Making a change to classroom instruction can be complex, confusing, and even overwhelming. Educators may have reservations about shifting their teaching approach as they consider student response, increased time commitment, or lack of support. They also may not know how to take the leap. But taking the leap to project-based learning is well worth the effort. Moving toward a PBL teaching approach includes many potential benefits for educators and students alike.

Administrators and first-grade teachers from practicing PBL schools across the United States participated in focus-group conversations as part of a project to inform the development of a PBL-based first-grade curriculum. During the conversations, educators offered advice about areas they continue to navigate, what works well, and how to start a conversation about moving toward a PBL approach to teaching.

ANTICIPATED CHALLENGES AND HOW TO ADDRESS THEM

If you’re considering PBL, you might be wondering about potential barriers and how to navigate them. In the course of talking with practicing PBL educators from around the country, some common challenges with PBL implementation emerged.

1. Lack of support from other teachers and/or administrators. Many educators indicated that there’s often a lack of support within the school as well as a general sense that teachers are fundamentally underprepared about how to implement PBL. External support is a crucial factor, so it’s important to talk with teachers and administrators about getting on board before launching PBL efforts. A network of other PBL educators inside and outside of school can provide support and help make the experience successful.

2. Additional time for lesson planning. Time is an important consideration that goes into planning and implementing project work, as a majority of educators mentioned during focus-group conversations. Since integrating PBL takes a substantial amount of time, educators can ask for understanding and flexibility from others in the school with planning, scheduling, and enacting.

3. Shifted role from instructor to facilitator. Successful PBL requires teachers to act as motivators for students in their learning. This shift in classroom control may cause apprehension and a need for adjustment for teachers and learners. Through the use of balanced instruction, increasing the amount of student choice, and providing appropriate scaffolding, this instructional shift becomes much easier to navigate and creates an opportunity to successfully implement PBL.

SUCCESSES OF MOVING TOWARD PBL

Using a PBL learning approach comes with many benefits and countless opportunities, as the educators we talked with pointed out. These advantages positively impact students, teachers, parents, and communities.

1. Opportunities for collaboration. Collaboration is paramount in PBL and one of the best ways students and educators can further develop soft skills, including communication and problem-solving. Students learn to consider alternative viewpoints, and educators benefit from being able to plan with the support of colleagues, collaborate with teachers from other classes, and think through ideas together.

Collaboration seems to be fundamental to educators’ perspectives with creating successful and meaningful project-based approaches to learning. Through collaboration, students and educators not only develop better project work but also learn important real-world skills that extend beyond their projects and will benefit them in multiple ways.

2. Increased student engagement. By using student voice and choice throughout PBL, educators can create opportunities to engage and motivate students who might otherwise not be interested in actively participating in learning opportunities. Project work requires balance and finesse to maintain engagement over the course of the entire unit. By utilizing PBL curriculum, however, these educators reported greater student connection, particularly for students who are often hard to engage.

When educators take the perspectives of their students into account throughout the learning process, they create engaging ways to keep up with their changing needs. It can be helpful to use formative assessments, including student interviews, as a way to check in with students throughout the PBL process to understand what motivates, engages, and excites them. Increasing student voice by linking student interests and motivations throughout the process can maintain engagement and ensure that students feel connected to the work.

3. Authentic learning opportunities. It’s important to ensure that projects serve a purpose beyond the classroom and allow students to draw real-world connections with the work they’re actively engaged in. When educators provide authentic context for student work through PBL and an authentic audience to present their work to, students feel more connected, excited, and engaged with their project work. Nearly all of the educators in focus-group conversations noted that it’s important for the project work to feel real to students and to remind students of their authentic audience throughout the course of project work.

STARTING THE CONVERSATION

Previous research shows that PBL can foster intrinsic motivation, increase student engagement, and help develop creative thinking skills. It’s also been proven to be a catalyst that can encourage engagement of student learning, support sustained student interest in exploring novel ideas, and help promote communication and collaboration.

A great place to begin is to familiarize yourself with the essential project design elements of PBL. Next, start small. Think about a project idea you may have once had, dust it off, and start talking with your colleagues about how to bring it to life in your classroom. Then, recognize your capacity.

As demands on teachers increase to equip students with 21st-century skills to help them adapt to a quickly changing society, more educators are turning to teaching methods such as PBL, and it’s essential that administrators know how to support them. Talk with your administrator about your PBL thoughts, hopes, and dreams. Present the evidence, pitch your idea, and prepare for an exciting journey with PBL.

Reference: https://www.edutopia.org/article/pbl-early-elementary-grades?fbclid=IwAR00WXltFTzAaAxpMP03Rbj9Z9R7vk29DAplwAeZLO21xbP2PWIOvoelbbA

4. TROUBLESHOOT IT

One of the most efficient and effective quick checks for understanding involves troubleshooting. Present students with a common misconception or a frequent procedural error. See if they can:

1. Identify the flaw or error, and (even better)
2. Correct it.

Their responses will provide a quick check of the depth of their understanding.

Examples:

• Present a rough draft of writing and ask students to serve as an editor to mark compositional and grammatical errors.
• Have students review work on a multistep word problem to identify computational mistakes and reasoning errors, and correct them.
• In a photography class, show photos reflecting common compositional errors or flawed exposure or lighting, and have students recommend needed corrections using photo editing software.

5. SUMMARIZE IT

Having students regularly summarize what they are learning is not only an effective means of helping them increase comprehension and retention of new material, it can also provide teachers with insight into whether students are really grasping important ideas.

Here are a few examples of this technique:

• Compose a tweet in 280 characters or less answering the question: What is the big idea that you have learned about _____?
• Record a one-minute podcast or vodcast using an app on a smartphone or tablet to summarize the key concepts from one or more lessons.
• Prepare a weekly letter to your teacher (or parents) summarizing something that you now understand as a result of your learning during the past week.

Khan Academy has helpful videos on summarizing nonfiction texts and fiction texts.

6. APPLY IT

Understanding is revealed when students can transfer their learning to new situations. Accordingly, one of the best checks for understanding is to see if students can apply material in a somewhat novel context. This technique includes asking students to find or create new and novel examples to illustrate a newly learned concept.

Here are some examples:

• Create a “real life” word problem to see if other students understand how to calculate surface area.
• Locate a news article or blog post that presents an example of the tension between individual rights and the common good.
• Find examples of symmetry somewhere in our school or on the playground.

7. TEACH IT

This is a more involved, but valuable, formative assessment technique. Ask students to teach a new concept or skill to someone else—a new student, a student who has just returned from absence, or a younger child. You’ll be able to gauge their degree of understanding as you review or observe their lesson. Here are two examples:

• Develop a five-minute lesson to teach a younger student about how supply and demand can affect the price of things. Use one or more specific examples that we have not discussed.
• Your friend has been absent and missed the last two lessons where you learned about community helpers. Draw a picture of at least five helpers in our community to help them understand the concept of a community helper.

In virtual learning environments, students can record a lesson using a laptop, tablet, or cell phone camera.

8. ANALOGIZE IT

A more sophisticated technique invites students to develop an analogy or metaphor to illustrate a newly learned concept or skill. The effectiveness of their explanatory analogy or metaphor can give you insight into their understanding. However, be cautious when interpreting student responses to this technique—a student may very well understand a concept but be unable to generate an appropriate analogy. Asking students to explain their analogies will give you further insight into their understanding.

Here’s a prompt for students: A _____ is like a _____ because _____.

Examples:

• A fraction is a part of a whole like a wheel is a part of a bicycle.
• Formative assessment is like tasting a meal while you’re cooking because it provides feedback that a cook can use to make adjustments to improve the meal.

Students can also create visual analogies (combining techniques 3 and 8). In virtual learning environments, students can post their analogies and metaphors in a chat box or on a Google slide or Pinterest board.

Note: Several of these techniques (especially 1, 2, 5, and 8) can be naturally used in conjunction with another popular formative assessment technique—an exit card—given to students at the end of a class period or end of the school day.

While these techniques can provide valuable information about the effectiveness of teaching and the quality of students’ learning, they’re not ends in themselves. Instead, they should be seen as the first step in a “feedback cycle.” The next step is to act on that feedback—reteaching something that many students failed to learn; correcting misconceptions that may be revealed; and/or providing scaffolded support to students who need it. Moreover, when students are given feedback, they must also be given opportunities to use it, such as revising their work, practicing the skill, or correcting errors. (Getting feedback without a chance to use it is like eating without digesting!) Then, the formative assessment cycle reboots as revisions can be assessed again, with progress noted and new learning goals set.

Reference: https://www.edutopia.org/article/8-quick-checks-understanding?fbclid=IwAR11PFxoZum4SlN6iPSRhNr7llNaPLe98ogYCnLbODY3K7e6WIK2Ad_uBjQ