My sister- in- law, a
kindergarten teacher, posted this clever and oh- so- true quote several weeks
ago…
Summer can work wonders. We
garden, ride bikes, sleep, hang out with our kids, and…. we work.
I think that the most important work that teachers do in the
summer (especially late summer) is reflect. What were the successes? The
failures? How can I get better? What do I want to try this year?
And now, alas, summer’s almost gone.
When it’s time to put that reflection into action, the
document that I pull up first is always the curriculum map.
While curriculum
maps are nothing new, they do have a different look and feel in PBL. In short,
a PBL Curriculum Map has a row for each project or unit and columns for topics,
driving questions, standards, approximate duration, potential community
partners, project deliverables, and benchmarks.
It’s important to note that many of the details (i.e.
scaffolding activities, entry event format, assessment pieces) will be
addressed along the way in the school year. Some, though, need preemptive
attention to make sure that you don’t a) run out of time, b) go crazy or c)
decide you hate your curriculum in the middle of the year.
Here’s a back- to- school curriculum checklist for the PBL
educator.
1. Take a fresh look at your Driving
Questions.
These are the bedrock of each project or
unit that students complete. Driving questions are, by definition, broad and
holistic questions that can only be answered with deep inquiry; that is to say,
they are not yes or no questions or ones that begin with “what,” “when,” or
“where.” They are also not specific to any one scenario or situation but are
instead adaptable and
As an example, my AP Biology students will do
a project where they analyze the impact of invasive plant species on our
watershed and propose solutions. The overall topics are ecology and evolution,
and while I may or may not choose to do this project again or even every year,
my driving question for this project is constructed in such a way that give me
the flexibility to choose.
A non- example:
What
are invasive species and why are they bad for ecosystems?
If this were a driving question for
a project, that project might be over in 20 minutes. It’s not deep, requires no
inquiry other than a Google search, and isn’t broad enough to encapsulate all
of the topics of ecology and evolution.
A better, but still inadequate, example:
How
do invasive plants impact the Haw Creek Watershed and what can be done about
it?
This isn’t an awful driving
question because it’s still fairly open- ended. It would require plenty of
research and investigation. But it’s not a good driving question because it’s
too context- specific. There are plenty of other facets of ecology and evolution
that do not fall under the umbrella of this driving question. Therefore, it’s
out.
The winner:
How
do ecosystems exist in a state of balance, and how do disruptions to that
balance affect species in the short and long term?
This broad stroke carries enough
weight to drive a curriculum for an extended period of time (in my case,
possibly a full quarter.)
The important thing here is that,
from a planning perspective, having a set of good driving questions will help
you budget your time spent on each topic, feel confident that you’re focusing
on the right stuff, and give your course/ curriculum the year- to- year stability
and consistency that it needs.
2.
Reexamine
the logic of your sequence.
A “perfect” curriculum map would have all
of the topics and skills presented in such a sequence that each project belongs
precisely where you have placed it in the year. That is, each topic or skill
should serve as a building block for what comes next in such a way that your
curriculum is constantly “spiraling up”; in essence, this means that because
each topic is a building block for future topics, it is revisited throughout
the course (albeit in different ways and probably not necessarily re- taught.)
Naturally there are other factors at play,
too. We do ecology in the fall because it’s still warm out and it would be
immensely disappointing to do ecology exclusively indoors. Maybe there’s a
cultural event like Ethnic Expo in October that would be a great focal point,
celebration or curricular connection and you’d like to build a project to fit
in with that event. Those factors are important, but are secondary to the
logical placement of topics in a sequence. We all have done projects where we
realize, often too late, that there were skills or topics that needed to come
earlier or later and think, “Wow… how much better would this have been if the
students had already learned how to do scale factors going in to this?” More
important than fall weather for doing ecology and evolution is the fact that
these are topics that are both foundational and broad; they are implicit to the
rest of the curriculum; therefore, they come first.
3. Check for round pegs being forced into
square holes.
I had a conversation with a middle
school science teacher earlier this summer who was implementing cross-
curricular projects with her teaching team. The issue she was having was that
there were some projects where her topic had to take a back seat to language
arts and math (she had too little content), and others where she was super
crunched for time to deliver a lot of science in too little time.
We looked at her standards next to
her curriculum map and it seemed that not only was there an opportunity to take
some of the pressure off of her time in the time- crunched project, but in
fact, some of the content fit better into a different project (the one where
she didn’t have enough to do with her kids.) A win- win resulted! She would
have a better and more logical placement of content in her team’s curriculum.
Another peer had done a cool thematic
project, also a cross- curricular one, where students designed and tested their
own water filters while studying The Lost Boys of Sudan. She had included broad
standards about global weather patterns and ocean currents in a project where
all students really needed to know about water was a bit about its chemical
makeup. While technically she had included “water standards,” they were non-
essential and forced into a project (because, let’s be real… we’re expected to
get them all in.) Nonetheless the conclusion we reached was that they needed to
be taken out and given a more meaningful and authentic context (i.e. write a
different driving question and design a different project.) It was indeed a
good experience for the students and should stay… but it should be executed
differently (in her case, social studies has more curricular ties to language
arts than science did, it was decided that a proposal be made to her team to
move it.)
When standards are forced into
projects, things get weird. And with all things education, if it’s even
remotely confusing to you, it will be downright baffling to students.
4. Evaluate the impact of community partners.
The inclusion of adults other than
teachers has an immeasurably important effect on the engagement and
authenticity of projects. The best projects involve a community partner at many
points along the way. If you ask students doing PBL, they’ll state the tremendously
positive impact of these authentic partnerships.
Except when it’s not. Sometimes we
have grandiose plans for how to include these outsiders into our projects and
it simply doesn’t pan out; we wanted to have them come five times in a month
and they could only make it happen once, or we thought they would just love
being with us and interacting, but actually they were bored (or worse,
unimpressed.)
A curriculum map should have a
column for community partner ideas, even if they’re just brainstormed ideas.
Many times we encounter potential community partners after a project is done
and gone. As a Cubs fan, I know the adage all too well: there’s always next
year. Revisit the names in that column and decide who you will call back, which
names should be scratched and perhaps how to use certain persons or
organizations differently and better than before.
It may be obvious to state this,
but I’ll do it anyway. When asking community partners to provide feedback or
instruction to students, make sure that a) they are operating in their domain
of expertise and b) students are given sufficient content preparation prior to
their coming. I’ve made the mistake of asking museum officials to give feedback
on the scientific content in displays, falsely assuming the officials had a
science background. And I’ve had many a time where I felt embarrassment on the
behalf of my students because I hadn’t prepared them well enough for the
community partner’s visit (or I did not provide the community partner with
enough detail about what their background was.)
Also be mindful of fatigue on the
part of your community partners. Sure, there are a few people that I contact
every single year and they come in with abundant gusto. Others I know I should
probably only ask every couple of years. It naturally stands to reason that if
a community partner got a thank you note from a student after last year’s
project, you’re more likely to get their help again.
5. Budget variety.
Think about the culminating products that
your students might produce this year. If you do have past years on which to
reflect, ask yourself whether or not they did enough different kinds of things as PBL experiences. If
what they did at the end of each project was a PSA or a slide show
presentation, it may be time to think about how to incorporate more variety
into your planning. While I am of the strong belief that it’s more about the
process than the product, there’s a lot to be said for asking students to
create final products that stimulate their imagination, build a variety of
skills from communication to technology to collaboration, and give them a
challenging goal to work towards.
There are some PBL projects that
are truly authentic, where the work they are doing replicates the work being
done by the corresponding adults in those disciplines. Clearly a great thing.
My students participated as student scientists in a Purdue yeast biodiversity
survey for the past two years and it was truly authentic and truly engaging
because they were doing real work (they discovered new species, even.) There
are also projects that sacrifice some authenticity for the sake of engagement.
I’ve created complete mock- up crime scenes of cookie recipe thievery that were
100% fictitious, but also highly engaging. Both of these approaches serve
valuable roles in the curriculum.
Finally, budget variety in the
duration of projects. Not every project needs to adhere to a formulaic,
“perfect” project length. If there’s a project that will take five weeks,
consider following it up with a two week mini- project. Students get worn out,
too. There’s some dread that happens when, coming off a huge project, you jump
right back into another huge project.
The greatest thing about each new
school year is that it’s a fresh start. The greatest thing about a good
curriculum map is that you don’t have to completely start over each year. Curriculum
maps should always be considered living documents that will evolve over many
years… but while there will be elements that are “one and done,” never again to
be repeated, there will also be pieces that bear the original ink from the very
first drafting of the map.
Taken together, a new school year
and a fresh revision of your curriculum maps will ensure that there’s a least a
few bars in the battery at all times this year.
If you need help creating a curriculum map,
contact Magnify Learning for a discipline- specific thought partner and sign up
for summer training in 2016!
Andrew Larson facilitates Environmental Studies and Biology at
Columbus Signature Academy New Tech High School in Columbus, Indiana.
@andrewmlarson
@csanewtechhs
No comments:
Post a Comment