capable of working within a group.  When conferring with other teachers, it was suggested that these students could be successful on their own.  By allowing this voice and choice, students can set their own progress goals and will also allow them to self monitor and self regulate these goals.  

I provided my students with opportunities to show me their growth through Ticket Out  the Doors every few classes to ensure that students were understanding  the different standards being learned through this project.  This allow allowed me to gain insight when a mini lesson was necessary.  This kept high expectations for all learners and allowed me to give feedback for those that were not quite being successful as the project progressed.  

By using this project as my starting point in my and the students Project Based Learning, I was able to gain knowledge and insight into what worked and what did not work.  This will allow me to create more thoughtful and creative projects for my students.  While this project was not a failure it can definitely be improved upon and it was a wonderful learning opportunity for myself and my students.  I will take their feedback and use it when creating our next PBL project.