Reflections on the 4 Domains

Introduction

There are four domains for our consideration as we move through the preparation of PBL units and lessons, ways in which we can check our application of the principles of PBL and self-assess our units.

Cognitive—Need to Know

The things that I need to know how to do to help my students become adept at PBL assignments, and to help myself implement PBL assignments, are centered around the concept of student-directed learning and student-based inquiry. There were several takeaways that I gathered from reading the Cognitive piece.

One main item to consider is being able to communicate the central concepts of student-directed learning, something I already practiced and recorded the day that Chris Burras came to video me. I tried to tell the students as succinctly as possible about what an adventure into PBL would mean for their ownership of their learning, all the while referring to the Standards Wall so they could envision each piece of the puzzle in the Culture Unit. Going forward I will have to spend some time at the outset of each unit in an opening statement about the process.

Another central item is building understanding and building mastery of concepts through the use of rubrics.  Mastery to me is simply that a learner “gets it.” Measuring getting it according to a well-planned rubric means that students can set their learning goals ahead of time and plan for their own learning, another feature of ownership.

Making concepts meaningful and providing a variety of authentic issues from a variety of perspectives is equally important in the Cognitive domain. We learned how to create authentic activities at our high school as we implemented common core argument writing. Going forward in PBL I want to bring in the public product and the community connection aspect of PBL to my class so that authenticity will be present. In the upcoming unit on urban and settlement we will have in Geography next semester we will be hosting a “City Night” like a science fair type of activity where we will display tri-fold boards and city models that will be created and built by the students. (More on this in the final project) This will go a long way toward adding the public product aspect of PBL to the class.

Promoting self-regulation by the students is another component of the Cognitive domain. The way that my Professional Learning Community of Geography teachers at my high school decided to handle this feature of Cognitive was to set a number of benchmarks for completion during the Culture Unit. Students were given a number of set of questions for inquiry on a couple of the unit standards and EQs and then asked to generate their own sets of questions for a portion of the unit standards. Our freshman academy has as one of its themes the idea of accountability, and so the domain concept of self-regulation goes along with that feature. Instilling the idea of goal setting and measuring a little success every day, two of our freshman administrator’s concepts dovetails with this idea as well. Going forward into future PBL units next semester the geography teachers have agreed that we will continue to set benchmarks for student completion of core portions of the units, and that we will try to foster a work ethic that will lead the students to success.

Further, in the Cognitive domain a teacher needs to aid her students in prioritizing between work and task assignments and among completion mechanisms. Writing lists is one thing I did to encourage my students in the Culture Unit to achieve success. In future units and in the urban unit particularly, making lists and setting priorities for completion of a model of a city will be essential.

Last, in this domain giving feedback to students is critical. After each of the presentations in class during the culture unit I gave the groups immediate feedback on the product and the presentation as much as was practicable. A few groups had to be deferred but mostly it was same day information. In the upcoming city project for the urban unit the feedback will take many forms, from peer review and teacher assessment, to the public input at the city fair event we will have at the school.  Also, by seeing how all the freshmen groups in the building compare students will be able to self-assess and self-feedback by examining all of the products/models in the public display.

Intrapersonal---Need To Process

There is so much information that comes under the umbrella of Intrapersonal that I hardly know where to start. One important aspect of this domain is the commitment to treating all groups in a similar fashion with high expectations for all individuals no matter their ethnic background. Along this same line of thinking is the concept that we must be culturally sensitive. In the population migration unit in geography right now we are reading as a group a book titled Enrique’s Journey about undocumented Central American migrants. I had to preface the book with a political disclaimer that no matter what your opinion of illegal migration is the story of “Enrique’s Journey” is still a compelling one because of the peril and danger involved. I do not have a Spanish edition of the EJ book so one of my bilingual students is reading out loud and translating the story for the ESL students in the class until the ESL teacher can obtain a copy. We will eventually have a class discussion about the material in the book and so I know that I will need to preface the discussion by assuring all the students that they are safe and can safely express themselves as long as the discussion remains civil. Also, in going along with the domain, I will remind students that a lot of our beliefs are formed and informed by our own biases, and so this way I hope to be able to promote inclusion of everyone into the book’s orbit as it were.

The growth mindset, modeling persistence and grit and modeling delay gratification are three similar issues within the domain. Grit is one of the big buzz words at our school this year, and they even had a professional development on it. I have always been a pretty persistent learner so I find it hard to understand how others are not. Thus, I need to be sensitive to the fact that a lot of the students are not the same type of persistent learner that I have been. Modeling persistence is one challenge we face. Today in class as we read Enrique’s Journey as part of the migration population unit, I tried to model persistent reading of the book. During the classes today I did a modified popcorn reading where each child had to read a sentence from the book as I stood by their desks and circulated desk to desk. The students were told to read one sentence or more, and I popped in when a child hesitated. It worked out well to model reading out loud. This too goes along with the part of the domain that emphasizes demonstrating competence from effort. If the students will not read then their reading abilities will not improve, so making them try to read at least a sentence in the class can help them learn that they can do it.

Demonstrating a commitment to student centered learning also goes with this domain. After I had taken the summer course I felt as if my entire approach to teaching would be revolutionized by the concepts of PBL. During this course and the course to follow in the spring, I will continue the path to reinvigorate my teaching and help my students master the standards, all the while letting them know that failure at an attempt at something is OK, and that persistence and effort is the key to eventual success.

Interpersonal---Need to Relate

There are many angles to this domain, and while some of these are ideals that I have had experience with there are several which I am just beginning to learn. Mentoring others is an aspect of the domain with which I am familiar having taken the state mentoring course and having had many student teachers and mentees over the years. Being a teacher-leader is something that I try to aspire to every day in this building because our retention rate is not what it should be and every year we have a lot of new faces around. I am the building rep for United Way and we have built our donation program successfully year after year so much so that we are consistently at the top of donations by Greenville County Schools.

As far as the student learning opportunities go within this domain I feel as if I have work to do. Because of constant behavior and discipline issues at our school and within my classes I have had to use classroom management approaches that students find to be mean. The aspect of the domain that emphasizes respectful communications, while applied to my relations with colleagues is fine, as applied to students whom I would term challenging and disruptive is not so fine.  Going forward in the PBL units and in the years to come I feel as if I need classroom management approaches will allow me to be less crabby and more nurturing, but as to exactly how to get there I am as yet unsure.

Along with this aspect of the domain goes the idea of demonstrating proper conflict management. If one supposes that proper classroom management is bread and butter of this aspect, then I need help every year with an abundance of disruptive students. If one supposes that helping PBL student groups sort out their own difficulties and challenges within their groups is the focus of the aspect, then I am doing far better in my growth in the domain. I was able to help several groups in the culture unit solve issues of personality, slacking, decision-making, and things of this nature but being a good listener and offering suggestions on how to move forward. No one got kicked out of any group due to a group vote during this unit, and this was among 30 groups with most being 4 or 5 students. I was able to help them manage the work load by offering suggestions as to how to motivate slackers. I felt that my advice was listened to, respected and followed, so I feel good about that. In the urban unit the groups will be smaller so we will see how that turns out and if I can continue to be a resource for the students to help them resolve issues that come up.

Another of the aspects of this domain is motivating other team members. In our PLC this year with Mr. Elliott and Mr. Horn, the other two geography teachers, I have had a chance to explain PBL to them and to work toward its implementation. The administrator for our group, Mr. Winney, has also bought in. We have had numerous conversations where we are sharing ideas and results, working toward adapting PBL for our learners. In our professional development classes with Mrs. Norris, the CRT for Woodmont, we are learning that the district is moving rapidly toward student-centered learning in all disciplines. I am glad to be on the edge of this movement. I feel as if by working toward the PBL endorsement I am a bit ahead of the game. The other two geography teachers have totally bought in, and we are already debriefing on the culture unit and looking to tweaking it for next year. One of the teachers has indicated he would like to pursue the endorsement as well, seeing how it has brought a new dimension to his classroom already in just the first go.

A further aspect of the interpersonal domain is to encourage students to self-assess and to peer-assess. In the culture unit we had a two part rubric about “collaboration” that was a teacher, self and peer assessment.  Each child filled out an evaluation worksheet about themselves and their group members. I attach them here.

Group Collaboration Worksheet

Period_______________ Group_____________ Region______________________

Directions:  Using the chart below you must anonymously score each student in your group, including yourself.  You do not have to put your own name in the first box. If someone did most of the work or did nothing then the score should reflect that.  All members’ scores will be averaged, and that score is 70% of the collaboration grade.  (Mrs. Eastman’s separate assessment is 30% of the grade. The collaboration grade is a test grade. The possible scores are from 0 to 20 pts per category. Consider each category separately. Place the numerical score in each box.

Name of Student and Yourself (Place each group member’s name across)	Name	Name	Name	Name	Name
Takes responsibility for oneself	0-20	0-20	0-20	0-20	0-20
Helps the team achieve the group goal	0-20	0-20	0-20	0-20	0-20
Makes and follows group agreements	0-20	0-20	0-20	0-20	0-20
Helps to organize workload	0-20	0-20	0-20	0-20	0-20
Help team complete tasks	0-20	0-20	0-20	0-20	0-20

                                 ___________      ____________    ____________   ___________    __________

                              Total                      Total                     Total                   Total                     Total

Comments:

Collaboration Rubric

Student Name_________________________                       Period____________________

Average score from Collaboration worksheets ____________________________________

                                                                                                X 70% =_______________________

Mrs. Eastman’s score for collaboration (0 to 30 pts.) _______________________________

                                                                               

                                                                                                Total points ____________________ (test grade)

	0     Not at all	5     Beginning to	8    Developing	10      Entirely
Used class time effectively in the group
Used research material effectively in the group
Worked toward group goal effectively

                                                ____________    +        _____________    +    ____________  +       _______________

                                                                                                                                                                = __________________

I find it helpful to make the worksheet anonymous so that the students feel as if they can be more honest in their assessment of the group members. I also received several emails from students with additional comments about their group process and relationships which I took into account. All told, the aspect of self-reflection and assessment is one which will be invaluable to students as the move into adulthood. We all must undergo assessment at nearly every juncture in our lives. Our school is not one of the “Baldridge” schools which incorporates regular record keeping by students of their own progress, nor are any of our middle school feeder schools Baldridge schools. Were we, I would be able to more swiftly adapt that process to what we are trying to do in the geography class with feedback for peers and from me the teacher, but using the rubrics together with the portal spreadsheet of their grades will suffice.

Last, embracing the idea of student creation of individual learning paths is an important aspect of this domain, as well as embracing student voice and choice.  At our school all the freshmen who I teach are now being called to their IGP Individual Graduation Plan meetings with the school guidance personnel. At the school scale for the child the path is already made clear by guidance. At the classroom scale each of us must place the student in the position of having them individually consider how they will master each standard from the World Geography standards promulgated by the state and published on Rubicon Atlas for our use. At the outset of the culture unit I introduced the standard wall and the various parts of it, the SWBATs, the EQs, and the must-knows. We walked through what they had to be able to do by the close of the unit. For the upcoming migration and population unit I have posted the new standards wall. I will be walking the students through the expectations of the unit and letting them know how to organize their learning as we complete the assignments. There will not be a huge group project with this unit as was the case with the culture unit. Nevertheless they still need a focus for their energy and a target to which to aspire. Explaining the parts of the wall really helps them formulate a plan.

Instructional---Need to Do

This domain, more so than the others, probably has more aspects to it which are things we would already be implementing in our classes under the canopy of best practices, rather than as strictly PBL, things such as utilizing technology, scaffolding instruction, maintaining high expectations, using formative assessments and promoting student ownership.  Some of the aspects of the domain which perhaps are inherent to the learning of PBL best practices would be facilitating a public showcase, offering student choice in mastery demonstration, collaborative group work, promoting student reflection of product and customizing the learning experience.

First, facilitating a public showcase is something that our geography team has not yet done but which we plan to do in the future.  In the culture unit the products created by the student groups were mostly power point type presentations even though we each encouraged the students to think beyond power points and to create their own type of custom product. We will try to move them past this idea when we implement the urban and settlement product group. We are going to have the student groups, smaller and with more voice and choice as to whom to partner with, create their own city. We will provide the scaffolding about various city models that exist in the study of geography, and then we will invite the students to create their own city. We will be showcasing the work for all of the freshmen in a science fair type of a display with tri-fold boards and the cities they have created in our commons sometime in the late winter or early spring. I conducted an IB Personal Project event similar to this a few years in a row several years ago and it was really fun, so I think we will nail the public product and the community and family relations aspect of the Instructional domain as we work toward City Night at Woodmont High School. We also would be offering the students a total choice in how they present their city, with the proviso that a tri-fold explaining the process accompany the product rather than be the product.

We will need to up our game in the component of teacher and student reflection, another aspect to this domain. I had not done a great deal of reflection during the culture unit with the students but our geography team is putting together a survey to get feedback from the students going forward. This will help us adjust our craft to the students’ needs, customizing their learning experience perhaps better than we did in the culture unit.

In conclusion, as I move forward in earning the endorsement for PBL, I will try to be mindful of the many aspects to the process, the four domains and the variety of components of the domains, so that I can become a better teacher in the mastery and collaborative mindset.


----Sally Eastman