Class 16: 10/20/11-Legacy Cycle Project

Agenda:

1. Brief View of the Road Ahead
2. Legacy Cycle Groups
3. Krajcik, McNeill, and Reiser

Dr. Petrosino began class by going over the agenda for the day. The road ahead includes starting on our Legacy cycle projects within groups (which are to be discussed later in the class) and doing more extensive reading on PBI. As we finish the semester, we will also be reading critiques and counterarguments to PBI; this is important so that we can continue to improve the PBI method and compare the benefits of various teaching methods.

Dr. Petrosino then began giving us information about our Legacy cycle projects that are due in approximately a month. Individuals may choose to work alone if preferred. Otherwise, groups should have two to three members. It is not required that all members of a group be of the same discipline (e.g. a chemist and a mathematician may create an lesson together). In addition, lessons could be on any subject desired (within the secondary and middle school scope). There is a curriculum model provided in the reading which is useful for thinking about the legacy project. Feedback and revision is important in PBI but we will not have sufficient time for that. Therefore, we may redesign an older legacy cycle from the web page if desired.

Dr. Petrosino then began a lecture on the reading of Krajcik, McNeill, and Reiser. This reading is assigned for us to read by October 27^th, 2011 (one week), but Dr. Petrosino decided that he would give a previewing lecture on the reading.

There is a constant tension between the state and federal government on the debate as to who has power over education. The states feel they hold the ultimate power on their state’s education since they provide the funding for it. In terms of curriculum and instruction, the state writes the curriculum and teachers must be certified through the state.

Standards tell us what to teach but not how to teach it. With numerous standards and limited time, we tend to go back to direct instruction in order to cover anything.

How do we move from content standards to learning goals? The reading discusses this and common Design Issues with curriculum. The Atlas of Scientific Literacy is very helpful to see how content is related to better plan and explain the sequence/structure used in the classroom.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class. Today’s blog is brought to you by Cassandra.

Class 14: 10/13/11-"Back of the Envelope" problems

Dr. Petrosino began class today by asking, “What do you know about pi?” and “Who can give me a value?” Student responses were the usual 3.1459 with some students carrying the decimal out farther than others. A few minutes of discussion then occurred centered around those two questions and the idea of estimation. The discussion concluded with Dr. Petrosino stating estimation is closely related to guessing. The class was then challenged to consider if grading estimations is possible, and if so, how it could be done fairly for students in their classrooms. This question remained the central theme throughout the duration of the class.

The majority of class time was activity based. Dr. Petrosino introduced the students to their activity by showing them some ““back of the envelope” problems (also know as Fermi Questions). Some examples shown were those that Bill Gates would ask in his interviews for Microsoft. The class was then divided up into groups of three and had ten minutes to solve one of the three Fermi Questions presented. The three questions presented are the following.
1.  What is the total weight of all the leaves in New England (in Kg)?
2.  How many crossings of the Atlantic Ocean have occurred since 1492?
3.  How many hairs on the average 20 year olds head?

Students were required to use assumptions and estimations to perform the calculations required. Their assumptions came from their own background knowledge, and collaborating with their groups. This element of collaboration was crucial in making their answers more precise. After the ten minutes were over each group presented their findings on the board in front of the class. These presentations allowed other students to see what each group discovered and compare answers. After the students were comfortable with the process of trying to solve one of these problems Dr. Petrosino presented more challenging Fermi Questions.

The activity did a wonderful job of demonstrating some of the elements of a Legacy Cycle. It consisted of a challenge, multiple perspectives and going public (Klein & Harris, 2007). The class ended with Dr. Petrosino explaining the difficulty of putting these questions on standardized test. The students agreed that these “back of the envelope” problems would be extremely frustrating to solve on without collaboration and under the pressure of a test. In response to the challenge question, estimations problems, like the Fermi Questions, allow students to use problem solving and critical thinking skills, but should be solved through collaboration in groups instead of individual. For more information on Fermi problems and the solutions follow this link!

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class. Today’s blog is brought to you by ­­Casey.

Class 13: 10/06/11-Petrosino/Lehrer/ and Schauble

Tomorrow, Friday, is the first day the PBI students will be in the field, teaching day one of their 3-day teach at Manor New Tech High School. Our TA Sara started class by reminding the class of expectations during our teaching experience, including: appropriate professional attire, early arrival to classes, and having confidence and enthusiasm while teaching! Prudie handed out rubric for the field trip teaching experience happening Saturday at McKinney Falls, and there was a reminder that the rubric for Friday and Tuesday’s teaching experiences were in the Course Documents on Blackboard.

Dr. Petrosino encouraged the students to not burden themselves with the burden of being perfect because the high school students are the true audience – not the observer. The average teacher makes an instructional modification every minute, so expect at least a couple during your 75 minutes with the students. There will be moments where accommodation and “just-in-time decisions” will be needed. Take time to listen. Quiet isn’t a bad thing. Flexibility is key. Give the students time to talk and think and yourself time to listen, react, and interact. Keep in mind what things are important – what the ultimate goal is. It’s not your rubric so much saying you did a great job. The goal is engagement and thoughtful learning. There is great value in the cycle of reflection, interaction, and ability to make modification.

About ten minutes was given to teaching teams to gather and address last-minute issues, such as “Who is bringing what materials,” and “Who is taking the reins during the lesson at different points?” before the class discussion turned to the paper that had been assigned as the reading homework for the class.

For class today, we read “Paper structuring error and experimental variation as distribution in fourth grade.” (Petrosino et al., 2003) PBI student groups spent five minutes discussing the reading amongst themselves in order to determine if the experiment discussed therein was “big P” or “little p” and then to find points to defend their position. Groups wrote their ideas of “big P” and “little P” reflected in the paper on large sheets of paper distributed to each table with markers.

On a previous day, after reading two complimentary papers on Project-based Instruction, the class had defined “little p” as a project as many have come to know it. In general, it refers to projects in class that are more about making sure the students are doing something with their hands than being as much purpose-driven or problem-solving. Often, in a “little p” scenario, students are not sure of their purpose or goal or the connections the activity has to anything else. In contrast, a “big P” project is informed by theory, involves scaffolding, is learner-centered, driven by a problem or question, is relevant to the students in the place they are in, and builds community and discourse.

Something to consider is that the existence of a “big P” or a “little p” does not imply that one is inherently bad while the other is perfectly good. In reference to the paper, we discussed that perhaps one “little p” aspect was that although the project was taught over an 8-week timespan, a few days each week direct instruction was the mode of instruction. It was acknowledged that this particular paper did not necessarily emphasize Project-based Instruction. There were certainly “big P” attributes, such as the cycle of the first couple of activities of measuring the flagpole and the pencil and seeing the differences in experimental error building up scaffolding for the students before they attempt the largest challenge of the rocket launch. Their culminating challenge was to determine if rockets with rounded or pointed noses will go higher. The projects helped the students reflect on comparison of attributes, manipulation of variables, models of a situation to real world implications and in current work: measure and distribution. The trajectory of the project offered scaffolding by emphasizing standard deviation and distribution in a generative way for the students, who were also allowed many opportunities to present their data in their own way.

Teachers are Vygotsky’s bridge – the learned other – the archway between the child’s world and the scientific world. This project sequence explored: “When is a difference really a difference, and when is it simply within normal variance?” How we start launching rockets and want to make educated guesses about which design makes the highest height? We are almost intellectually dishonest with kids when we give them simplified situations with big effects and the data is not problematic. This project in the paper tries to give the students tools to use to decide when can you say with confidence that differences in results are due to the design difference.

At the end of class, the question arose from math majors who study the Moore Method how does that method compares to what is being taught in PBI. Dr. Petrosino shared that while he has not observed the Moore Method in practice, based on what he knows, the Moore method does not have the pronounced scaffolding discussed in PBI. In PBI, the instructor is obliged to be thoughtful of the scaffolds and collaboration supporting the learning goals.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class. Today’s blog is brought to you by Laura.

Class 12: 10/04/11-Peer Feedback on Lessons

For the first ten minutes of class Prudie, our UTeach master teacher, went over the logistics for the weekend field experience, and then we were split into groups. Each group had three teaching pairs, and each teaching pair had 15 minutes to present part of their lesson and seek advice from the other two pairs.

In my group, the first group was teaching a 10th grade geometry class a lesson about similarity and congruence using the side-angle-side and angle-angle-angle postulates.

For their warm-up, they plan on reviewing the distance formula, and classifications of triangles. Their driving question is, “How can you use mathematics to design a zip line at McKinney Falls”. The hypotenuse of the triangle would be the zip cable. On the first day of teaching they plan to introduce the question and have the students begin to design their zip line using what they know about triangles. At McKinney falls, they plan to show the students the location at which the park had decided to build the zip line. Students are to scale up their models, and determine if they fit the specified location. If they did not, they were to make adjustments to their calculations to make it work at this location. They would also use the GPS to take points and use that to help with their calculations. On the final class day, students will make any personalized changes to their design using the GPS coordinates, and create a model of final design with poster board, dowels and string to present to the class.

The second group is teaching a 9th grade biology class. Their objectives are ecology, food webs, and the effects of invasive species. Their challenge is to find a new organism to introduce into the ecosystem in hopes of helping it recover from the devastating drought. The first day they planned to review the concepts of trophic levels and food webs, and introduce the challenge to the students. Out at McKinney falls, the students would observe and take notes on the life they saw, and its relationship to other forms of life. The teaching group expressed concern about what to do at McKinney Falls and how to keep the students on track, and one person suggested they limit their students to the aquatic environment. On the last day, this group planned to have their students discuss the effects of the new species interacting with the preexisting species, and create a food web.

The third group was teaching a 6th grade math class about graphing, latitude and longitude, and the Cartesian coordinate system. The first day they planned to make the students experts at the GPS probes. Out at McKinney falls the students would participate in a treasure hunt and find “buried treasure” using layered transparencies making a map that they could then scale up to the park using GPS coordinates.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class. Today’s blog is brought to you by Anne.

Class 11.5: 09/29/11-Planning Session with Mentor Teachers

The purpose of today’s planning session was to meet with mentor teachers and discuss lesson plans for our upcoming teach.  It was in a relatively relaxed environment, which created a great setting for students and teachers to voice their ideas and concerns regarding lesson drafts.

The actual event was set to occur from 6-8PM, but the room (SZB 312) was opened early for groups to get a head start.  It was required that every group bring some form of rough draft of their legacy cycle.  Dr. Petrosino was relaxed in how we presented our rough draft; word documents, Google docs, and notes on notebook paper were all acceptable forms of a rough draft.  We primarily needed to have written evidence of an outline for our legacy cycle, proof that we had a basic structure; simply explaining lesson ideas to your mentor teacher without any documentation was not acceptable.  There was no required structure of the lesson draft, contrary to the norm for 5E lesson plan drafts. 

At approximately 6PM, when most students and teachers had arrived, dinner was served.  The provided meal helped contribute to the relaxed atmosphere; there were several types of pizza, salad, cookies and brownies, and various sodas.  Some groups took their meals upstairs to a vacant room on the fifth floor for a quieter working environment due to the congestion of the room.  After about 20 minutes, every group had finished dining and was hard at work.

As mentioned earlier, groups needed to create an outline of their lesson prior to the evening planning session.  Groups have had several collaboration periods during class, and many made significant progress on their legacy cycles during the field trip to McKinney Falls on the 26^th.  Meeting with mentor teachers during the evening planning session served as a time to review the progress made between the field trip and our most recent class period.  A large portion of the discussion revolved around smaller lesson details, such as supplies, trouble shooting, and the order of activities.

Personally, my fellow group members discussed worst case scenarios with our mentor teacher.  We predicted a maximum and minimum number of student attendees for each class to allow us to better predict the amount of supplies we would need and how groups would be formed for the lesson challenges.  We made an extensive list of all the needed supplies; it contained approximately fifteen items.  Within those needed items we determined which would be easily accessible through the UTeach supply room and which our mentor teacher could supply (such as scissors and sidewalk chalk).  We plan to use Labquests in our challenge, so we planned how many we would potentially need and what we would do if we didn’t have access to them and/or they ran out of batteries.  The solution to this issue was to collect GPS coordinates beforehand (we are using the Labquests for GPS purposes) or use a simple GPS app on a smart phone. 

Another significant issue we discussed with our mentor teacher was how weather conditions would affect our activities.  One of our activities involves measuring the height of an object by looking at its shadow.  We visited McKinney Falls in the morning on our field trip, and we came to realize that shadows would likely be in a different location in the afternoon, when we are planning to teach.  We thought of an alternative was to present the activity so it was not reliant on shadows; after all, even if we were teaching in the morning, there is always a chance it will be a cloudy day. 

Our group ended the session by exchanging contact information with our mentor teacher; we also linked her in to our Google doc with our current lesson outline.  We left the evening with clear ideas of what we needed to change in our legacy cycle in order to make it the best possible activity for our students. 

Class 11: 09/29/11-Big "P" v. Little "p"-Rivet&Krajcik 2004

“It breaks your heart.  It is designed to break your heart.  The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”  ~A. Bartlett Giamatti

Dr. Petrosino is a big sports fan and last night was a big night in baseball. Four key games meant the whole season to some teams.  Tampa Bay Rays down 7 - 0 and then in the last minutes of the game, they won.  This unsuspecting turn around shows the importance of perseverance, a great reminder before we go to our practice teach. 

Dr. Petrosino next addresses comments about the class submitted by students, specifically comments concerning how the class needs to have better organization of time during lectures.  The class discussed these comments and Dr. Petrosino explained that he will do his best to keep this feedback in mind during future planning.

For today’s class, we read “Achieving standards in urban systemic reform: An example of a sixth grade project-based science curriculum.” (Rivet & Krajcik, 2004)

Dr. Ann Rivit  is a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.  Her research focuses on PBI, science reform, content area literacy.  Dr. Joe Krajcik is a professor at Michigan State University.  He won a prestigious science education award. His background is in chemistry.  He was the graduate advisor of Anne Rivet and our very own Dr. Cesar Delgado!

The following PBI Science Features are given in the presentation:

Active Construction (refers to engaging students with a  the task in thought-demanding ways such as explaining, gathering evidence, generalizing, representing, and applying ideas)

Situated Cognition (students make meaning through interaction with the world and their interpretation)

Community of Practitioners (students learn ways of knowing, what counts as evidence, how ideas are shared within the culture of the discipline)

Discourse (Participation brings students into the language of the community of practice)

Cognitive Tools (extend what students can do and learn in that they provide opportunities for students to visualize and explore phenomena that would not otherwise be possible in classrooms through manipulating multiple dynamic representations).  Students can report findings, gather, analyzing, and interpreting information and data.  Also discussed is the importance of providing opportunities for students to construct knowledge through designing and constructing investigations or drawing conclusions.

Dr. Petrosino goes on to discuss Big “P” v. Little “P”  He gives the example, that a local New Technology Network school, Manor New Tech High School, is mostly using Big “P” on their campus.  Big “P” incorporates ALL of the aspects of the PBI Science Features, (listed above). This is no easy task to achieve, however, good project based instructors will incorporate as much as they can, in a fashion that is most comfortable and effective for them.

Little “P” on the other hand can be fun, entertaining, and hands on, but are usually done at the end of instruction as a summative assignment, and often do not meet the requirements listed above.  Many of us have only experience Little “p” in our schooling. 

The study done by Rivet and Krajcik (2004) consisted of 24 teachers that taught over 2,500 students in Detroit over a 4 year period.  The purpose of this research was to address science learning goals of balanced and unbalanced forces, simple and complex machines, and mechanical advantage.  Achievement outcomes as measured by pre/post test, show significant and consistently high learning gains, even as participation in the project include greater numbers of teachers and students in successive enactments, and leadership of the professional development support for this project transitioned from university researchers to district teacher leaders.

These results illustrate that materials that contextualize learning and support student inquiry as part of an urban systematic reform effort can promote learning of important and meaningful science content aligned with standards. 

The rest of class was spent working with our teaching teams on our rough drafts for Lesson Plans due in the evening.

 Each day in PBI different student(s) takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you through the collaboration of Claire, Lauren, and our TA Tara.

Class 9.5: 09/24/11-McKinney Falls Planning Trip

PBI-McKinney Falls Planning Trip - free slideshow

Today the UTeach PBI students from both sections of the class went to McKinney Falls State Park to get lesson ideas and practice with equipment.  The mentor teachers from local schools joined them in order to give feedback and assist with lesson planning, and UTeach master teachers helped to lead the day’s activities and give expert instruction on how to use the technology and other equipment. 

Students started the morning with a hike from the upper falls area to the lower falls, noting various landscape features like Old Baldy (a large Cypress tree) and a rocky natural overhang.  During their field experience, UTeach students will take high school students down this same trail and relate some of this same information to them. 

After the hike, UTeachers collected their equipment and practiced carrying out field experiments that they may decide to use in their lessons.  Some groups knew right away what they wanted to use, while others tried out a few different kits and tools before finding one they felt fit their lesson.  

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by our TA Sara.

Class 9 & 10: 09/22/11-Expert Blindspot/Petrosino

After a few weeks without Dr. Petrosino, class began with an air of anticipation. Dr. Petrosino would speak to us in a matter of moments. A classmate remarked, “I don’t even know what he sounds like.”  Class, however, began as usual with the previous nights’ reading being introduced to us by Dr. Petrosino.  He asked the class, if any, what made this reading relevant to the course.  After a few haphazard answers, the class seemed to give up.  “Because your Professor is some narcissist, egotistical, self-absorbed jerk!” said Dr. Petrosino.  From there the basic tenets of the article were covered in depth.  The results from this study performed by Dr. Petrosino revealed interesting data from which a pattern began to arise.  Having expert knowledge in any given field, does not necessarily confer one the ability to teach within that field. 

As a result, a so-called ‘blind-spot’ exists.  Blind spot refers to the phenomena where by experts fail to realize the shortcomings of novices. Dr. Petrosino surmised the point that experts think of information in their field in an implicit fashion and construct schemas of information and recognize only patterns in their fields.  Their ability to innovate in their field is hindered by how experts process information.

Of interest, a student asked a question that had to do with how reliable was the information that stated students in the study ranked math problems in that level of difficulty. To which Dr. Petrosino responded that many studies had been conducted over such knowledge, so much so that it was almost considered a fact or a kind of “truth”. This segued into an interesting analogy brought up by Dr. Petrosino.  His analogy invoked some ideas brought up by Vygotsky.  He drew on the board one world in which the novice lives in the world of the student, child, learner or beginner. There is an element of not knowing and almost allowing for magical thinking to pervade because of the ignorance of the beginner.  In another world, there lies the scientific world a world of hard facts, patterns, ‘the ivory tower’ and hard logic.  In order to cross over from the world of the student to the scientific world, the beginner/novice must cross a bridge. Being that bridge, the teacher must fluidly traverse both worlds in recognizing the needs of the students and the structure of the expert world.

Another interesting issue that came up had to do with the act of teaching in a classroom that stemmed from the apparent problem presented in the previous analogy. Why is being a teacher so hard? More importantly to some of the class, what did PBI attempt to do that could be practical in a classroom setting? Many of the classes that we take in the UTeach program seem to deal with theory and how they might apply inside the classroom.  It seemed as if the class was beginning to question the point of PBI.   One not only need to be an expert in their content knowledge, but also in child development, classroom management, interpersonal relations, public relations, pedagogical expertise and etc…

From that point, a student argued that maybe this article has the wrong approach and a better approach might look at what kinds of things work in helping people arrive at the ‘right’ conclusions.  Dr. Petrosino commented that the current research is exploring something similar called learning progressions.  In these studies, researchers are looking at “what it means to move over time toward a more expert understanding.” (Pearson, 2010)

(Expert Blindspot discussion continued on 09/27/11)

Continuing from the previous class meeting, the first order of business was to address our weekend visit to McKinney Falls State Park.  “Did you get your lesson plans worked out?” asked one of the TAs. The class seemed to squirm in their chairs because the big day is fast approaching. We will have to teach! Logistics aside, Dr Petrosino continued to explore the tenets of the article.  One of the results that really stood out from the study seemed almost unbelievable. The result said that high school teachers with high context knowledge predicted that symbolic math problems are easier than verbal math problems.  In fact, the opposite holds true and students to do better at verbal math problems rather than symbolic math problems. Expert blind spot in a nut shell. Just because someone is considered an expert in a field, they may not know how others will approach that given field as a novice.

From there an interesting point came up.  How is it that high school and college instruction vary so vastly.  Why are the ideas researched at the university level in education not applied at the university level?  To which Dr. Petrosino answered, that he didn’t really know.  It could be personal preference, legal obligations on the state level, more freedom is allowed at the college level hence not as structured, and other external factors that influence each respective arena.   

At the end of his lecture, the class was left to work on their lesson plans. Having met Dr. Petrosino and experiencing his lecture, he is not to quote him “narcissist, egotistical, self-absorbed jerk”.  He’s funny and really likes what he does.  He only teaches two days out of the week, but the work that he does influences people all over the world.  It’s this far-reaching effect that others may not understand at first glance.  Despite his loss, Dr. Petrosino is a self-deprecating, funny guy.  Glad to have him as my prof!

For a quick look at learning progressions and an idea of what they entail, go to:

http://www.pearsonassessments.com/NR/rdonlyres/6C8F4D6F-EFB1-47CE-9247-3712D274190F/0/Bulletin_12.pdf

or for a look at different definitions of learning progressions, go to:

http://www.cpre.org/ccii/images/stories/ccii_pdfs/learning%20progressions_heritage.pdf

Works Cited

Pearson. (2010). Test, Measurement, & Research Services. Bulletin , Issue 12.

Expert Blindspot Presentation

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by ­­­Jose.

Class 7: 09/15/11-Backwards Design/ Wiggens & McTighe

UbD

Today, class began with a discussion of chapters 1 & 10 of Understanding Design by Wiggins & McTighe. Students were concerned that the Backwards Design framework would be hard to implement in public schools, in which teachers had to cover specific materials and had specific teaching roles. Teachers would have to choose activities on certain bases, such that he/she would have to think of what they wanted students to accomplish before making a decision on an activity, and teachers would have to identify with the way students solved problems.

According to the authors, the idea of Backward Design laid out a framework, not a specific project or a 1-day activity, and it was focused on a larger scale. Students discussed the “6 facets of understanding,” which included Empathy, an emotional word, not formally associated with teaching. The TA asked how empathy applied to teaching math and science and how we would interpret empathy. Students suggested that we would have to make an emotional investment in the students; others said that there was a buy-in, that students would see the value in a lesson and have an emotional response, like feel motivation. Empathy in science would help create connections between the material covered and the students, or that students would make the connections themselves. In the discussion of the 6 facets of understanding, the TA brought up the updated Bloom’s Taxonomy, and how it was useful in classrooms for teachers, especially when creating tests for students and to self-evaluate.

The authors of the reading specifically pointed out that Backward Design was not a prescriptive program, philosophy of educations, or intended for indirect lesson planning, and the TA went on to discuss how it included very general steps. In connection to our reading in the previous week (Barron, Krajcik), all authors brought up the importance of content-specific goals, motivating questions, and so forth, and the fact that many or most teachers do not do this in their classrooms.

The discussion then turned to textbooks and the TEKS. Textbook writers (experts) create books in a way that may match or don’t match up to the TEKS, and follow a very different or strange way of ordering subjects.  Students asked, how are teachers supposed to organize their curricula in a way that makes sense for them and the students, and do we have to make a list of or prioritize TEKS? Activities and chapter orders have to be decided on by the teachers so that it makes logical sense for students as they go through the curriculum.

Teachers make the decisions to emphasize one thing over another (based on personal preferences). Teachers must make an emphasis on the large concepts that span their subjects, so that, when students are learning, they don’t get the impression that everything they are learning has the same weight in the real world. Furthermore, we have to respect the standards (TEKS) set for us so that students do come away with some understanding of specific content, and it really does give us a framework of what the students will be learning. Of course, creating priorities for students varies with the teacher, but overall, large concepts that students retain are similar from classroom to classroom.

The “Twin Sins of Design” were also discussed: coverage and “Hands-on without Minds on”.  Hands-on without minds on is the idea of an activity in which the teacher is hopeful that, through the activity, the students will somehow learn something. The TA asked how many students had gone through courses like these, and most of the class raised their hands (chemistry & physics labs at the university level included). The idea of coverage was also discussed and relates back to prioritizing the TEKS and spending different amounts of time on specific parts of the curriculum designed by the teacher. TEKS should be rated and ranked based on several factors, taking into account that some show up more frequently on the TAKS and also based on students’ prior knowledge.

Finally, class ended with a wrap-up discussion of the 3 steps of creating a backward design and a template worksheet was passed out (from the reading). The template, unsurprisingly, uses many of the same factors included on the 5E lesson plan model used by UTeach, including “Students will be able to”, and the Explore, Evaluate, Elaborate, Explain, and implicitly, Engage.

The template will be used for our field lesson and we will be expected to note down questions that we plan on asking the students to help focus the lesson.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by Sarah. ­­­

Class 6: 09/13/11-Petrosino (2004)

Tara, our teaching assistant, began the class discussion for today with a review of the critical aspects of Project Based Instruction (PBI) as defined by the readings for 9/8 (Baron et al and Krajcik & Blumenfeld).  The six most important components of PBI discussed were the driving question or challenge, scaffolding, collaboration, creation of a tangible product, ample assessment opportunities throughout, and authenticity or a “real-world” situation.

The importance of PBI as opposed to traditional laboratory and mathematics approaches was emphasized with the above "Ted Talk" video of Dan Meyers entitled “math needs a makeover” and the following quote from Ausubel

It should seem rather self-evident that performing laboratory experiments in cookbook fashion, without understanding the underlying substantive and methodological principles involved, confers precious little meaningful understanding, and that many students studying mathematics and science find it relatively simple to discover correct answers to problems without really understanding what they are doing.

The class then discussed what it would mean for the Petrosino case study of an astronomy class to follow the “How People Learn” text.  The How People Learn framework is focused on four classroom environments: knowledge centered, learner centered, assessment centered, and community centered.  Knowledge centered environments focus on student understanding of content, not just their memorization and requires meaningful engagement.  Learner centered environments draw on students’ prior knowledge, skills, and cultural experiences.  Assessment centered environments provide feedback on assignments whether these assignments are tests, worksheets, or assignments.  The feedback does not necessarily have to be tangible though.  For example, a teacher can jot down notes to themself on student productivity or have a conversation with a student or group of students.  A community centered environment creates connections between the school and the outside world.  Connections are made between the home, school, after-school programs, and experts.  Perhaps even more importantly, community centered environments form a community within the classroom and give students individual roles that draw on their strengths.  Great classrooms incorporate all four of these components.

Petrosino’s data collection methods were then reviewed with a focus on the type of data collected.  He used interviews (with the teacher, students, and colleagues), email correspondence, field notes of classroom observations, classroom artifacts (copies of the lecture, notes, handouts, computer programs, and class projects), and he focused on the photometry topic of the unit only instead of analyzing all topics covered.  These methods are qualitative, not quantitati/div>

Lastly, the class looked at whether the unit the teacher in the case study taught followed the How People Learn framework.  The majority of the class felt that the unit was knowledge centered because students actually used software and telescopes instead of learning about them.  The concern was brought up, however, that there was a focus on skills in the class rather than understanding but after some discussion there was a consensus that the ability to learn new skills is important and an ability the kids must have for future careers.  The class taught them HOW to use technology which prepares them for their future jobs that we may not even be able to picture yet.  Most importantly, the students understood by the end what a scientist is better than students that did not take this course.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by Rebecca. ­­­

Class 5: 09/08/11-Fundamentals of PBI-Barron/Krajcik & Blumenfeld

I will begin with a one paragraph summary of the class session and then describe it in a roughly chronological fashion. The major topic for the class session can be summarized by the question “What is Project Based Instruction (PBI)?”  The content (particularly after the first few minutes) was also focused around two papers: Barron et al on the one hand and Krajcik and Blumenfeld on the other.  The session consisted entirely of discussion: most of the time the entire class participated in a discussion together, but at one point the class was divided into table groups.  There were four major points of discussion, all of which were introduced by Sara, who ran the class (Dr. Petrosino was unable to attend class). The direction of the discussion was visibly influenced by the questions and comments of the students.  The four topics were: (1) the students’ prior experiences with projects, (2) a description of teaching practices that use projects but do not qualify as PBI, (3) a comparison of the two major schools of thought regarding PBI (as expressed by the papers), and (4) a discussion about the advantages and difficulties of implementing PBI.

Sara, after expressing the importance of the two papers, began class by asking the students to describe projects that they had completed previously.  Specific projects that were described were: an at-home project in which students constructed a Styrofoam model of a cell, a project in which students designed drugs to fight cancer, AP English projects in which the student (according to her choices) drew pictures and made crossword puzzles, a project in which a student built a castle, and a physics project in which students designed containers to protect eggs as they were dropped from a substantial height.  Many other students named characteristics of typical projects without describing any individual projects.  According to all these comments, Sara wrote on the white board a list of typical projects characteristics: taking place at home or outside of class, allowing student socializing, encouraging fun, involving rubrics (some but not all), involving research (some but not all), eliciting creativity, often taking place after the lesson to which they related, and involving freedom. 

Sara then informed that class that two major schools of thought exist in the educational research community surrounding PBI.  The first is centered at the University of Michigan and the second at Vanderbilt University.  She said that one of the papers the class read, Krajcik and Blumenfeld, was representative of the former and the other, Baron et al., was representative of the latter.  She also said the two schools have many similarities but that they also have differences.  After making this important point, she asked the class to engage in a discussion about characteristics of teaching is not PBI but still involves projects.  Based on student comments, she wrote the following descriptions on the white board: involving busy work (defined by the class to be repetitive work that does not introduce new concepts), completely teacher-run, involving only passive learning (or only lecture), one-shot only (that is, not involving revisions), involving recipes or step-by-step instructions, individual, and containing a closed or fixed ending.

Sara then asked the class to discuss with their tables the differences and similarities between the two papers.  After allowing for a few minutes, she asked the class to report the characteristics of the Baron et al. paper.  The class named: (1) non-specific feed back and revision, (2) appropriate social groups, (3) learning appropriate goals, (4) scaffolding, and (5) real word content (these are recorded as named by the class, not as written in the paper).  Regarding learning appropriate goals, Sara remarked that successful implementation can be deceptively difficult and she references the model rocket example from the paper. 

Sara also asked the class what was meant by the word scaffolding and the class (and the TAs) eventually stated that scaffolding is any structure meant to assist the students (like the structure of a building). Some examples given were lessons, labs, activities, problems, having students hold meetings, and deadlines.  These examples led to a discussion regarding the “hidden curriculum” of schools which is the attempt to teach “21^st century skills” such as collaboration, numeracy, critical thinking, responsibility, etc.  Some examples of this practice were mentioned by the students, such as a teacher requiring students to have a planner and to write down learning objectives.  Both TAs stressed the important of this sort of teaching and Tara emphasized the importance of being explicit with the students that it is part of the learning objectives.  They also highlighted the usefulness of having the schedule and/or current learning objectives hanging in the classroom.  Sara said sometimes one can feel like they are treating the students too much like children but it is okay. 

There was also a discussion about the importance of deadlines and both TAs said they were somewhat relaxed, but that it was important not to be too relaxed.  Sara emphasized that teaching is “a balancing act,” and in this case the competing forces are a desire to let students slow down to learn more effectively or complete projects if they fall behind (a concern raised by a student) and the requirement to cover the scope of the curriculum.  Prudie added that often in AISD, “curriculum roadmaps” are required, particularly in schools with low exam scores.  Sara reported that her success with meeting curricular benchmarks led the district to give her more freedom.  On the importance of deadlines, Prudie explained that the best philosophy depends greatly on the personality of the teacher: deadlines are very important to her and she is strict about them.  Tara emphasized that, with regard to deadlines and in general, the first project will typically go poorly as both the students and the teacher need to adjust.  She said that it’s important to have intermediate deadlines because otherwise students will try to do everything at the last minute, especially the students who are used to being successful.

After several minutes of this discussion (which stemmed from the characteristics of Baron et al), Sara refocused the class on the papers and asked the students to name the characteristics considered by Krajcik and Blumenfeld.  Throughout the discussion, the students named: (1) social organization, (2) scaffolding, (3) technology, (4) tangible products, (5) a driving question, and (6) situated inquiry (the latter two were named after Sara prodded the class; she also asked what was meant by situated inquiry and a student responded that the projects should be related to real life rather than demonstrating learning just for the sake of learning). 

There was substantial discussion regarding technology in the classroom.  The general consensus was that technology can be an added challenge because students are learning content and the functions of a device at the same time but that technology can be quite engaging to students.  Tara emphasized the important of teaching devices and technology to students rather than only teaching them to perform certain tasks (such as finding the point of intersection between two functions on a graphing calculator).  She warned against assuming students understand technology already: students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and do not all have access like we might think they do. 

In regards to tangible products, Sara pointed out that when students invest in something, it can make their work more meaningful.  As an example, she described a project in which her students picked a mythical creature or superhero and decided, with regard to organ systems, whether the creature could actually exist.  The tangible products in this case consisted of power point presentations, movies, or even skits (as their form was left open to the students).  She added that it was one of her favorite projects and that the students went much more in depth than she had expected.

For the final discussion point, Sara, asked the students to share their honest thoughts and feelings about the prospect of implementing PBI.  Most of the students seemed to imply that they liked the idea of PBI: one student said there seemed to be lots of possibilities, one said he was hopeful, one said she saw lots of value, and another that she liked the avenue for creativity.  On the other side, some concerns were expressed: one student said he was scared, another that she was afraid it would take too long to cover curriculum, and another that he was worried administration wouldn’t allow this sort of the teaching.  Sara explicitly recognized the legitimacy of these concerns and said that the students should always feel free to express their honest opinion, even if it feels contrarian.  Both TA’s expressed the importance of a willingness to learning alongside the students and Tara said she felt that administrators were beginning to come to an understanding of the importance of PBI.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by ­­­David.

Class 4: 09/06/11-Legacy Cycles/Klein & Harris

The discussion in our PBI class today opened up with this question, “As Project-Based Instruction revolves around the central idea of creating and implementing strong, solid Legacy Cycle projects, a firm understanding of what this is essential.” Below is a general schematic of a Legacy Cycle:

As defined by a student in the class, a Legacy Cycle is a type of problem-based learning that starts with a challenge being posed to the students. It goes through a cycle of generating ideas and gathering multiple perspectives on those ideas and assessing the various sources of information before going on to a process of researching and revising. Finally, when the students feel ready to "test their mettle", there is some form of assessment that evaluated their progress in their research. When their results are deemed satisfactory by their supervisors and peers, the cycle draws o a close with the final step of presenting their findings to the public in some way. Finally, if their findings prompt another challenge or prove unsatisfactory, the cycle starts again from the top.

So how is this different from a 5E? A 5E lesson plan is the template Uteach students used from Step 1 of the program until this class. The 5 E's in order are Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate - a very rigid and effective way to plan a lesson.

Of course, there are similarities between these teaching formats. Both include types of formative assessment and require the students to provide artifacts of their learning, both important tools that let the teacher know how the students are progressing. Both are templates, meaning that we can tweak the little things - they're backbones structures for lessons, there to provide a type of structure to the way we teach. 

But there are some noteworthy differences between 5E's and Legacy Cycles. In a way, the structure of Legacy Cycles is less strict, giving the students more free reign than in the case of a 5E lesson plan. In a Legacy Cycle, there is more room for multiple answers from the students. It also includes a revision step, in which the students may change the way they approach the problem if they find that they are stuck. The 5E's exploration is laid out for the students, but it's not as guided in Legacy Cycles. The 5E format does not have to start with a challenge, though it can. All in all, a Legacy Cycle encourages more independent thought; it's more open-ended. It's a more mature version of a 5E lesson plan.

The most vital part we as teachers need to get right in a Legacy Cycle is the initial challenge. A good challenge could fuel effective student work for the duration of the project. A sub-par challenge, however, could lead to massive confusion and a failed opportunity for productive learning.

This means that it is vital to know the qualities of what makes good challenge. Some ideas the class came up with were as follows.

A good challenge:

• provides more than one way to arrive at the/an answer. 
• provides foundation something that the students can build on for multiple or future challenges (scaffolding). 
• is Interesting to all members involved (students, teacher, community, etc...) 
• takes into account what the students already know, and relates to the students' lives and prior knowledge. 
• helps build students' confidence. 
• takes time, makes the students think. It teaches them to think.
• gives the student the chance to self-assess through reflection. 

With these ideas in mind, the class split off into our prospective teaching groups and researched the Legacy Cycles on Dr. Petrosino's website from students in the past to try to come up with a tentative lesson idea for this semester's teaching field experience. Our results can be seen in the below presentation that we collaborated on in class through google presentations.

PBI 9 6 Legacy Cycles

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by Diana.