3rd WEEK

 

The 16^th of November we began the class with this question: What is Project Based Learning (PBL)? And this question will follow me for the next days, because we will have to prepared a PBL for next week about Thanksgiving.

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. In Gold Standard PBL, projects are focused on student learning goals and include Essential Project Design Elements:

·       Key Knowledge, Understanding, and Success Skills - The project is focused on student learning goals, including standards-based content and skills such as critical thinking/problem solving, communication, collaboration, and self-management.

·       Challenging Problem or Question - The project is framed by a meaningful problem to solve or a question to answer, at the appropriate level of challenge.

·       Sustained Inquiry - Students engage in a rigorous, extended process of asking questions, finding resources, and applying information.

·       Authenticity - The project features real-world context, tasks and tools, quality standards, or impact – or speaks to students’ personal concerns, interests, and issues in their lives.

·       Student Voice & Choice - Students make some decisions about the project, including how they work and what they create.

·       Reflection - Students and teachers reflect on learning, the effectiveness of their inquiry and project activities, the quality of student work, obstacles and how to overcome them.

·       Critique & Revision - Students give, receive, and use feedback to improve their process and products.

·       Public Product - Students make their project work public by explaining, displaying and/or presenting it to people beyond the classroom.

About the PBL we have to prepare, we began with planning our initial question and is this one:

- How can we adapt and celebrate Thanksgiving this year with the pandemic situation?

With this question we can work the history and geography by discovering how thanksgiving actually works and how can we translate that into our Spanish society with the addition of the pandemic. 

The 17^th of November we began the class by explaining our initial questions and receiving feedback and suggestions from out teacher. She suggested us to complicate a little bit more the question, to deep more in the history maybe, and connected with the actual situation. The question was not wrong, but it could be improved. So, we took notes about it and started thinking again on it.

Once we have seen all group’s questions, we continued discovering PBL. Today I have learned that it is essential to show why it is important to investigate and answer the initial question.

Also, it is important to have project management, it is to say, the tools to manage the project. On of the tools is time management, given information to students about the schedule of the lesson and the project itself is a way to help our students to complete the task and give them the autonomy and the capacity of manage their own time management.

But how do we manage to assure every student is working and achieving the goal settled? For example, by reading and reflecting on their portfolios.

And how will you check team progress? By the evaluation.

Once the project is done, it is necessary to talk about how it went, celebrate, and reflect.

And this is what we have done this same evening Ana Gonzalo and me. We are cooperating because both of us are following the same goal (creating a PBL about Thanksgiving) and for that we are planning and scheduling together but dividing the task in small pieces so both of us are in charged of some of them. It is to say, everything is done under a mutual consensus but in the praxis, we work individually to later on put everything in common.

For next day we agreed on having a general idea of PBL and Thanksgiving, just like if we were doing a flipped classroom with our work, so the next day we can meet on Teams with a general framework in our minds and start creating from there. So here are my notes on my PBL research:

KEY IDEAS:

• ·       Make classes more engaging, avoid boredom.
• ·       Deeper learning.
• ·       Students learn to take initiative and responsibility.
• ·       Solve problems.
• ·       Work in teams.
• ·       Communication in a variety of media.
• ·       Make a difference in their community -> engage authentically with their community.
• ·       Interdisciplinary.
• ·       Help students to manage time -> they work independently.
• ·       Explore real-world problems and challenges.

 

Two main questions have to be in our teacher mind to focused the project process and doing it in the right direction:

- Did the students master the context?

- Where they able to apply their knowledge and skills?

How a PBL must be done? -> Including students in planning. Also, students need to have a purpose and an audience beyond the teacher, classmates, or families.

STRUCTURE OF A LESSON

1.       Whole group introduction to the session (10 minutes)

2.       Guided small-groups activities related to the units final project

Whole class review and reflection

 The next day, 18^th of November we began with a need method, blended learning. To learn more about it we have watched the following video that explains very simple and practical what this method is about: (239) Blended learning & flipped classroom - YouTube

I was so confused about the difference between blended learning and flipped classroom because both features are so similar, but this video gave me the solution: flipped classroom is a type of blending learning. It changes the perspective of traditional classes. Now, students watch the lectures at home, which is more flexible to anyone’s process of learning, and at class they do tasks or activities related to the topic and under the eye of the teacher whose role is facilitator and open to everyone’s doubts and needs, so in the stage where students have more problems (Tasks) they are available to help and guide them to complete satisfactorily the translate of knowledge to practical skills and competences.

How do we integrate blended learning in our class? We can monitor groups, given them different activities. It is needed to use Bloom Taxonomy to schedule the lessons but always having in mind ZPD of Vygotsky, because you can not prepare a task if they are not able to understand that without your help. So, also, we need to prepare scaffolding activities to help in this case.

Some disadvantages of this method is that not every student has Internet access at home (that does not promote inclusive education). Another problem is that not every student has the enough autonomy to work alone efficiently without help.

Some advantages are that students become more prepared to control their learning process, their time management, the activities and topics are focused on their needs and desires, so it makes classes more engaging to them and with low affective filter.

As always, this method will be a success in some cases but not in all of them. We need to think first in our students, class environment, school and families context, and decide if this method could be available to be done without making too many challenges that finally end up in a big mess where students are going to be the most affected.

 

* WORK AT HOME… This evening my partner and I realize that our initial question was so simplistic that it could be much better if we give another try to our creativity’s minds. So, wondering between a lot of topics we came into the idea of changing it to: Why do we say “thank you”? Nevertheless, this one does not encompass all our ideas or all the stages that would lead into the final product or goal of the project. So we think about if there could be two initial questions. The second one will be: How can we say “thank you” in our neighbourhood?

Both questions will involve history and civic education. For history we thought that, like in the origin of Thanksgiving tradition, we need to thank life for having essential thinks like food, so the aim of the project is to make our students concerned about what they can do (for example, share food with others) to help them as well as they are thanking life for having it. The purpose is to know the history of Thanksgiving and enhance civic conscious.

 

Next day, the 19^th of November, we began the class by bombing our teacher with different doubts about the projects. I asked Dolores about the doubt of yesterday, and yes! We can have an initial question that can be divided progressively in sub questions.

Another notes I noted down from classmates’ doubts where the following ones:

-      Create worksheets to reference the information they have been discovering.

-      Subdivided the project in little tasks. So they can use the previous information to different tasks.

-      Related activities to the researches they have done so we can see the progression.

-      Invite someone outside the class.

-      We have to be very systematic so students can achieve mechanic actions and thinking resources like when you are driving and you know how to drive, you do not think every action, you just do it.

-      We go to receptive to productive skills. First, they have to understand before creating (speaking and writing).

-      While we are listening or reading they are active, they are focusing their attention in the input, for example, highlighting key words.

 

5Cs

Content – Communication – Cognition – Culture – Competences

 

LISTENING SKILLS

To avoid using L1, listening tasks are the best option, but the work has to be progressive. If we do not pre-active their prior knowledge this aim is going to be very difficult.

·       Bottom up: Use synonims, explanation, point out, use flashcards, etc.

·       Top-down: use familiar situations, routines, providing context, ask them questions.

 

Quote of the day: “Change perspective: teachers do not know everything, they know lots of things.”