Towards Project Based Learning - The Long and Winding Road

What's happening

I'm back after yet another long break.  I'm moving to open another school in Weston-Super-Mare, near Bristol - Hans Price Academy.   It will be in the same Federation of schools as Bristol Brunel Academy and will have PBL at it's heart.   I'll stil be working with BBA helping to develop their PBL programme further. 

I guess the biggest thing that I've noticed in the past year has been the extent to which so many schools design all their systems, structures and processes around the needs of the teacher, before the needs of the student.   Does your school?   If you have 5 mins have a look at a recent paper I wrote for the SSAT:    Download BBA principles in action    

 

A great resource base for PBL

This link was sent to me by Nathan Grim (SR Education Group ).  It's well worth going into

http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/online-teaching/project-based-learning. 

Comfort Zones and Scary Zones

And another difficulty . . .   teacher development.    I really underestimated the amount of professional development our staff would need to deliver this programme effectively.   Our seminars are fine - the teachers are in their comfort zones; their specialist subject areas.    Our focus sessions are a different story.  

Facilitating learning is far more difficult than 'teaching'.   We have had to develop a crib sheet for staff who have felt really insecure when facing a group of young people coming along to a class at all different stages in their project.   Before giving them this crib sheet/script ( Download Focus Session Script )which guides them through the facilitation process, many of the teachers were floundering.  Students were not showing progress during focus sessions due to a lack of subtle guidance/support and well crafted questioning.   Some staff were still trying to lead from the front or in some cases sit at the front.  

Focus sessions need real interaction with the students.   Teachers are put into a framework where they have to deliver; there is no place (or worksheet) to hide behind.   Slowly most of the staff are becoming accustomed to this way of working.   A few months ago our main source of complaints from staff was related to not knowing what they were doing and not feeling capable.   Today the biggest source of complaints from teachers are related to other teachers not pulling their weight.   A teacher taking a focus session must work with the students to ensure progress.  Failure to do this results in the next teacher 'picking up the pieces'.   We have also given every teacher a certain amount of planning responsibility within each project.   A teacher who does not do his or her share of planning is not appreciated by peers.  

So in some ways although this is a difficult process, it is nevertheless positive in the sense that teachers are having to develop their craft or understanding of pedagogy.   There is no longer the possibility for teachers to retreat into their classroom armed with a text books to copy from or work sheets to endlessly fill in.   I know I am probably sounding as if I have a negative attitude towards teachers, but I am only talking about the few who exist in every school and who are not really concerned with pedagogy, seeing a successful lesson as one which is ordered and quiet - where learning comes second.    

Timetabling difficulties

I'm obviously not disciplined to write often, or maybe I have no time because of this *##xx!!# monster we're creating.   Here's a quick summary of what's been happening:

We're now into our second year of delivering this programme. Our Year 7 and 8 students are participating in PBL for approx 80% of their curriculum time.   They are doing Languages and PE discretely.   It's been very hard, but we are still persevering and beginning to see the fruits of our labours. 

Structuring the timetable has been difficult.   Issues:

• Students have too many teachers.   They go to a focus session and at worst, pack up after 50mins leave that teacehr go a couple of doors down the corridor, get out all the same work and carry on the focus session with another teacher.   Teachers must be timetabled for longer sessions
• It has been difficult to timetable tutorials because teachers in focus sessions are still not comfortable with the different students coming to them for focus sessions.  (If a tutorial is to run then the group of students in a teachers "Learning Family" need to be dissipated across the rest of the cohort).  
• Because there are too many teachers, individual teachers don't have enough ownership of the project and so assessment is not as good as it could be.  

We've made the mistake/ or fallen into the trap of unconsciously building/structuring our timetable around the needs of our teachers.   Have a look at your own timetable; it is built around a series of grids which are designed to place teachers in separate 'silos'.   When developing the timetable, the timetabler works around constraints such as teacher non-contact time and trying not to give a class a triple session because how could the teacher possibly fill the time and keep students focused?  There is an outcry if a teacher doesn't teach as much as possible in the same room, or does not have the same group of students at the same times of the week every week and it's the end of the world if a teacher goes over their allotted amount of contact time.   I'm not trying to put down teachers who moan.   Why shouldn't they moan their job is hard.   However without realising it, when we are timetabling (and I was a timetabler for quite a few years), those cries of horror from the teachers are there in the back of your mind and we structure the timetable around their needs.   I don't think I've explained myself here so don't crucify me yet rather, indulge me for the moment and I'll do more justice to this statement in a future post.   Just let me say for now that we are still maintaining the status quo in our school, by restricting our timetable to suit teachers.  Students are staying in the same groups all the time, which is exactly what I wanted to avoid.  

Solutions to this have been to do some re-timetabling this year as teachers have become more confident, but from next year we have been working on a new way to timetable, placing teachers in to teams from various disciplines with ownership of one project.   We will not timetable non-contact time for teachers, instead the teams will have enough time to allow for non-contact time.   The same cohort of students will work with this team of teachers and teachers within the team will be responsible for athe academic mentoring of a certain number of students.   They  will organise  themselves as a team, and work in partnership with each other.   part of their responsibility will be to ensure that the students are all assessed by each mentor regularly (the more difficult concepts will be covered by the particular subject specialists in seminars).   English and Maths teachers will work outside of these teams, ensuring the delivery and development of Literacy and Numeracy. Each team of teachers will deliver their project to a different cohort of students each half term across three year groups.  

This is all far to complex for  me to explain just now so apologies if it sounds a bit disjointed.   I'll post a model when it is completed.  

Bringing down walls

I went on an Academy Principals trip last week, visiting Academys around the M25.    In one of the Academys the Principal, gave us a tour and told us how bad the building was and how many extra walls she had to ask the builders to put up as the building neared completion.   Maybe I'm naive, but if we put up walls to stop student movement or reduce noise, we are giving a subliminal message to the students:  We don't trust you to walk around this building in an appropriate way and we certainly don't trust you not to disturb others.  

If we are to instill good habits of learning in our students we should give them the chance to aspire to behaving appropriately and be there to pick them up when they are struggling to do this.   Just another job for the teacher I believe.

Issues Part 5 - Seminars

Seminars should cover the difficult concepts in subject areas and also allow the student an opportunity to explore topics at a deeper level with a teacher.    Some of these should be mandatory attendance, but some should have an element of choice.  

 

At present seminars tend to focus too much on just Maths and English and tend to be very instructional.   This is fine if the seminars are synchronised roughly with the work students are doing, but it is missing out on opportunities to explore the wider richness of the driving question the students are focussing on.   It is fine to have instructional seminars if the quality of facilitation in focus sessions and tutorials is such that students have opportunities to discuss or analyse things in a wider context.

 

A possible solution to the above issues might be to divide our seminars into three types:

• Compulsory seminars.   All students would do these seminars at the same time.   (When we timetable for next year if students are doing different projects we would have to synchronise the times of this type of seminar).   These Seminars could be taught in the normal Sets and differentiated in the normal way.  If the seminar is shorter than 50 mins then students continue with focus time activities
• Optional seminars.   Some students will be directed to go to these.   Others may be given the option, but only if the Learning Facilitator agrees.   Normally at least someone from the team needs to go.   These seminars are an opportunity to delve deeper into the subject and discuss the subject matter/issues more fully.   During these seminars, it will be helpful to have bigger classrooms in operation to allow larger groups working in focus sessions.
• Enrichment seminars.  These seminars are voluntary, giving the students the opportunity to develop their projects further.   Again we will have to timetable focus sessions on at these times in big classrooms.   These seminars would be more sporadic in terms of frequency.  

Issues Part 4 - Tutorial Sessions

Tutorial sessions

Tutorial time is time put aside to allow Learning Facilitators (tutors) time to meet with individual students or teams in their Learning families.    This is taking place, but it is infrequent.   The original plan was to have two Facilitators timetabled at the same time.   Between them they would have approx 28 students.   These students would be distributed between the other focus sessions 9there are 8 groups on at any one time.   The two facilitators would then see their students individually; perhaps four or five during a 50min session.    Facilitators have two sessions per week in which to carry this out.

In reality we have a number of issues and questions raised:

• Only one facilitator at a time is seeing students while the other takes the whole group.   In other words groups are not being distributed.   The most likely reason for this is the setting arrangements. 
• The quality of these sessions will vary due to some facilitators not being timetabled enough on the PBL programme, therefore becoming out of touch with day to day progression
• As sets change, as a Learning Facilitator it is difficult to meet with/keep up with student progress in your Learning Family
• To what extent are students having the opportunity to discuss their learning?

If we are to resolve these issues we must consider the following:

• Creating more time for Facilitators to meet with students.
• Only two tutorial sessions (both from the same joint Learning family) should take place at the same time.   The rest of the group will be distributed between the other focus activity groups, therefore we will need to timetable focus groups in big classrooms.  
• Facilitators need to be timetabled for at least half their load on the PBL programme
• Consider the possibility of creating Academic Learning Facilitators who have responsibility for tutoring a group which is set.   This group may change as sets change.   (Pastoral Learning Facilitators would be separate from this and have independent Learning Families).
• During tutor time the following should be considered with the student:
  • Understanding of project; overall expectations and driving question.
  • To what extent is project plan on schedule (is their a plan in the first place?)
  • What has prevented student from achieving milestones in project and associated products?
  • What is the quality of work produced?
  • To what extent is the student organised?  Do they know what they are going to do next?  
  • To what extent is the student recording the development of good habits of learning (how aware are they of this?)?

The nature and length of tutorials will vary according to the graduation stage of the student. 

 

At the risk of the joke becoming boring - my wife is out collecting my daughter from Guides.  

Issues Part 3 - Focus sessions

Focus Sessions

Focus sessions are time put aside to allow students to plan, carry out research, work on and reflect on their projects.   At present we appear to setting dead lines for students to complete certain tasks in each focus session.   This is fine at the first graduation stage (Asteroid), but we appear to have fallen into creating very task driven projects that end up losing site of the driving question and supplementary questions which support it.   The students become less analytical and less reflective, focusing on completing a task at all cost, resulting in the driving question not being at the centre of everyone’s attention especially the Facilitators

The question this begs is the extent to which Facilitators are aware of how important it is to draw the students back to this question; to what extent does the work the students are carrying out at any given time, take them a step closer to answering the question?

 

The role of the facilitator during focus sessions is crucial.   At present the teachers involved tend to view the sessions in the traditional sense, in that the students arrive at their class.  The expectation is that the students will be working on roughly the same things and a traditional lesson plan can be prepared for the session.   This perception by the teachers has been difficult to dispel.   It is safer and easier for the teachers to have their students nicely controled in "boxes", doing what is expected of them.   Allowing students the freedom to work at their own pace with perhaps 5 or more different tasks or activities taking place is taking the secondary teacher out of their comfort zone.    

 

Facilitators of Focus sessions should:

• Be aware of the project and it's milestones and products
• Be prepared to have students workign at different rates
• know where to access information to help students
• At the beginning or during a session remind students of the driving question (similar to returning to objectives).
• Systematically work with teams or individuals in order to check quality, progress and understanding.
• Keeping track of progress so that the next teacher taking over is aware of progress.

Perhaps at the Asteroid stage we need to be getting the students into good habits by being driven less by the content.   We could lengthen the project and be more didactic in our approach so that in addition to seminars and individual tutorials,  students have to do the following at set times during some focus sessions:

·        to reflect individually on  progress (in terms of literacy or numeracy attainment and developing good habits of learning)

·        share progress with each other – how close are they to answering the driving question? 

·        Draw out and discuss supplementary questions or new concepts that arise during the project

·        Review plan and revise if necessary

 

Obviously students will still require time to actually produce products for their projects, and carry out research and team organisation, but the above points need to be included on a regular basis.   It is especially important that the driving question is returned to frequently so that students (and facilitators) don’t lose site of this.  

 

My wife is on the phone to someone - probably another man

Issues part 2 - Use of ICT

Use of ICT

All our students in Year 7 have netbooks for use in school (we are currently looking at a lease scheme to offer our parents), but we should be exploiting the potential of ICT more fully.   Obviously there are training issues here and some of the possibilities listed below will need to form part of an ICT development plan.  

The list can be endless, but  below are some possible ways we can use ICT:

• Projects on the VLE (we use Fronter) – work could also be handed in via Fronter.   Students on higher graduation stages can be monitored more easily.   
• e-portfolios for students to record and monitor progress.   Could be linked to graduations stages and easily monitored if students become accustomed to tagging
• Blogging linked to their e-portfolio again very useful if students use tagging technology
• Seminar booking system allows an element of choice for some seminars
• Audio and visual technology for communication,/presentation purposes

We are a bit behind with our development of ICT, but we have recently appointed an excellent thinker in this area who I'm sure will contribute to this page in the near future.

 

My wife is putting our youngest one to bed.  

Issues Part 1 - Project planning

Project Planning

To some extent there is a sequence to the order we plan projects

Overall planning:

·        What are the essential driving questions we want to cover?  

·        Will these driving questions cover the identified concepts we want to cover?

·        What are the key concepts for the year we want to cover?   Literacy and Numeracy first, followed by other subjects

·        What additional driving questions do we need to ensure we cover all the concepts?   Or do we need to tweak those we have?

·        What habits of learning will we focus on in each project?

·        What are the assessment opportunities?

·        What resources?

·        How can we differentiate these?

 

How we brief staff

• The more staff are involved in the planning the better.   At present staff don’t have enough ownership of the projects which are too complex to assume you can walk in and “wing it”.
• Staff need to be clear on milestones and products.  It is the Tutors responsibility to follow up any student who does not achieve the milestone.  
• The driving question should be explored by all staff taking part in delivering the project

How we brief students

• At the beginning of a project, students should be given the opportunity to explore the driving question.   Mind maps are the ideal way to do this.   When ideas for the direction of the project are given by students, the skilled facilitator will be able to guide (manipulate dare I say) the students towards the desired direction.
• Milestones and Products should be given out (or developed collectively, depending on graduation stage
• Teams formed
• Students should be given the opportunity to plan their projects (depending on graduation stage)

My wife is currently making jellies for party tomorrow