|
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Driving questions, Essential questions, and Supporting questions This series, we’ve been talking a lot about project based learning. One of the main elements of Project Based Learning is coming up with a driving question. What’s a driving question? It is one that’s aligned with learning goals, engaging, allows for open ended responses, rooted in a specific context, clear, and centers justice. There are also essential questions and supportive questions. Grant Wiggins has a blog post that explains the difference between all of these. The essential question stays relevant and comes back into curriculum unit after unit, even moving between subjects and grade levels. Supporting questions are small scale. They have an agreed upon answer and they help students in answering their big driving question. All of these question types are helpful for different reasons. They all go together into completing a project that looks at an issue. What’s important here is not trying to leave any out or substitute one for the other. In this episode, we're diving into the details of a driving question. “There are different levels of questions and an essential question as the driving question for a project is not going to cut it. it's not going to be super engaging, it's not going to be contextualized in a way that makes sense for the project so students might be confused; they might just be disinterested. And the supporting or what I have been calling the scaffolding question is just way too narrow.” What make a driving question stand out? It’s important for a driving question to be exciting for students. If there’s no interest, it’s automatically going to be a less effective project with answers that may not be fully developed. We want it to be in a specific context so that it’s not too broad. It needs to be open ended so that students can all respond in their own way with something unique to bring to the table. It should be clear; students should know what is being asked of them. Lastly, it should center justice and give students a chance to be a part of real world problem solving. Examples A way to make sure that your driving question hits all of these elements is to create at least 5 rough drafts before you decide what your final question is. Additionally, ask a friend or students for feedback to see if anything’s missing. To borrow an example from John Larmer at PBL Works, if you were going to talk about math and basketball, your first draft might look something like this: How is math used in basketball statistics? Then it could progress to: Is Lebron James the best basketball player ever? There’s a clear difference here for a couple reasons. First, it’s gotten more specific. It is more compelling. People are much more interested in Lebron James as the subject. And it’s created another question about how to define best and what that’s based on. Now it would have to be edited further to include justice. Sometimes when justice is added to the question, the question may get bulkier or less clear, so you want to try to maintain a balance all of these qualities. Some of the possible directions you can go with driving questions is making it:
Here is John Larmer's post with some more sample questions to check out Closing activity: As we close this post, just take a moment to do some brainstorming. Think of a unit idea/topic that you could use for your question. Then try to come up with those 5 minimum drafts. Use the Backwards Planning Template to give you a checklist for driving questions as well as some other info you won’t want to miss. If you have any further questions feel free to reach out! For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now to create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self. TRANSCRIPT we are diving into episode number four of the curriculum design series. Talking about creating a strong driving question, we will tackle questions like what's the difference between an essential question and a driving question. I'm gonna give you a bunch of examples and some really gold standard elements of a strong driving question to be able to use almost as a checklist as you are creating a strong driving question that's compelling to your students for your upcoming unit that you'll be designing. I'm so excited, let's dive on in. Hi, I'm lindsey Lyons and I love helping school communities envision bold possibilities. Take brave action to make those dreams a reality and sustain an inclusive, anti racist culture where all students thrive. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach, educational consultant and leadership scholar. If you're a leader in the education world, whether you're a pro principal superintendent instructional coach or a classroom teacher excited about school wide change like I was, you are a leader and if you enjoy nerd ng out about the latest educational books and podcasts, if you're committed to a lifelong journey of learning and growth and being the best version of yourself, you're going to love the time for teacher ship podcast, let's dive in. 00:01:26 According to PBL Works, one of the quote gold standard elements of project based learning is a challenging problem or question. So I want to dive in a little bit deeper and take a look at this element that is so critical but often overlooked or kind of skim through or you know, just seems confusing and so we don't really touch it or refine it that much. So let's talk about the driving question and the very first thing I want to do is distinguish it from an essential question. Grant Wiggins who is a co author of Understanding by design, you B. D. Many people will notice as distinguishes an essential question from a compelling question if that's what he calls it is the same I think as a driving question and he also distinguishes both of these from a supporting question as well. So he has a whole blog post on this. I can link to that in the show notes but he clarifies that an essential question is one that Rikers over time and points toward important and transferable ideas. 00:02:28 To me. An essential question is something that might be your entire grade team content to content area creates curriculum that enable students to address an essential question. It's transferable to different content areas. It could also be that your entire department in a given school year to year, students are grappling with the same essential questions again transferable to different contexts and time periods and all that stuff. Those essential questions are really broad or high level. They're used everyday kind of as a focus for curriculum from year to year. The other end of that continuum as supporting questions. And so these are at the lesson level. Grant Wiggins says they have agreed upon answers and they assist students in addressing their compelling or what I'm calling driving questions, all of these question types are really valuable, it's important to have essential question, it is important to have those kind of scaffolding or supporting questions that enable students to answer the driving project based questions, but they're all really different when it comes to the purposes that they serve. 00:03:38 And so it's just important to be clear. You can call them whatever you want, but just recognize that there are different levels of questions and an essential question as a driving question for a project is not gonna cut it, it's not gonna be super engaging, it's not going to be contextualized in a way that makes sense for the project. So students might be confused, they might just be disinterested a supporting or what I have been calling. The scaffolding question is just way too narrow and not something that students could really use to answer in any sort of depth. So it doesn't make a good project question either. So what does make a strong, compelling driving question? A strong driving question is the key again to the success of a project based unit. If students aren't excited to address the question answer the question, the project immediately becomes less effective. It is so important that we get this question right here are the criteria that formulate a compelling driving question, it's engaging to students, it allows for open ended responses. 00:04:44 So, again, just like we said with the supporting or scaffolding questions can't really go many places with that. If it's a question that opens up a range of answers and a range of responses that could be considered valid or valuable, then we're good. It also, and this is the important thing that I think essential questions, misc and a lot of teachers, including myself early on Miss this rooted in a specific context. So the driving question should be contextualized. It needs to have a bit of context to it or else it is way too broad and then becomes an essential question. The driving question should also be clear, meaning students understand what the question is actually asking. The language is clear, but also just the phrasing of the question is clear. So the question as a whole can be understood by students and I would add a piece that is not part of PPL works, which is that it centers justice as well. If we're creating justice centered units, we're creating projects that ask students to apply with their learning in the spirit of advancing justice, they're able to take action or resist oppression. 00:05:50 We need to be able to have a driving question that centers justice within the question, right? It should all be grounded in justice. And so we start that off with our driving question. Of course, it also should be aligned to learning goals. That's another thing that PBL work says, I just think that's pretty much a given at this point, but that is another thing to consider. We want to make sure that we're teaching what we need to teach. And of course the learning goals should be aligned as well. If you find yourself drafting a driving question and it doesn't meet these criteria or meet some of them, but not all of them, I would challenge yourself to rewrite, we do this with blog writing a lot. Rewrite a list of maybe five iterations before you settle on your final piece. Five iterations of the question I think is a minimum. If you can do like 20 iterations, if you can ask for feedback from fellow teachers, former students, current students, I think that's even better, but make sure that you're being really thoughtful about the step of creating a driving question because if you move too quickly, the whole project, the whole unit can kind of be upended because there's not a compelling driving question that students want to answer. 00:07:02 Let's take a look at an example. This is probably my favorite one. I think this comes from john Larmer at PBL Works who wrote a blog post about creating a compelling driving question. The first draft of this question is, how is Matthew's basketball Statistics? This is a very common type of question that I would say it's probably an attempt at contextualizing an essential question of like how is math used in life, right? And then they apply basketball and now we call it a driving question, but that's not really a compelling question that students are going to be excited to answer? That's kind of a pedagogical question that asks the teacher will how can you create projects or activities that invite students to apply statistics in a basketball context? That's a question for me as an educator, not for students. The second draft that is student facing might be is Lebron James the best basketball player ever. I have asked this question not just to students but to educators, to adults and our virtual workshop chat just kind of devolved into arguing about this. 00:08:08 So it clearly is compelling, right? It's clearly way more compelling. People are gonna have opinions about it. And as a math teacher, you could break down how statistics can be used to be able to address and support that question and your answer to that question. Now, I think there's another component here that is missing for our purposes of creating justice centered curriculum, which is where is the justice in that piece? So we might actually create another level or another draft of that question. And I am not saying this is a great question, but I've been kind of playing around with this example, but might look something like what's the formula for calculating the best basketball player of all time? Right. So is there some sort of formula that gives us the best basketball player of all time? And I think what that gets at is what statistics are missing from the debates of whether Lebron James is the best basketball player ever. Are we just using his in game statistics? Are we just using his points, rebounds, assists, Right. 00:09:11 All these things that we typically use when we talk about basketball? Or are we also creating a lens of justice to look at this quest through and ask, what does Lebron James do for intersectional justice? What does he do for racial justice? What does he do for gender justice on the court off the court in his context as kind of a public figure? What is he doing to advance justice as a human being? Is that an important consideration in terms of what makes the best basketball player of all time? Is it just his basketball performance or is it him as a person who happens to also be an athlete? This could create a little bit broader conversation. Certainly we're still using a lot of statistics, but we could also bring in concepts of racial justice and what Lebron James has done for racial justice efforts to be able to speak really intelligently and broadly on that topic. You're going to need to do a little bit more research into the context and statistics of these other issues that he might be talking about. 00:10:15 So I think that is an opportunity for people to add a layer of justice thinking back to this kind of checklist of what the driving question needs to have. It is engaging, is Lebron James the best basket player ever, Certainly more engaging than how is Matthews in basketball statistics. It allows for open ended responses, you can say yes or no to the question of is he the best when you open it up in that third draft of like what's the formula for the best basketball player, then we have even more open ended opportunities. Whereas our first is kind of a yes or no, but I have a lot of avenues to be able to support the yes or no. So I think it still fits an open ended response requirement. It is rooted in a specific context. So we are not only saying basketball is important, but we're asking about Lebron James specifically. So I think that is really specific and that third draft thinking about calculating the formula, it is contextualized, but it might actually lose a bit of context realization as we're trying to broaden the open ended responses. 00:11:17 So there's a balance there for sure. I think the Lebron James question, is he the best right that is clear. Students understand that question, they're going to immediately be able to jump into a conversation and then over time kind of curate all the research necessary to support their position in the third draft, we get kind of away from that clarity and so again, these are all kind of a bit of a balancing act and certainly we try to center justice in that last piece as well when we're thinking about this list of qualities that are driving questions should have. You'll want to write out each of the questions and then have the list of qualities handy as you kind of check each of your drafts of your driving question against the list. I often feel like I just want time to, as I'm listening to podcasts to be able to think about what is being said without noise and sometimes I can't hit that pause button because my hands are occupied and so I'm going to give us a little bit of time here. I want you to write a compelling driving question for a unit idea in your mind. Let's just take a minute and get a unit idea in your head. 00:12:22 It could be a unit you've done before, it could be one you've dreamed about doing. Let's just get a general topic in your mind. Once you have that, I want you to draft at least five possible driving questions, you can write it down, you can think about it, but let's just take a moment to just brainstorm at least one driving question, I'm sure you will need more time. So you can feel free to press pause if you're able, but I want you to have at least one in your head and then let's go through the checklist first, I want to invite you to think about, is it provocative, does it enables students to kind of jump in and answer So recall your question and ask is it something my students are gonna kind of scramble to answer if it's engaging and provocative students are excited to answer it. 00:13:42 The next question is does it allow for open ended responses? The wording should not suggest a correct answer. Can multiple answers be shared? Is it rooted in a specific context? So is there a relevant context provided? Or can students choose a context if you're thinking about it in the context of a unit where students can go one of three different paths and students can determine which path they want to go down. But there is options for context provided, basically this idea of context gives them a clear why? So why am I answering it for the Lebron James question? Why am I even thinking about the question about math and basketball? Right, Why is that even important to me? Well, now I've contextualized it, so I have the why have the motivation to answer? Take a moment to think about? Does your question have a clear why, meaning a relevant context that would excite students to answer that isn't too broad. Next ask, If the language is clear, Can students actually understand your question meaning each word in your question, but also the question as a whole. Does it make sense? And you may want to test this out with different people because sometimes we could just say, oh yeah, that makes sense because we wrote it. 00:14:57 Maybe run that by a few people but take a moment ask of each of the individual words as well as the question as a whole makes sense and then ask does it center justice? Is justice at the core? Often I think it's hard to embed justice into a question that was inherently not about justice. So the Lebron James example is one that I took from john Larmer article and then tried to apply justice way harder I think to do something like that than to create from a standpoint of just so if you're struggling with this, I would say kind of start again, brainstorm a unit idea or topic idea from the beginning, the centre's justice and that becomes a lot easier. The other things are a lot easier to adapt because they're more linguistic issues than the content itself. And a final check that speaks to something we said earlier, can this question be answered in one minute? It shouldn't be, this should require a strong understanding of course knowledge and skills to be able to answer it. 00:16:06 Okay, if you have just done that activity and you're like whoa, I need to start again from scratch or if you're thinking wow, I couldn't even come up with a driving question, no worries. Of course this takes much longer. So feel free to really listen or pause and come back to this later, but I do want to share a couple of formulas with you as well as some example driving questions that might provoke a little bit of creativity or innovation in terms of getting started there. The Buck Institute for Education. They came up with what they call the two Brick, basically a formula to create a driving question and I think it's a little clunky to be honest, but it's great if you're just getting started. So they suggest starting with a frame, for example, how can we, should we the first word or two of the question then a person or an entity. So how can we, we would be the person, how can our class, our class would be the person, how should this government, the government would be the person. Right, so an actor or an entity frame the person then an action and then a purpose or an audience. 00:17:09 So for example how can we solve that's our action. A particular problem littering in our school would be the purpose, we take an audience view for that last segment. It might be how can we create a product? So create a product would be our action for our first period math class. That would be the audience that we're creating for going back to the government example, should this government pass a particular law to address a particular problem? The first few words of the question, a person or entity, the action that we're going to take and then the reason we're going to take it like is it solving a problem. Is it creating something for a particular audience? To me that feels a little bit clunky. I think it's better to create organically, but again if you're stuck it's a nice starting point. And even simpler formula I think is april smith who came up with how can I as the frame, how can I and then challenge audience. 00:18:12 So how can I plan a school carnival that will raise money for our school? Right so our school needs money and the creation the challenges that I need to plan a school carnival to raise money and the audience is our school. So that's another one that you can use. I want to talk a little bit about some subcategories of driving questions really quickly I think of them in two big categories. My most successful driving questions have either been debatable questions. The Lebron James example is a great example, it's not what I've used but it's kind of a yes or no and then we can have an argument about it or it's to create a product or solve a problem and that's kind of what the buck institute and april smith's formulas speak to, we're creating a product to solve a problem. A debatable question might be why has a woman never been a U. S. President super open ended, it's an opinion question but we can debate why all day long now we can use course concepts to be able to understand why that is. 00:19:16 We can use it to support an answer. But really we're talking about kind of a debate. It's not a debate in the sense that we would think about Lebron James debate where there's a right side and the wrong side. It opens up opportunities for a lot of different positions. Can a dog live in the desert? Definitely a yes or no. Head to head debate or another kind of version that I would put under debatable questions is an alternate reality. What if something happened? So for example, what if the world ran out of oil tomorrow? What if something that happened in history didn't actually happen? How would life be different? It's kind of an opinion. It enables students to debate, oh, that wouldn't happen, that would happen. And it's kind of a fun twist. But in terms of an authentic product when we're going back to authenticity and those gold standard PBL elements, we don't necessarily have a final product that advances justice. But what I do think is really important. And what kind of afrofuturism has taught me is thinking about alternate realities as innovative cream creative potentials for seeing the possible for seeing the possibilities for advancing justice for seeing how oppression is not inevitable. 00:20:30 And so I do think there's kind of this creative writing element or creativity element to this alternate reality scenario that does advance justice if you look at it through that lens. And so that's why I would consider this part of a justice based question. The other piece is creating a product or solving a problem. And so driving questions might look like I'm gonna pull from a couple different places here. So Maryland's East Public School, which is in Australia. They had students answer this driving question, which is kind of a two parter. What can we as young scientists do to convince policymakers and governments of the threat of climate change? And part two, what solutions can we provide to minimize the effect of climate change on the environment? Here's one from Washington Discovery Academy. How can we as first graders create geocaching sites to promote physical fitness in our neighborhood. So you can see these use the formula a little bit more. Right? How do we as an actor solve this problem for this audience? Other kind of subsets of this idea of creating a product or solving a problem could be that we're teaching others about something or we're convincing others to change their behavior. 00:21:34 So convincing one might be how can we persuade teenagers to drink more water? A teaching one might be how can we teach senior citizens how to use an iPad and communicate with their grandchildren, other categories that I've heard put out there and I'm not a huge fan of include the broad themes. So for example, how does math influence art? Again, I think that's not a driving compelling question. I think it's an essential question because it's too broad, but a math class and an art class could consistently go back to that question unit after unit throughout the year and just think about how that question relates to what they're learning super helpful. Not a great project based question, right? Not a driving question, it's not at that level, it's too broad. Another one that I'm not super jazzed about is a fictional scenario. And I say that because I think there are opportunities for us to create scenarios that are real and not fictional. So for example, you're a Nasa engineer, you're in charge of building a moon base. What are the 10 most important things to include and why? 00:22:36 That is probably a really cool question to answer. And so if engagement is your priority, go for it. But I also think that we could frame this as you're not a Nasa engineer, but you are an emerging scientists, right? You're in a science class and Nasa might be building a moon base or they might be going to MArs and that's a real thing that's happening in our society. And we're talking about this stuff that's that's a real life thing that needs an answer. What do they need to include as they go do this thing. You can actually have students send a report to Nasa. So it's not just that they're doing this for the grade, but there is a real audience at the end as you go send whatever you're sending to. Mars, here's what you need to include and here's why you need to include it. There are so many times throughout history where we've seen brilliant people or organizations just forget or skip over something that it seems really obvious. Maybe to a child though there's a real opportunity here to make a report that could actually benefit humanity or be innovative or see something through the lens of a child that an adult at Nasa didn't see. 00:23:44 I mean, these are real opportunities to just slightly pivot a project and make it more authentic. The final thing I'll say is once we start bringing these driving questions into the class evidence of a strong, compelling driving question when students have a bunch of sub questions that immediately emerge. So something like, you know what if question, what if we had a chicken house at our school could lead to a lot of sub questions that we have to answer to be able to answer that driving question? What should the house be like, how many can live in a house do chickens live with their families? Do they need sunlight? Do we need to have playtime for chickens? What do chickens eat? How will we pay for their food? How often do they eat, Who's going to feed them? There's all sorts of cool branching questions that students will be able to gen if it is a compelling driving question. So that's another great check is just kind of throw out a question to your students and see what comes out if there's not a lot of engagement, if there's not a lot of questions generation, that kind of branches from that driving question, you might want to rethink or revise our question. 00:24:46 Alright, that was a very deep dive into driving questions as a free resource for this episode. I'm going to give you my backwards planning template which does have a mini checklist around driving questions as well as a lot of other things including a proposed unit arc which we're going to get into in our next episode of the curriculum development series. Just a reminder that curriculum boot camp, my online self base course is available for purchase for individual teachers or for school leaders who want to purchase it for their department or grade teams. I also have a live component. If you are a school leader who would like me to come in and help your department to your grade teams, spend two days developing one complete unit start to finish. If you are a teacher who is a little cash strapped looking for just one piece one module of the curriculum bootcamp course. I got you, I have heard a lot of people ask for it, I've been resistant to give it up as its own thing because I think the whole package is really important. I am going to drop a link into the show notes for you to just purchase the protocols module of curriculum boot camp, including all the templates with it. 00:25:53 Get excited for next week's episode or we'll be diving into the creation of a unit arc and protocols that are in that module I just mentioned. Thanks for listening. Amazing educators. If you loved this episode, you can share it on social media and tag me at lindsey Beth Alliance or labor review of the show. So leaders like you will be more likely to find it to continue the conversation. You can head over to our time for teacher ship facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders continue to think Big Act brave and be your best self.
0 Comments
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Matthew Pimental has 15 years of experience in education. He got started with developing cultural immersion experiences for American teenagers to locations throughout the world before transitioning to a classroom position in a Philadelphia charter school serving students from the third (economically) poorest zip code in the United States. He transitioned to a role supporting students identified as “intellectually gifted” and now oversees professional development programming for teachers. He also supports a school within a school project-based learning program in a highly diverse school district in a metropolitan area. Can you remember the first time you heard about Project Based Learning? Perhaps it was from this blog, during a PD workshop, or maybe you saw your coworker teach a PBL unit. Did you think to yourself, “wow that sounds like a lot of work,”? You’re not the only one. Our guest, Matthew Pimental, says it’s common to hear teachers assume that being unconventional in the classroom means throwing away everything you know and having to start all over again. That’s what deters schools from getting into project based learning. In this episode, Matthew breaks down some of these fears and talks about why it’s really not as big of a leap as you might think. All schools should be able to make changes that will help the students The methods and ways in which people are taught do not have to be through a textbook. Many schools get a kind of tunnel vision when going the typical route. Teachers try to get through the fast paced flow of the week without remembering that there is more to education than this one way. Matthew remembers feeling like a cog in a machine as a student in middle school classes with traditional models. There was no personalized learning. Private schools seem to have more resources and capacity for unique learning experiences. But fun, enriching education experiences shouldn’t be a luxury for private schooling. Public schools deserve the same outcomes. That’s why project based learning is on the rise. The benefits are stirring conversations. Is PBL less rigorous? Some parents and principals worry that changing the pedagogy and evaluations for students means losing out on organization and quality. Here’s the secret: there’s only a risk for disorder and low quality if you allow it. Proper planning and following research based strategies is all it takes to make sure any changes are smooth. For example, shifting the grading system to align with a PBL approach does not mean throwing out all forms of assessment and feedback. “If you're not going to grade students, how are you holding students to excellent work? Right, you can't avoid that just because you're not going to use grades, and I think oftentimes...getting away from grading winds up being getting away from any kind of evaluation whatsoever, and that's not high quality education.” PBL can still meet the basic standards within your state. It’s not as radical as one may think according to Matthew. PBL curriculum still enables students to learn the most important course concepts and skills. Not to mention, he recommends that you keep using practices from the traditional model too because many of those still have value. Find what works for your students and keep it! Then, look at what’s left to change. Use project based learning as the main course (not the dessert at the end). The project should drive the learning. For teachers who don’t feel like they want to incorporate PBL into every unit, Matthew says some of his teachers choose specific units to use a PBL approach and other units are designed using a more traditional model. What do you think your students could accomplish with more project based learning? If you've already started, what successes have you had? If you're not sure about starting, what’s holding you back? Share your thoughts in the comments section below! For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self. More Links! During the show, Matthew refers to a student-created book as the culminating "public product" of a ninth grade PBL unit. Here are links to two of those books (2018) and (2020). He also mentioned his teachers are participating in High Tech High's Unboxed Podcast. Matthews’s email and more information on his district can be found on Cheltenham’s Website. TRANSCRIPT in this episode, I'm talking with Matthew Pimentel who has 15 years of experience in education, you got to start developing cultural immersion experiences for american teenagers to locations throughout the world before transitioning to a classroom position in a philadelphia charter school serving students from the third forrest said quote in the United States, the transition to a role supporting students identified as intellectually gifted and now oversees professional development programming for teachers and help support a school within a school project based learning program in a highly diverse school district in the philadelphia metropolitan area. I can't wait for you to hear from Matt. Hi, I'm lindsey Lyons and I love helping school communities envision bold possibilities, take brave action to make those dreams a reality and sustain an inclusive, anti racist culture where all students thrive. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach, educational consultant and leadership scholar. If you're a leader in the education world, whether you're a pro principal Superintendent instructional coach or a classroom teacher excited about school wide change like I was, you are a leader and if you enjoy nerd ng out about the latest educational books and podcasts, if you're committed to a lifelong journey of learning and growth and being the best version of yourself, you're going to love the time for Teacher Ship podcast, let's dive in Matt, welcome to the time for Teacher Ship podcast. 00:01:34 We just introduced you with the formal bio but is there anything else you want to share with our audience. Just happy to be here, talking with you. I'm just looking forward to diving into a conversation about progressive education and project based learning. Excellent. I'm so excited. One of the big things that we start with at the top of each show is this idea of Dr Bettina love talking about freedom dreaming dreams grounded in the critique of injustice as I think about your district in your program. I think about, like you said, progressive education and Children's right to a quality engaging education. I think there's so much that is a dream of sorts for you and the work that you do. Do. You want to just describe to us a little bit about that dream you hold for the field of education, thinking of it from that lens. I have to go back on my own experience to a certain extent, as an elementary school student. I attended a laboratory school which is directly came out of the vision of john Dewey who wanted to set up free public elementary schools that would be run by college professors at colleges of education and the purpose of them wasn't to just be another school, it was to be a place where they could attempt To pilot new ideas that would help foster this notion of progressive education as defined by Dewey. 00:02:51 And so he started the first one. Um I believe in the University of Chicago. So I happened to grow up in a small town where there's a teaching college there. So there was a laboratory school that was set up back in the 1930s and is still there today. So my experience as an elementary school student was pretty extreme. Um, we did some pretty out of the box stuff and the other part of it was that we also had on any given day at any time, there was at least two or three college students in the classroom observing and sort of engaging with us as well. So it felt like the world was kind of watching and knowing sort of what that experience was like or what the end product of that was, which was that the students felt very invested in the school that they were in, it felt like a community, like the line between home and school was completely blurred as students, we felt like we belonged. And then on top of that, the methods and the ways in which the teachers sought to teach us the things we need to know was not through textbooks, it wasn't through worksheets and those kinds of things. 00:03:53 It was very, in some cases hands on. But even when it was more academic in nature, it was still um, a lot of sort of quote unquote fun was built into it. Now, the term that you might hear use like Gamification, like how to make things that are actually learning more of a sort of fun experience. There's a lot of that and I don't think I realized how unusual it was, it just felt natural, it felt like something a kid should do. Why shouldn't it be like that? And I didn't realize the shift until I then moved to the middle school in my small town, which was a perfectly fine, perfectly functional middle school sort of middle America standard middle school experience. But it was by relative comparison cold, it felt too big, it felt industrial and it lost that human touch. And I definitely felt like a cog in a wheel. Like there's these things I'm supposed to learn them. If I don't learn them, then my teacher has a furled brow and sort of, you go on from there and of course there are some great teachers there too, but as a system overall, it felt institutional and and not like a natural place to be as a kid. 00:05:01 And I'd say that that's kind of stuck with me as I've gone on to become an educator myself and to think about how to apply these things to our world today and being able to have lived through both of those things myself that just always lives with me as a kind of ideal or a dream or something that we ought to be doing more of in our public settings, that it doesn't have to be something that is only for the elite or only for the private schools, it can be something that everyone gets to experience and enjoy. That was great. You said the idea of like home and school being blurred, you talked about the sense of belonging, those are absolutely critical things that we don't always think about when we think about schooling institutions and if they were less institutionalized and more like that, I think we really would be achieving monumental transformation in our system. So I love the ways in which he described that as we think about the schools, maybe that are institutionalized in this moment, that are kind of recognizing themselves in the descriptors of the cold institutionalization and wanting to shift more to the sense of belonging, that authentic project based learning, the progressive education, the blurring of home and school lines. 00:06:13 What do you think are the mindset shifts that are required to get people to buy into that approach? There's a couple angles on that. Um so the first one I have to take actually is straight from Dewey, one of his later texts, he goes on to extol the virtues of a traditional education and the reason why he starts from that seemingly odd place is that one of the things he recognized is that a progressive education done poorly is not a good education. And that oftentimes when we go to put progressive educational practices in place, they are not done with the same level of rigor and expectation as what you would find in a more standards based approach. And so what ends up happening is that the progressive model gets used as an excuse to not provide an absolutely fabulous first rate, no questions asked. 00:07:15 This is a wonderful educational experience. And instead it's kind of this half baked thing and the mantle of progressive education gets used as an excuse for why things aren't as high quality. Some of the examples are like, oh, we're, we don't grade students. That's an interesting philosophical concept and you can you can have a whole podcast on whether or not we should grade students. But if you're not going to grade students, how are you holding students to excellent work? You can't avoid that just because you're not gonna use grades. And I think often times and I'm using it as one example, but getting away from grading winds up being getting away from any kind of evaluation whatsoever. And that's not high quality education. The same thing goes to like behavioral stuff. We let our students pass in and out of our room, They don't have to ask permission. Okay, but half your classes in the hallway, there is an education happening. It's it's it's chaos. It's not order. Um, so just because you're so open minded that you don't have these basic rules is not really an indication of an improvement. So I really take Dewey's own critique of his own system as something that we still need to apply now. 00:08:22 So for those who are thinking about a mindset shift, one of my first thoughts is don't necessarily like go off the deep end and say everything about the current educational system should be trashed and we need to start completely over, well, I don't know about that, you know, so there's a lot of good stuff that we do in traditional schools now. We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think that's kind of one thing for people who are sort of scared at the idea of a significant change. But what about all the stuff that works? It's like we'll keep doing those things. You don't need to reinvent the wheel where it's unnecessary. I think that's sort of one piece of it and then the other piece of it is, this is often cited. I believe it was from 1960 until the year 2000. The top 10 highest paid professions were the same. It was the same 10 jobs they jockeyed around in terms of who was number one or who was number three, but it was the same 10 jobs. And it was all the things you would have thought of if you were of the generation that came up during those years. So doctor, lawyer, um, engineer, so on and so forth. 00:09:24 And then from the year 2000 to today, the top 10 highest paying jobs didn't exist, that is likely to be a clearer picture of what the future is going to hold for us than the old model. So the idea that I'm a high performing parent and I have a high performing child and I have expectations for them to do great things in the world. So the assumption that we will limit this child to medicine, law and engineering is not necessarily to actually put that child into the same position that you would have done. So if it was 1985 and you were trying to make the same decision for your child, I think the recognition that the world is just a more flexible, fluid, undefinable space means that the education we have to provide for our Children has to be aligned to that unknowable future. And the whole concept of a very rigid standards aligned education does have philosophically underpinning it an assumption that there's an end point that we're all marching toward that we know about. 00:10:29 I think that part of the big shift is simply the recognition that that end point is not the solid fixed flag that it once was. So knowing that we don't even know where we're going, how do we educate people to be able to have success in that environment? Just sort of an aside. Um and this is because my my family is Portuguese and one thing that always struck me was that in the early days when the Portuguese started exploring, they would send out 10 boats in different directions and they would be lucky if they got one back, which means that nine boats never came back, no one knows what happened to them in a sense, that is like more like what the future is going to be like how do we prepare people to just go into unknown directions and define success? So I think all of that then, if you can walk through that sort of series of thinking, then you're going to start looking for adjustments or alternative educational models that might be able to better address the needs of this unknown future world. 00:11:32 And I think that that's where project based learning comes into play, which is that it's a method or it's a means that has already been developed where we can put students into educational scenarios where they are employing more skill sets that are aligned toward this unknown future. And that aspect of it, I think is something that helps us to try to mitigate this challenge. And then a few just other pieces to that, because I would personally would place project based learning sort of in the middle, if not towards the um and I don't mean this politically, but towards the conservative end of the progressive educational options, you can apply project based learning and still meet basic state standards, you're still meeting the core content things that students need to know, you're still teaching them the skills that they need to know that they would have learned. Otherwise, it's really not nearly as radical as people think it is. And I think that if you can kind of get on board that this is actually more of a of a twist of the wrist it's really not that much of a radical change that I think can also alleviate some people who are like I don't know if I want to go down this road, it's like it's really not that weird. 00:12:44 It's really not once you get a grasp on how to do it and how to do in a high quality way, it's not that big of a shift really from what we do in a traditional setting. And that sounds like a perfect transition to thinking about what are the brave actions that someone can actually take to start that shift and maybe figure out like you were saying how to build up that way of doing PPL well in a way that's not super scary. Yes, so I think I've probably touched on a few or I've set the stage anyway for sort of that piece. Number one is it's not helpful to try to show up and be the rebel who's like telling everyone else that they need to upturn things like none of that's helpful. It doesn't actually result in good outcomes. I think it's more about looking at the systems you have in place and figuring out what do we keep and that should be most things and then start to look at okay here's the things that we keep and what are the things that need some adjustment they have to change, but we're not getting rid of these things. And then I think once you sort of can bracket all of that, then you're looking at what's left over for where the real change is going to occur. 00:13:53 And I think that that then really focuses on what it is your students are going to put in front of others as a demonstration of what it is that they learn that then becomes the thing that truly changes and you can wind up keeping a lot of the other things that you may be doing in your school now that don't require the shift. So I think, I think the bravery comes around the ability or the willingness to a evaluate everything that you're doing because you have to decide what's going to stay and what's gonna be adjusted and what's gonna go. So that's kind of the first brave step is what we are going to look at everything and decide what, you know, what needs to stay, change or go. I think that's step one, I'd probably leave it at that. That sounds great. Yeah, and I love how it's that critical evaluative look, right? That totally takes bravery and then the piece that you're talking about two, I've heard of PBL described as the meal, not the dessert, right? You're the main course, not the dessert and so there's that approach to like full on PBL where the project we're working on the project every step of the way during unit. 00:14:57 And then I've also seen teachers who are just kind of experimenting with it, who start out with that end product. It could just be like the last few days of the unit, we're putting together this product and we're not taking a full deep dive into PPL, but we're just trying to figure out what's a cool application project, like what's a cool demonstration of learning. And I think that feels like a safer transition point sometimes for teachers instead of like, let me revolutionize my entire unit or my entire curricula to make everything PBL centered. That might be easier for folks. Do you mind talking just a little bit about how PPL works in your school district? Like I know you had spoken to me a little bit about the K-12 continuum of how students are introduced to PPL and you're doing some full things there. Yeah, we thought of it as a kind of funnel. Um, I should actually back up and say that we're a traditional public school system. We're in the suburbs of philadelphia, very diverse district, both in terms of racial demographics, but also in terms of socio economics and religion. So it truly is a very diverse place. And when we thought about the application of project based learning to our district, a big piece of it was an eye toward equity and providing an educational experience that is of high quality for all of the students who engage in it. 00:16:14 So, the way that we approached it was, we thought of it as a kind of funnel where students at the narrowest part of the funnel would be having a very intensive project based learning experience. The widest part of the funnel would be having a kind of light touch, sort of an introduction to, or just a taste for what it might be like and and that in essence sort of defines the K 12 continuum. He started at the narrowest part of the funnel at our high school. For high school students, there are students who opt into a project based learning experience and for the majority of the day, they are, in a sense, this is not a really accurate way to describe it, but it's a kind of school within a school. What makes a difference is that as the bells ring and students throughout the rest of the school are moving from class to class. The students in the PBL space are not, they stay contained within the same group of students for the majority of the day, not the entire day, but most of it, and during that time they are with PBL teachers who have been trained in project based learning. 00:17:18 All of our teachers have shadowed with a high tech, high teacher from high tech, high SAN Diego. So those teachers then, um, as you said, you know, they are using project based learning is the meal, um, not the dessert, it is the projects are how learning happens. It is the thing that drives learning. So that's the experience for our students at the high school level, the middle school level, which is kind of the middle of the funnel. It's a little bit different. Our middle school is broken up into teams and so for each grade level, one of the teams is converted, so to speak to a more design thinking slash project based learning experience and that that team is randomly selected. So students are not opting in um it's the students who are simply placed on that team, they're on the project based learning team. And then when they moved from seventh to eighth grade, they may or may not be on the project based learning team in eighth grade. It's not meant to be a kind of continuum experience. It's, it's meant to simply have two of the teams in the school are using PBL and then within those classrooms it is not PBL all day all the time. 00:18:28 Teacher select particular units that they are going to apply a project based learning approach to and then there's also units where they don't um, so for example, our english classrooms, when is leading up to the state standardized assessments, they are not doing project work during that time. So they, they sort of put their project time at different points in the year is one example. So it's a little bit of a less intensive experience and then right now we're in the process of finding ways and methods to bring a PBL experience to all students in our elementary grades, so that that they have a light touch experience, some kind of combination of maker space meets design, thinking meets PBL as a way for everybody to get a taste, a person listening might be a leader of high school thinking, yep, I can see this path forward, I can see how to transform this or at a lower level thinking like how does this actually work with all the stuff that we have going on? And I love the maker space idea as kind of the light touch at the start of the funnel. 00:19:29 Super cool for schools that are thinking about more or project based units and supporting the teachers to design project based units that speak to their students, your teachers have created their own podcast, right, that will share really cool projects that have been going on with others as kind of a source of inspiration, I think that's amazing. Do you mind just sharing a little bit about that initiative? That initiative started with high tech high um they had created a website that was a series of exemplar projects that high tech high teachers have utilized and an outgrowth of that experience because there is sort of a general call for people who are interested in project based learning, you know, what does great project based learning look like, What's an example of project? How do you guys plan this? Like all those kinds of questions. So high tech high decided to take it in a slightly different direction, which was to start to produce podcasts that would essentially act as audio documentaries of the teachers experience in the creation and formation of their own projects and what that was like for the students um and the teachers so on and so forth. 00:20:42 And that was a part of their unboxed Journal essentially, which, which is, I think like a digital podcast journal. So high tech, I reached out to us because we have a close relationship with them and asked if some of our teachers would be a part of this initiative to put together these podcasts and we of course were more than happy to join in and some of our teachers volunteered to be a part of this sort of special program. Those teachers who are with us are actually working with high tech, high teachers in the creation of these audio documentaries to let other interested teachers who might want to know like what does a great project look like and what the trials and tribulations of a teacher who goes through the process of putting this together and what do the kids have to say about it. That's really what got the whole thing started and our hope as we continue to do this and this is actually our second year of doing it, The first year was more of a website creation and so then this year they shifted to the podcast component and our hope is that as time goes on in conjunction with high tech high, we're building a bigger and bigger library of great project work. 00:21:50 That's amazing. And is this something that people can listen to on like the regular podcast channels? Yes, don't believe it's been published yet. They're, they're still trying to wrap things up. Okay, awesome. As you think about all those amazing units that teachers are doing in the auto documentaries that are happening, what are maybe one or two of your favorite PBL projects that you've seen at your school? The first one that comes to mind is the opposite of kind of like a grandiose project. And I think this goes back to the idea of PBL doesn't have to be such a radical thing. We had an english teacher who wanted his students to write a series of self reflective vignettes, kind of standard english teacher thing to do. Anyone is an english teacher assigns teach kids to do vignettes, that's something you can do. But in a typical setting, you have students learn what vignettes are, what are the components they write them, they hand them in, they get a grade and then we move on in the project based learning space. What they did was they read a book that was a series of vignettes, um, house on Mango street and they used that as their exemplar about what a collection of vignettes can be. 00:23:01 And the difference between a vignette and a collection of them that are thematic in nature. He then had the students write their own vignettes around an organized theme. After that part of the work was done, they compiled them together into a book that is now for sale on amazon and that's the product that was produced through the project based learning experience. So from sort of an instructional lens, if you looked at it, you're like, well what's really different about this? Well, instead of it just simply being a paper that's handed into the teacher, it's that and these things get put together and published in a way that the public can join in the book is for sale. You know, there's there's copies of it on the shelf in the classroom, It's a final finished product. It's a real text. I think that that is a representation of like a very easy slight shift that a teacher can make. That is all the difference between a traditional classroom and a project based learning class and obviously anyone who's an english teacher and who might be listening to this, it would not be hard to meet all the standards that you have to meet to teach. 00:24:07 All the content skills you have to teach. Like it's not asking you to throw all that out, but the students are in the end producing something very, very different. I love that as sort of one of our examples of a successful project that is from a sort of PBL lens, you could say it's like a small lift or a small shift. Another example that comes to mind, we had another teacher who was trying to make sort of a bigger splash, no pun intended as I explain the project. So it was a combination of several subjects and part of it was a theme on migrations, human migrations. And so as a part of that thematic concept, one of the teachers had students build life size canoes and they put them together in their fiberglass and they're real canoes um that they produced and as a part of the production of that was the whole was wrapped into that english lessons and social studies lessons and chemistry lessons all about the different components of the boat building process, about human migrations, technological advancement, those kinds of things. 00:25:15 And so then the end product were these full size vessels that we put in the high school pool and we're able to, you know, paddle around and they're hanging from the ceiling in the PBL rooms now. And it was really for some of our early students, one of their first experiences of being able to really produce something big and grand and that came out really well and looked professional and and looked high quality, you know, I think it's one of those projects that they'll remember for the rest of their lives. Thank you for painting a picture of both of those like the small lift and then maybe a larger lift because I think it speaks so well to the continuum of opportunity we have in PBL and I love that you framed it in that way too for the teacher who's listening, who's like, oh yes, I can do that one, maybe I'll get to that one, but I can do, I can do maybe that first one. And I also love that, you know, house on Mango Street is used as an exemplar, like you were talking about the finish product is like this meaningful product, which I, I think is such a hallmark, important hallmark of PBL projects. I also love that PBL can use these existing text as opposed to we learn what kenya is and then we read the text and then you know, game over instead we're like okay, we're thinking about writing our own and so we're studying this really cool exemplar as a mean to create the project, which I think speaks to the idea of the project as the main course versus the dessert. 00:26:37 Just that small shift in mindset, there is like, oh that's why that teacher did that. Okay, now I could see how students are more invested. The product that they end up producing is a little bit better because they were more invested as they were reading the vignettes so much, they're wrapped up in what you said, I just wanted to kind of highlight all the cool stuff happening as we kind of wrap up the episode. We've shared a lot today. And so I'm just curious to know what's the first thing that someone could do ending the episode? That's kind of a first step into jumping into this? I know you talked a little bit about the action steps, Is there something that you would recommend people do right away? Is it, you know, go explore some project options online. Is it doing that? Thinking that you mentioned about what's working, what's not, where would people go first? I would say if it's an individual teacher thinking about it, the first thing I would recommend is to start thinking about what is it that you think students could do if they were held to a really high standard and and I don't mean academically, but like what could they produce? What do you think they could make? Um You know, in the example of the book that I'm talking about, I mean, it's a professional looking book that Anyone would buy from Amazon. 00:27:44 It was made by 9th graders, really trying to challenge yourself and challenge the students around this idea of super high quality work in a realistic, in a real world context, what do you think your kids could do? And if you can start thinking like that. I think that that's sort of the right first step before you start landing on things like oh I want to do, X, Y. Z. Project, um you know, starting with what you think your students are capable of, what you think they could do um if they were pushed to produce really high quality work, I love that's a great suggestion. And as we close up the last two questions I always ask first, what is something that you have been learning about lately? I would say that I have um recently really been going down the rabbit hole of the application of design. Thinking as a method for administrators, mostly people in leadership positions but also teachers as a sort of modus operandi on how to make decisions and how to function and operate a large scale organization that is in keeping with the general principles of um progressive education and do it in a way that can be applied in a traditional public school um that it doesn't have to be a private school or charter school or something where you can kind of really break the rules so to speak, but that can happen inside a structure that has history and has been around for a long time. 00:29:11 I love that and that's gonna be super relevant to everybody listening. Last question, where can people learn more about you, learn more about your school, connect with you online. I'm sure people are gonna be interested in learning more. For starters, people interested in project based learning can um look at the Sheldon ham school district in pennsylvania. Um and we have things on our website around project based learning and you know also my contact information is there as well. Awesome matt. Thank you so much for being on the show. Okay, thank you. Thanks for listening. Amazing educators. If you loved this episode you can share it on social media and tag me at lindsey Beth Alliance or labor review of the show. So leaders like you will be more likely to find it to continue the conversation. You can head over to our time for teacher ship facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders continue to think big, act brave and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: One of the foundational elements of backwards planning justice-centered units with flexibility and multiple opportunities to practice skills is a course-long rubric. Getting clear on where we're going helps us as educators, and that clarity helps our students. Using one rubric for all course projects In last week’s post, I touched on project based units, curriculum design, equity, and mastery based grading which helps students deeply understand content and repeatedly practice and refine key skills by addressing one driving question throughout a unit. We cannot design application projects or create lesson-level activities for students to practice the key skills if we don't know what the key skills are. That's why a course-long rubric is step one. “Work within your department or the grade you teach to be able to co-create a rubric that has the same priority standards so that students moving class to class or grade to grade, year to year, they see the same language... and they get further opportunities to be able to practice and refine those skills.” Co-creating this rubric with fellow teachers who teach the same content or grade level will result in a better rubric that's aligned from year to year and class to class. It also saves the student the trouble of having to read through and learn new rubrics. Now, there are two ways you can make a rubric for mastery. One is called a single point rubric. The three columns are: Approaching standards, Outcome, and Above Standards. In the middle column, you will list all of your outcomes. So name the skill and under it explain what being proficient in that skill would mean. The other two columns are for you and a student to write your own notes. If a student is not quite at the standard, you will describe why in “Approaching Standards” and if they have gone above those standards you write how they exceed the standards in the “Above Standards” column The second option is a three or four point rubric with 3 or 4 vertical columns and horizontal rows for the priority skills. The difference is that you define each category of mastery on this rubric (e.g., below standards, meets standard, and above standard). Best practices:
I think you’ll find it useful to hear about the skills-based rubrics that the New York Performance Standards Consortium has developed. Many schools have adopted these standards and it’s great to see these collaborations between departments in different schools. Their four point rubric is based on these core subjects: ELA, Social Studies, Science, Math, and Engineering/Design Science. The priority skills listed for ELA are organization, analysis & interpretation, style & voice, connections, conventions (written) or presentation (verbal). Social Studies is viewpoint: thesis & claim, evidence & sources, analysis & persuasion, effective organization, understanding of implication & context voice, and a presentation format. For science they have the presentation piece plus contextualize, critique, experimental design, collect/curate/organize/present data, analyze & interpret results, revise original design. Math is problem solving, reasoning & proof, communication, connections, representation. Finally engineering/design science contains problem solving, reasoning & proof, communication, connections, representation and a presentation format. Rubric design is critical for backwards planning curriculum, and it doesn't have to take forever! Take a look at my rubric templates below to see the templates we discussed today. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module to create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self. TRANSCRIPT in episode two of our mini series on curriculum development, I'm going to be talking about rubric design will cover a little bit of a review of why rubrics for mastery are really important and then we're gonna dive into the how and I'm gonna give you some examples of what mastery based rubrics actually look like and the types of specific skills and standards for specific content areas that you might want to include in your mastery based rubric. Here we go, Hi, I'm lindsey Lyons and I love helping school communities envision bold possibilities, take brave action to make those dreams a reality and sustain an inclusive, anti racist culture where all students thrive. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach, educational consultant and leadership scholar. If you're a leader in the education world, whether europe principal Superintendent instructional coach or a classroom teacher excited about school wide change like I was, you are a leader and if you enjoy nerd ng out about the latest educational books and podcasts, if you're committed to a lifelong journey of learning and growth and being the best version of yourself, you're going to love the time for teacher ship podcast, let's dive In last episode, I was talking about my vision for amazing curriculum design and what that looks like in a huge piece of that is, students are allowed to revise and resubmit they're able to have sustained inquiry, they're able to practice the same skills time and time again over the course of a year and even over the course of their academic careers from school year two, school year, I talked a little bit in the last episode about grading bias and the research on how mastery based grading is actually a more equitable practice and traditional grading practices. 00:01:58 So you can feel free to go back and listen to that episode if you want a little bit more context. But here are just a few quick highlights. Mastery based grading has resulted in a 34% gain in student achievement over traditional grading practices. There is an increase in student learning as well as a decrease in the stress level of the class climate. This includes better student and teacher relationships and it has been shown to decrease achievement gaps or quote unquote achievement gaps. That's just a really quick summary. Again, feel free to listen to that previous episode if you want some more detail on that and other equitable practices. But today's episode is really going to take a dive into how do we actually create rubrics? So really quick overview first. I just want to say that rubrics for me as I've seen them developed and refined and utilize in different spaces in schools that use mastery based grading practices and project based learning practices. 00:02:59 It's really beneficial to get that repetition time over time the year to year to be able to have a rubric that you use for every unit for every project throughout your course and what I would highly recommend is to work within your department or your grade team depending on what grade you teach or what educational setting you're in to be able to co create a rubric that has the same priority standards so that students moving class to class or grade two grade, year to year, they see the same language and the same priority standards. And they get further and further opportunities to be able to practice and refine those skills because they've been deemed priority in concert with other teachers. And so there's this collective opportunity throughout the school to really focus and prepare students to demonstrate these core skills. And so I think there's a lot of collaborative effort that goes into creating the kind of school wide culture of master based grading and rubrics that really work here to your grade grade class class. 00:04:07 But it is also completely doable if you are an individual teacher who doesn't have that kind of school wide support yet to do it for your own class with that context, knowing that we want to develop a rubric that we can use for every project throughout your course. Again, that's a huge time saver as well as it offers the benefit of students practicing the same skills over and over and not having to familiarize themselves with a new rubric when you enter a new project or a unit. So there's some benefits, both for the students and for the teachers here. I want to talk to you about what that robert can actually look like. So I think there are two great options here. One is a single point rubric where you have three columns on a piece of paper and you would just go down the middle column and write all of your outcomes. So whatever the skill or standard is, you're going to write it out as kind of a title usual, it's like one or two words for example, analysis might be your skill or your standard and then underneath that you're going to define what master it looks like. 00:05:12 So what is your expectation for a student in your course, given the grade level, given the subject area, what does it look like for you for that student to demonstrate? Mastery and what you'll use the left and right. Most columns for in a single point rubric is to jot notes or even better to have the student and yourself jot notes as you are reviewing the students project that they're submitting for grade. So this is your opportunity. If there are approaching standards, they're not quite meeting the standards in that middle column yet, you can use the left most column to just jot a quick note and say, here's where it's not meeting standards quite yet. You can highlight some things that are maybe missing from that middle definition or if they're above the standards, you can use that right most column to be able to say why they've actually exceeded the standards there, above the standards. And you can highlight the things in again, that central column. That definition of mastery what they went above and beyond for in that project. And I say that students and teachers can both use this because I often in the last few years of teaching high school would have my students actually submit a rubric with their final project for a unit and I would actually sit with them, look through the project that they created and look at their rubric in terms of how they graded themselves and either agree or disagree with each of their grades for each of the skills. 00:06:40 And so we actually have a conversation about that. I got to see their reflective practice and their thoughtfulness in terms of how they graded themselves more often than not, students were very accurate, maybe not the first unit because they're so not used to that flexibility and that freedom to grade themselves, they're typically not asked to provide that kind of feedback. That's something that they see only the teacher is capable of doing. But after that first unit we kind of normed a little bit our grading practices with one another, it was very accurate and students were really thoughtful about this. I think that's a really cool practice that you're able to use. Once you have rubrics that are understandable to students and familiar, you know, project to project unit to unit. And so that's one the single point rubric where you're just typing out the skills or standards in that middle column leaving the left and right. Most columns blank for comments written in. The other option is kind of a three or four column rubric. So on your left most column you have your list of skills and then you're right. 00:07:43 Most columns are either three or four categories for mastery levels. So you might use something like an approaching standard, a meat standard and above standard. Some people have more mastery categories than that. But I would just start with those. Those are pretty basic to have those three and then you're actually going to write out not just what meets standard looks like, which is what you did in the single point rubric, but you'll also define what is approaching standard look like and what is above standard look like. And what's really important to do here is to talk about the skills, not the specific projects. So again, we want to be able to use the same rubric. Minor revisions are definitely possible if that's easier for you. But I would recommend just the same rubric for each project for each unit. And so you're not changing this rubric. This is something students are familiar with, which means we can't talk about specific project details. If I have students creating a project that is a documentary, I might be talking about, you know, evidence as an interview that you did with a person or research that you found online and you have to cite the sources and include a a P a citation or something if you have a completely different project where students are teaching a younger grade level content that they learned that's not relevant when it comes to a evidence. 00:09:06 I might not have them cite their sources in a reference list. I might not have them interview anyone for that project, but I might still talk about evidence in terms of what is quality evidence. Did you get your evidence from a good place? Is your evidence displayed? Clearly. Did you have some sort of reference to where you got it? And so that high level skill description is really important for the continuation of the rubrics use from project to project. Again, you can adapt that core rubric with assessment specific details if you would like. And so then you'll just have your main rubric and then your adapted rubrics for each project. But maybe the main rubric goes up as a poster on your wall or you know, is is somewhere in your learning management system, your google classroom. And that's kind of the reference point for students to come back to. The other piece of this is when you're describing approaching standards or above standards, you want to focus still on what students can do at each level of mastery. This is incredibly challenging. I still struggle with this, but instead of saying for approaching standards because that's usually the one that's that's the challenge. 00:10:11 We're not quite at meeting this standards. And so what we often do is default to, students cannot do whatever master it looks like, right? So students do not have six pieces of evidence. For example, what mastery language would look like at approaching standards on a good rubric would be something like, students have four pieces of evidence were still saying the same thing. They don't have the six that are needed for mastery, but we're doing it in language that is more positive and not negative. So it's not that they don't have this, it's that they only have this and we might not use the word only, but we're really describing what they can do at that level. Another example of this might be, if we are creating definitions of mastery for the skill of analysis, for example, that's a really popular one. I think it pervades grade levels and content areas and students often struggle with it because it is a very high level skill. We can identify maybe additional standards or kind of supporting standards to that high level skill or standard. 00:11:18 So for analysis, the first thing they need to do to be able to analyze is to understand if they're reading a text, what does the text say? They might need to be able to restate or summarize what the text says and then they need to analyze if they can't do those first two supporting standards, they're not going to get to be able to analyze really well. What I might do is define students can at the approaching standards level for analysis, summarize what they have read so they actually can't analyze yet. But I'm not saying that they can't analyze, it's just that they're only regurgitating the information back to me. They're not adding a layer of analysis. So I would just define mastery of a supporting standard versus saying they can't do the standard that we're working on. Another thing that I would recommend when you're creating a rubric is just having 4 to 8 outcomes, eight becomes really unwieldy for is as low as I've seen that still covers all of your bases for priority standards you'll need for a full course. 00:12:21 What I'm gonna do now is that I'm actually going to read to you some of the priority skills and standards from the new york performance standards consortium. I taught at a school that was part of that consortium and they are amazing for really having those collaborative conversations department to department and also between schools, departments between schools. So your social studies rubric is going to be pretty much the same rubric from school to school and all of the social studies departments and each grade within each high school. So that's pretty cool, collaborative effort and since they've already done all that work, I just want to share with you what they've come up with in terms of their priority standards and you can also take a look at, you know, how many are there in a rubric that last them an entire year. And you might be shocked to find that it's not that many. So let's take a look really quickly. You can also google new york performance standards consortium. I know that's a mouthful. I'll link it in the Senate as well and they have a link on their main site to rubrics and so you can check out the language of mastery and how they use. 00:13:30 I think it's a four point rubric. So not the single point but a four point rubric. That second option be discussed and you can look at how they define mastery in each of those categories as well. But here we go. Let's take a look at the skills for each core subject. We'll start with the L. A. In L. A. They have five total skills and that includes a presentation aspect. So whether they're doing a written or a verbal presentation, they have a presentation row or standard for either one. So again depending on the project it's either conventions or kind of verbal presentation skills. There's five including that presentation aspect. The others are organization, analysis and interpretation style and voice connections. And then again the fifth being conventions or presentation. So five total for the entire year. Five priority standards. You'll see two content to content area. 00:14:34 Some of these actually processed. So the idea of organization and analysis and connections some of those are seen in a lot of other subject areas as well. So there's some cool grade level overlap as well as department specific priority standards. Let's take a look at social studies. Next they have six standards. This is the highest number of all the content areas that the consortium puts out. Six plus a presentation format. So again only seven total standards. We think about all the standards that we often try to cover. I really wanna hammer this point that there's only seven that our priority for the entire year and one of those is the presentation format. So same as E. L. A. They have the conventions if it's a written product and then they have a presentation line of the rubric. If it is a verbal presentation. Okay so social studies has viewpoint which they kind of further define as thesis and claim Evidence and sources is the 2nd 1. 00:15:37 Analysis and persuasion is the 3rd effective organization. Understanding of implication and context and voice is the 6th for science. And this is specifically a rubric. For an experiment for science. They have five plus the presentation piece that the others do here are there five contextualized So they need to be able to know the context critique of the experimental design collection curation, organization and presentation of data analysis and interpretation of results and a revision of the original design for math. They have five total they don't have a presentation element like some of the others. But here they're five problem solving Reasoning and proof is the 2nd 1 communication connections and representation. So how they represent the mathematical concept and the fifth that they include here is what they call kind of an engineering or design science. 00:16:46 And there are five including the presentation piece. I could see this mapping onto several different content areas. First we have contextualized the design problem. Right? So I'm already thinking of beyond engineering. This could be humanities class where we're talking about youth action research or a lot of different pieces here. Right. But we have a problem. So we're going to contextualize the design problem. two is critique the design process three is test the prototype which includes a lot of things we heard in the science piece though, collecting, organizing presenting data And then the 4th is evaluating the prototype. So you can see a really a range of 4 to 6 priority skills that each subject area has and so hopefully some of those resonate with you while they are developed for high school grade levels. I think these are really relevant year to year grade to grade across the K 12 continuum. And even into college, if you are ready to design your own mastery based rubric. 00:17:51 Again, keeping all of that research in mind, keeping your different options in mind and keeping those parameters of really 4 to 8 concrete priority standards and defining for mastery what that looks like using one rubric for the whole course. I'm gonna share some free rubric templates with you. There'll be the two templates that I discussed in this episode and I'll add those to the show notes so that you can just grab a copy and make your own rubrics and get started again. This episode was number two in our curriculum design series. If you are interested in a deeper dive of curriculum design, we have our curriculum bootcamp online self paced course for any teacher who wants to enroll, go ahead for any leader who is listening, who wants your department to undertake a curriculum boot camp of their own. There are package options for you to get a discount for group packaging, for a grade team or department and I offer a live coaching component for curriculum boot camp where we design a unit in just two days start to finish. 00:18:54 If you are a teacher who was like Lindsay, I don't have that kind of cash on me right now. I am responding to calls for just the protocols module so one out of the several modules in the curriculum bootcamp course with all of the templates for protocols that I'm going to be selling as an independent standalone option. That is much more affordable for teachers who might be interested. So I'll link to that in the show notes as well. Don't miss the next episode in the series where we have matt Pimentel coming on to talk about project based learning and what they're doing at his school to support students and teachers in a project based learning model and how you can make your class or school a PBL class or school as well. Thanks for listening. Amazing educators. If you loved this episode, you can share it on social media and tag me at lindsey Beth Alliance or Labor review of the show. So leaders like you will be more likely to find it to continue the conversation. You can head over to our time for teacher ship facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. 00:19:56 Until next time leaders continue to think Big Act brave and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: My dream for students Imagine if we could help students learn how to identify the injustices around them. One of my dreams for students is for them to be able to call out these injustices that come up time and time again. I want to be able to develop curriculum that enables them to create projects grounded in justice. These projects go beyond the grade. They should be heard by authentic audiences in the community. They bring inspiration and give students a sense of ownership in taking on these issues directly and creatively. When we apply mastery grading to projects over traditional ones, there is less room for bias and more for considering what skills are being demonstrated through these projects. What does the research say? The research on student-centered learning is revealing. This makes learning personalized to the individual needs and gives them power to be part of the creation of curriculum. Students get to progress to the next level when they’ve nailed down the concepts, not when a teacher says so. Here’s what students have shown from the research:
In addition, having more student voice has shown to greatly improve student-teacher relationships and student-student relationships. Students increase their critical awareness of the world and they naturally gravitate towards activism. This next one is so cool—when educators share power with their students, more power is created. This is known as cascading vitality. Usually, people assume the opposite. They assume that sharing power will mean chaos and that no one has enough. But I want you to reframe that mindset. Student voice engages and heals We talk about the importance of trauma informed teaching in school. There’s a reason that we need to change the pedagogy and methods with students who have been through trauma. Trauma affects the brain and impacts a child’s ability to learn. Besides SEL, students who have trauma can also benefit from this shared leadership model. It gives students control over themselves and how they learn which counteracts that feeling of powerlessness that some have after trauma. The process of restoring mental wellness and going beyond healing is called Post Traumatic Growth. Researchers find that the right environment for Post Traumatic Growth is one that involves a way to cope and regain agency. Justice-centered units and shared power are opportunities to to cultivate that. For many schools, there is a lack of connection and a lack of engagement in classrooms. Students that don’t feel like they are valued as an individual may feel this way because the traditional curriculum doesn’t reflect their identities or make room for their ideas. Our world needs young people to fight for justice, and the research tells us even having more class discussions increases students' future civic engagement. Next, I want to discuss why project based learning is impactful. In project based learning (PBL), you start with a challenging question or issue. This problem/question is one that students address throughout the unit. The summative assessment is a “public product” with an authentic audience beyond the teacher, and throughout the unit, students have multiple opportunities for critique and revision of their project. Classes that use PBL have been studied and found to improve students’ attitudes on learning, engagement, self-reliance, and overall attendance. Bonus finding: PBL teachers are happier than non-PBL teachers! “PBL also increases content retention and deepens students’’ understanding. Students in PBL actually do better on standardized tests than students not in PBL classrooms.” Reflecting on power and grading bias When teaching for justice, we have the opportunity to develop student identity and criticality which often doesn’t get the attention it deserves. When planning for lessons, take it from Dr. Gholdy Muhammad and ask yourself how your lesson will help students learn something about themselves or others. Sylvia Duckworth has something called the wheel of power/privilege. It’s a colorful and complex wheel that shows our proximity to power with all of our different identities. You can use this as an example to also ask yourself how will my lesson get students to think about power, equity, and ways we can disrupt oppression? Another aspect of teaching for justice is preventing grading bias. The data shows a clear bias in the practice of assigning a grade to students. Even when we are unconscious of it or aim to be objective, it’s too easy to judge the student rather than the quality of the student’s work or learning. The research on "mastery-based" or competency-based" grading, however, shows this approach to be more accurate and equitable. “Mastery based grading results in a 34% gain in student achievements. It increases student learning...and “achievement gaps” decrease.” Mastery-based grading really stands out because it doesn’t punish students for coming from past schools that haven’t prepared them to succeed. Usually, Black, Brown, and Indigenous students are the ones who are affected by strict grading because it doesn’t account for the gap or differences between students coming from advantaged schools and students coming from schools with less funding, crowded classrooms, and teachers that didn’t have the tools they needed. It’s all about giving all students a chance to practice the same skills and show progress/mastery in a variety of ways. I hope all of the research on these topics have inspired you to dive deeper and bring more equity into your class. If you want a simple resource that ties all of this together, be sure to click below to get my “Equity 1 pager”. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module to create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
|
For transcripts of episodes (and the option to search for terms in transcripts), click here!
Time for Teachership is now a proud member of the...
AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
August 2024
Categories |
RSS Feed