Latest / New Teacher Talk / Ep 154: Making PBL Work: Sustainable Project-Based Learning with Brad Sever

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Ep 154: Making PBL Work: Sustainable Project-Based Learning with Brad Sever · New Teacher Talk

Welcome to the latest episode of New Teacher Talk where we
discuss issues that are important to aspiring and early
career educators.
Whether you are in a rural, suburban, or urban setting,
we are here to provide insights, advice,
and support to help you thrive in your teaching journey.
My name is Brad Sever, and I'm an assistant principal.
Today,
I'm gonna talk to you about sustainable project-based
learning.
What it is, why it matters, and most importantly,
the five steps that can help you make PBL stick in a
sustainable way.
So what is project-based learning, or PBL?
When we talk about project-based learning, or PBL,
it's important to start with a clear definition.
According to PBLWorks,
PBL is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge
and skills by working for an extended period of time to
investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging,
and complex question, problem, or challenge.
Now,
PBLWorks also outlines seven design elements that make up
what they call gold standard project-based learning.
And those seven design elements include a challenging
problem or driving question,
allowing student voice and choice, authenticity,
reflection, critique and revision, sustained inquiry,
and a culminating product that is made public.
Now,
when teachers design around these seven design elements,
they design a unit of study around these seven design
elements, I believe they create a very powerful,
real-world learning experience where the project is the
learning, and not just an add-on at the end of the unit.
So here's the honest truth.
In my 20-plus years of experience in being a student of
project-based learning,
the real challenge isn't introducing project-based learning
to teachers, it's sustaining it.
And there are several factors that cause sustaining project
-based learning to be so difficult.
And those factors include schools often face competing
initiatives, such as grading practices,
social and emotional learning, PLC work,
differentiated instruction, and many,
many more initiatives schools face each day.
And each of these initiatives, of course, has value,
but they pile up, teachers can feel stretched thin.
On top of that, teacher collaboration time,
whether you call it PLCs or grade-level teams,
aren't always aligned to supporting project-based learning
implementation.
Teams may spend time analyzing standardized test data or
looking at pacing guides,
but not necessarily digging into student work or discussing
evidence of deeper learning.
And that's the why behind sustainable project-based
learning, which is what I'm very passionate about,
and it's what I wrote a book about.
It's a way to integrate those initiatives into a single,
clear framework,
and one that gives teachers both structure and flexibility.
And this is where John Hattie's research is so critical.
Looking at his visible learning research,
we know that collective teacher efficacy,
which is the shared belief that teachers work together can
positively impact student outcomes.
It has a very high effect size,
almost more than three years growth in one year's time.
And so knowing this,
we know that there is so much power in effective
collaborative teacher teams.
So when teams encourage one another, support one another,
and hold each other accountable,
it not only has a direct impact on student learning,
but we know also it increases the joy of coming to work.
So sustainable project-based learning gives those teams a
shared framework and language for planning, assessing,
and reflecting together.
And that's really what makes it stick.
So in my book, Sustainable Project-Based Learning,
I describe what I call SPBL, as that S is sustainable,
sustainable project-based learning.
It builds on seven, those seven design elements,
but it also intentionally integrates three things that make
it truly sustainable.
It integrates, of course, those seven design elements.
It integrates also social and emotional learning,
looking at the CASL competencies.
And then finally,
the third level of integration is that teacher action
research,
the work within the context of those teacher teams.
So what I want to go through is the five-step process of
sustainable project-based learning.
So here are the five steps of sustainable project-based
learning,
the core process you can use to design meaningful project
-based learning units, but sustainable.
So step one, step one is simply planning the unit.
Begin with your standards, create a driving question,
map out the key knowledge and skills that you want your
students to know and do.
In my book, I lay out a very clear,
so it's really a one-page outline template that has a place
where you put your standards, your driving question,
you develop learning intentions and success criteria,
you have a spot to think through the tasks,
and it really is a user-friendly one-page template.
So step one is planning that unit.
Step two then is developing your assessments.
And I believe that when we develop our assessments,
we have to have obviously a clear vision for the
culminating product,
but we also need to kind of plan backwards from that
product and have very clear concrete milestones,
those key highlights and benchmarks along the way.
Now, when we develop our assessments,
it's imperative that we have surface level, deep level,
and transfer levels of learning represented in those
assessments.
And we think about surface,
that's like key knowledge and understanding.
We think about deep, it's compare and contrast,
cause and effect.
And when we think about transfer,
it's application in a real-world context or a different
context outside of the walls of the classroom.
So step one, again, is plan the unit.
Step two is develop assessments.
Step three is when you're in your teacher teams,
establish a clear goal.
I like to use smart goals,
but co-construct a goal with your teacher team grounded in
that unit of study that you're developing.
Make the goal grounded in evidence of student learning.
And then step four is implement that goal and conduct
teacher action research.
I encourage protocols like getting into one another's
classrooms and doing focus teacher to teacher observations.
You know, let's go in,
let's plan a time to go into a teacher's classroom from our
team and let's give constructive feedback,
focus just on one aspect of the unit of study.
Whether it's our students meeting milestone three,
or our students using the language of surface deep and
transfer,
or is this driving question leading to really good student
-generated questions,
but a focused observation in conducting teacher action
research, doing that.
And then finally,
step five is the teacher team after the unit of study,
after the project-based learning unit of study is
implemented, reflect, refine, and celebrate.
Build in these opportunities to reflect, improve,
and recognize both student and teacher growth.
You know, when we think about project-based learning,
what makes it really attractive is that idea of teaching
for transfer.
And I just love the movie Karate Kid.
And I love the scene where Mr.
Miyagi is teaching Daniel to wax the cars and paint the
fence and sand the floors.
Daniel at the time doesn't see the point until he realizes
those actions were building the very moves that he needs
for Karate.
That's teaching for transfer.
And in sustainable project-based learning,
we don't stop at surface or deep level knowledge.
We design so students can apply their learning in
authentic, meaningful ways.
And these five steps are what makes project-based learning
sustainable.
They connect clarity, collaboration,
social-emotional learning,
and rigor into a single five-step process.
So if you're a brand new teacher and you're not ready to
dive into all five steps yet,
here's one small move you can start with right away.
Ask yourself and your team four reflective questions.
And these are the four questions I really encourage teacher
teams to focus on.
Question number one,
how are we getting to know our students?
How are we getting to know our students?
What are their motivations?
What are they doing in their free time?
And this shouldn't be something that's just done at the
beginning of the year.
This should be a question that teacher teams discuss
throughout the course of the year.
How are we continuing to get to know our kids?
What are the intentional strategies and techniques that
we're using to get to know our kids?
Question two,
what is the evidence of surface deep and transfer learning?
Looking at it from those three levels of learning and
having ongoing conversations about those three levels of
learning and the student products that support those three
levels of learning,
the evidence of learning at each of those three levels and
designing assessments that key in on each of those three
levels of learning.
Sometimes traditional teaching has this pitfall of only
staying at the surface level,
but sometimes bad project-based learning glosses over
surface and deep level learning and goes right to transfer.
And then we just have these empty presentations or these
empty solutions to problems that don't have any real meat
to the bones or clear evidence of standards in student
learning.
Question three,
how are we defining employability skills and giving clear
feedback on them?
We all know that skills like collaboration,
critical thinking, communication are very important skills,
but those are ambiguous buzzwords.
What do we mean when we say we want our students to be
effective collaborators?
We need to clearly define what that skill means,
reach consensus as a teacher team and be intentional about
giving kids feedback on their growth in that skill.
And then finally, it's Hattie's question.
Question number four is Hattie's question.
How are we ensuring one year's growth in one year's time?
I love this question.
We can look at it very scientific and quantitative,
and we can establish effect sizes as teacher teams if
that's what you wanna do,
have intentional pre and post assessments,
or we can do it more of a qualitative approach, right?
Things like writing progression rubrics or skill
progression rubrics,
or simply having conversations about vertical articulation
between one grade level to the next or one prerequisite
course to the next course in that same course sequence.
How are we ensuring one year's growth in one year's time?
So even if you don't redesign an entire unit tomorrow,
you can use these four questions to guide your planning,
your conversations with colleagues and your reflections on
student work.
They are small but powerful levers that they build habits
of mind behind this concept of sustainable project-based
learning.
So one last thought.
My friend and colleague, Kristen Camps,
she wrote this really great article about project-based
learning called the Demerswitch approach.
And those seven design elements that I mentioned earlier of
student voice and choice, driving question, authenticity,
reflection, critique and revision, sustained inquiry,
and having a public product,
approaching them not as a light switch that you just flip
on and off, but as a dimmer switch.
And I also want to extend that analogy to think of it like
a stereo equalizer.
You know, have like the treble and the bass and the fade.
Think of those elements as a stereo equalizer that you can
kind of turn up and turn down depending on the teacher
readiness level, your readiness level,
the student readiness level,
or the specific unit of study that you're teaching.
You know, in some units of study,
you might be able to crank up that student voice and
choice, but in others, you might not.
In some units of study,
you might be able to crank up the public product,
but in other units, you might not.
I encourage you just to approach those seven design
elements like a stereo equalizer.
So today, in conclusion, this is what we covered.
What project-based learning is,
the seven design elements that make it powerful.
Why sustainable project-based learning matters because it
helps overcome the challenge of sustaining PBL in the face
of misaligned collaboration time and competing school
initiatives.
We talked about what makes sustainable project based
learning different, which is the teacher action research,
the SEL integration and just overall that five step
sustainable project based learning process.
A small move you can try tomorrow is using those four
reflective questions that I talked about to guide your
planning and collaboration.
And finally,
that mindset shift of thinking about those seven design
elements like a stereo equalizer not an all or nothing
thing.
If you'd like to learn more,
I can share resources and templates and examples on my
website, which is at www.perseveranceeducation.com.
Thank you for the work you're doing as new teachers and
teachers in general.
Remember every small step toward authentic sustainable
learning makes a lasting difference for students.
That's a wrap on today's new teacher talk.
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