Authentic Project-Based Learning in Grades 4–8

Standards-Based Strategies and Scaffolding for Success

Dayna Laur

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000586725
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Authentic Project-Based Learning in Grades 4 – 8 provides a clear guide to design, develop, and implement real-world challenges for any middle school subject. The author lays out five clear, standards-based stages of assessment to help you and your learners process the what, how, and why of authentic project-based experiences.

You'll learn how to create projects that:

• Align with your content standards
• Integrate technology effectively
• Support reading and writing development
• Utilize formative assessment
• Allow for multiple complex pathways to emerge
• Facilitate the development of essential skills beyond school

Each chapter includes a variety of practical examples to assist with scaffolding and implementation. The templates and tools in the appendix are also provided on our website as free eResources for ease of use.

1

Authentic Concept Creation

How do we empower our learners to potentially effect change in their communities?

An Introduction

A friend of mine and author of Faces of Learning: 50 Powerful Stories of Defining Moments in Education, Sam Chaltain, spent a significant chunk of time asking people to recall their most memorable learning experience. When I met Sam in 2011, and he asked me this question, I had a difficult time responding. You see, my educational story reads like this: I was the student who followed the rules, checked the boxes, and easily played the game of school. However, I was bored. Here’s exactly what I remember from late elementary, middle school, and very early high school, as my school district was so small that eighth grade was part of the high school!

♦ In the fourth grade, I failed my first and only test. I was a terrible speller, but I was good at memorizing. I was also very tall, so I sat at the back of the class. I copied my spelling words from the board, memorized them, took the test, and missed every single one. It turned out I needed glasses.

♦ In the fifth grade, I tried kiwi for the first time as part of a special celebration. I can’t recall what that celebration was all about.

♦ In the sixth grade, I made, or rather my mom made, a rice crispy treat pyramid to show what I “learned” about ancient Egypt.

♦ In the seventh grade, I earned the “gifted” label. All this netted me was the right to complete a lot of extra worksheets for “enrichment.”

♦ In the eighth grade, I was the only person who knew all three rivers that met at the confluence of Pittsburgh for the geography bee.

Unfortunately, I see a similarly defined path with my youngest daughter who is currently in the fifth grade. Apparently, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. While she is in the advanced class for all of her subjects and is in the “special interest” class for gifted students, she is bored. School, for her, is just a job. She goes to school to see her friends and for playing her violin, participating in physical education class, representing her peers on the student council, and being a bus monitor. While she is categorically disengaged with the learning process, I feel fortunate that she is a “good” kid who wouldn’t dream of being a class disruption. However, I don’t want her current experience to define her educational story.

To shift the learning experience ecosystem into one that allows learners to write their educational story and define their educational journey, we must invert how we have traditionally approached lesson planning. Rather than start from a bottom-up strategy, we should move to a top-down design. This top-down design is one that immediately asks our learners to start with a challenge rather than begin with the basics. (Stick with me here and don’t put this book down yet!)

Conventional projects as you know them, and more than likely project-based learning as you have heard it explained in general terms, are not what allow our learners to write their educational story. These conventional projects happen at the end of a unit and come with a host of guidelines that we require our learners to check off, one by one, to develop an end product that meets our predetermined notion of what is considered proficient or advanced. All of the “learning” takes place ahead of the project. Lessons, activities, readings, and often a test lead up to the project implementation. The project aligns to the previously taught unit to ensure our learners know what they need to do. Sometimes, this project is in lieu of a test, or it might be an attempt to enhance the grades of those that don’t test well.

While included as an integral part of the title of this book, project-based learning as it is generally defined and explained is not what you will explore as you turn these pages. You can throw out all of your old notions of PBL that ask learners to complete a task that is then shared at a local exhibition night and comes with tri-fold poster boards for parents to “ooh” and “aah” over. These projects start with an entry event meant to engage students and a need-to-know list that is supposed to begin the process of inquiry that emerges from a driving question – for a list of these driving questions, check out Table 1.1. They are a random but not exhaustive list that I compiled from a quick Google search. As you review each of these questions, consider the differences between the listed driving question and the authentic challenge ideas reviewed in Table 1.4 later in this chapter. As the pages of this book unfold, I intend to challenge the conventional notion of PBL, which lacks many of the fundamental attributes of an authentic learning experience that is instead a call for participation to potentially effect change in the world.

Table 1.1 Driving Questions

Driving Questions
What is epic poetry? Can we trust our government? Is the water in our town safe to drink? What effect does population growth have on our community? How is geometry reflected in art?

As you begin to consider the shortcomings of traditionally written driving questions, you should recognize that these sample questions are written at a low-level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. One of the goals for me in writing this book is to help you understand the differences between conventionally designed project-based learning and truly authentic challenges that I believe have somehow gotten lost in much of the current PBL vernacular. To facilitate our learners as they self-direct their educational story and choose the pathway of their educational journey, we must provide them with the open-ended possibilities that come with an authentic, relevant, and complex challenge. These questions now shift from low-level Bloom’s to a high-level, “How can we (I) …?” The use of this question stem creates multiple possibilities for solutions, is actionable, and puts our learners in charge of their educational story. And, I promise our pre-teens and teens are ready to tackle these challenges even before we “teach” them everything we think they need to know.

At this age, it is imperative that we pique the interest of our learners through the exciting challenges that an authentic learning experience affords them. Too frequently, we shelter our learners from the trials of the real world, as we fear they are too inexperienced and don’t have the skills or knowledge to delve into the problems that we, as grown-ups, try to solve. However, our upper elementary and middle school learners are full of questions and have become more independent in finding the answers to them. Instead of a primary focus on the preparation for what we imagine the future requires of our learners, we must remember that our learners are active participants in the real world. In the words of my colleague and friend Tim Kubik, “participation is preparation.” Thus, it is our job to encourage our learners as they define their educational story and begin to make impactful changes before they ever leave our halls and classrooms.

How do we empower our learners to potentially effect change in their communities? By the age of ten or eleven, our kids are starting to take on more responsibilities at home. By the age of twelve, many kids have started to babysit for other children, if they haven’t already been tasked with taking care of younger siblings. It also isn’t inconceivable for some of our middle school children to take on neighborhood jobs. At the same time, organized athletics become more important, as some may join a travel team, and by seventh grade our schools officially compete in many sports. These responsibilities give our adolescents a taste of freedom and the desire to move beyond what many traditional classrooms have to offer them. Think about the number of learners who enter your class daily and are distracted by the world outside of school. They are eager to delve into meaningful work that exposes them to the world beyond the confines of the textbook and scripted units we may offer.

While we might not understand their constant need to communicate socially via Houseparty or Snapchat, we can connect to their desire for relevancy. If we consider all of the times we have been required to sit through a professional development session that struggled to hold our attention, we have a baseline for understanding our learners. Thus, it is our responsibility to create and co-develop with them a classroom ecosystem that is relevant to their lives, while enhancing their essential skills and solidifying their understanding of complex content.

This classroom ecosystem offers an opportunity to investigate a complex as opposed to complicated challenge where our learners develop new ideas rather than produce what we believe is the right answer. If we invite our learners to participate in real-life challenges in place of a required assignment, we allow our students to become agile learners ready to explore and discover, as they initiate their learning through the process of inquiry inherently required in an open-ended challenge. Through an open-ended challenge, our learners have the occasion to develop an entirely new set of attributes that many pre-teens and teens are accused of lacking (Table 1.2). More importantly, as we design and co-design, with our learners and technical experts, authentic learning opportunities that are relevant to our learners and their communities, we empower them to effect positive change beyond simply giving back in the form of community service.

Table 1.2 Learner Attributes Developed Through Authentic Challenges

Agility Awareness Curiosity Collaborative Flexibility

Initiative Imaginative Motivation Observant Self-advocacy

I promise this book isn’t about how I want you to abandon all of your current classroom practices. Instead, I want you to think about how you can level up your pedagogical approaches. There is no need to start from scratch. Don’t throw away all your lesson plans, as these are often good scaffolds for supporting your learners in their project challenges; although, I won’t complain if you toss out your worksheets and packets! The most successful authentic learning experiences are grounded in the best instructional practices. Moreover, please note that I use various terms interchangeably throughout this book. “Authentic learning experiences” is an umbrella term that I use, but I know districts have adopted “project-based learning,” “inquiry learning,” “authentic challenges,” and other similar phrases to describe their focus on a more open-ended, inquiry-driven approach to education. Therefore, I, too, use a variety of terms to describe the work in this book.

As we begin to dive into our content, remember this first chapter is merely meant to be an introduction to this pedagogical shift in your educational story; think of it as the 30,000-foot view. If you find yourself asking questions, that’s a good thing! Asking questions is part of the inquiry process, and you are the learner in this process. I promise we will go into much greater detail in the chapters to come.

As we start to consider the development of authentic project-based learning experiences, we move beyond complicated activities that have a right answer according to the teacher’s guide or the department committee that crafted the activity. These authentic challenges are much more than a community service project. Now, we focus our content and standards in an authentic a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• eResources
• Meet the Author
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Authentic Concept Creation
• 2. Align Content Standards to the Real World
• 3. Support Digital Transformation
• 4. Generate Authentic Reading and Writing
• 5. Formative Assessments for Success
• 6. Levels of Complexity
• 7. Essential Skills for Tomorrow
• 8. Commonly Asked Questions about PBL
• Appendix 1: A Guide to Tools, Activities, and Protocols
• Appendix 2: Templates and Tools
• Appendix 3: Suggested Options for Authentic Challenge Questions
• Bibliography