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I am struggling a bit here, and beg your indulgence, this will be a little long for a traditional post. My Assistant Principal, AP, came into my room yesterday for a walk through. My middle school Design and Engineering students were totally on task doing exactly what they were supposed to. We are currently working on the Future City Competition, a national STEM competition where students create a city at least 150 years in the future and have an essay to write on a research topic write a city narrative and make a scale model of their city and present the model and share how their city deals with storm runoff. The topic this year is “Rethink Runoff”. The topic is exciting, highly engaging and rich in terms of being able to find research. The students are very engaged. The dilemma I am having is over having a single learning target for students when they are engaged in a project of this depth and having a variety of skill levels to accomplish the final product, a 1000 word research essay with MLA citations. My AP queried: “ There were a series of tasks for students to complete on the board but no learning target. One student told me that they didn’t have a target today and implied that they hadn’t had one for a while, (Awhile being one week). I asked students: a. What is the learning you are supposed to be doing today? • More about computers • How to use citations for different kinds of resources • How to write essay up to the standards of Future City • Water runoff • How to write an essay? (another student responded to this –no not what we are doing, what we are learning) b. How will you know if you were successful? How will the teacher know? • We have a PDF that tells us what Future City expects What was the learning that you were expecting students to do today? How will you know that each student hit the target for the day?” My response: (edited for length) “This is where it is hard when it comes to learning targets because everybody is at different places in terms of their writing of their research essay. There are tasks more than targets. The ultimate goal is that they are able to use all of the multiple skills I’ve taught them and that they’ve been practicing for the past two weeks to research and write their 1000 word research essay on storm runoff. Some are still stuck on the basic skills of taking a .pdf file, highlighting and converting it to a Word document, bearing the same name as the original .pdf article, then highlighting the important parts of the article, noting the cites from which the author cited. They then copy that information into a Word document, known as the “practice essay”, carrying the citations from the highlighted article to the practice essay. Once the information is transferred, they go to the bibliography tools and use the citation information to insert a citation using “add a source”, then insert the bibliography. I am checking their sticks for both documents, providing feedback and doing re-teaching both within their documents and on the board up front to help them understand the process. In the past, the essay has proven to be the hardest part for students to complete because they don’t have the necessary computer or writing skills to do this well. This year I am scaffolding the work differently to help them practice the skill before they actually have to write the real essay. It has been difficult at times, because students are so unfamiliar with Word and computer skills along with how to cite work in a written essay. There are those that did well and are moving on to actually beginning the research for their real essay, and also helping others as they can. Most of those not getting it, just need time to do the work – slower I am sure because they do not have keyboarding skills either. I am putting on my server on an every other day basis websites, youtube video links and articles to help them with their research. They have been told to check the site every day for new additions, but the expectation is that they will find their own as well. Those that I am posting are resources they either wouldn’t have access to or would not know how to find because they are so embedded in another piece of work. My question to you all is how do you write a single learning target when you have a situation like this where you are teaching a new skill(s) on a new task to learners with a wide chasm of experience and abilities?

Hi Sandy, Have you thought about some sort of rubric that examines pre and post skills since kids are coming in with different levels of skills? That way you can see how much they have grown and it is more individual for each student?

I suggest that you visit the Buck Institute for Education and check out their resources on Project Based Learning. You can create a free account and access all sorts of tutorials and tools on how to use PBL in your classroom. You may find some useful advice here: http://www.bie.org/ Your AP wants a single learning target that is the focus of the daily lesson? How broad can it be? Can it be as simple as "Students will use 21st century skills to complete a project on....", with a subset of specific tasks that are being worked on each day?

Sandy: I want to commend you for your hard work and diligence. I want to encourage you to continue because very few people attempt to truly engage students in STEM. I teach inclusion students in middle school and STEM is the best way to keep them engaged and excited! Many AP's don't understand but they will when these students succeed not only in school but in life! Judy

Thank you Cris for the link to the Buck Institute, I will definitely look into that. Unfortunately broad won’t work, I’ve tried that before and while my AP is outstanding and understands my dilemma, others in administration are not. They really think you can do a project based learning project more or less lock step. I have limited board or bulletin board space to put my learning targets up, so even though there are numerous learning targets being addressed depending on the task students are choosing to work on, they want to see them because they think students can’t track their learning if they don’t know what they are supposed to be learning. We go over all of the skills and learning’s for each of the tasks, they are recorded in the students notebook, and if asked, can even tell you the task and what they are learning, they are kind of old fashioned in the belief “visibility makes it real.” I realize there are some of my students that don’t get the big picture of PBL and struggle to manage their time and project completion is difficult, but in reality, they all learn how to be project managers over time. I keep searching for that “perfect” solution. We are getting better at it, just not good enough yet. I appreciate your responses.

Looking forward to hearing about your finished project!

Adah this is a very good site! It helped me as well! Thanks Judy

Hi Ladies,
This is a bit off 'target', but I wanted to share my favorite STEM site - the Siemens STEM Academy. Their webinars are fantastic for design engineering projects.
Carolyn

Hello Thread Readers and Posters. This is some tangential information that may be useful. The Concord Consortium has activities and projects that evolved from PBL - they were one of the first riders along with Tuft's University on developing PBLs. Educators may find some interesting ideas among their various projects. Concord currently works with cohorts of teachers in several states, one of them is VA, integrating projects into science offerings. Go ahead and scan the activities from the site. Although they are specifically developed for some software and probeware developed by CC, the projects easily may be modified to reflect what teachers have available within student learning environments. As an NSF project, the information is available to all. http://concord.org/projects Some middle school activities are found here: http://concord.org/activities/grade-level/middle-school ~patty

Thank you Patricia. I think these sites are great. I am interested in getting some training using PBL and am having a harm time finding some that are in PA. Judy

Thank you for sharing the Siemens STEM Academy site. This is one I had not yet seen. I am looking forward to spending some time with it. Patty, I had heard of these sites, but have not had a chance to do much with them. I like the look of the organization of the pages I was able to glance through. There seems to be quite a variety of tasks that look like they would really engage students.

I concur with Adah who makes a good point about accessing the archives of the Siemen's web seminars; they are great resources for any time, any place learning and gathering of information. Archives, even those available within the LC are asynchronous. Sandy, let us know your thoughts on any specific activity. Many middle school teachers modify them and use interfaces and sensors that are available within their classrooms. They adapt the times for collection of data as well as the software for the analysis of data. And pencil and paper still work! What a renegade statement from a computer techie. ~patty

I've been doing a little searching in the Learning Center and came across this article that may be of interest. Robotics on Water By: George Hademenos, Jonathan Russell, John Birch, and Karen Wosczyna-Birch Grade Level: High School “Engineering Challenge for the 21st Century,” a weeklong teacher workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation, uses project-based learning (PBL) to help students and teachers build science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills. The workshop, hosted by the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, features the Coast Guard Academy Robotics on Water (CGAROW) project. The goal of CGAROW is to stimulate teamwork, foster creativity, encourage strategic planning, and develop practical scientific and engineering aptitude while building robotic crafts. This article describes the teacher workshop, the CGAROW project, and its application to the classroom.

I would really like to do more STEM activities, I am doing a great deal of research and bought some books. My goal is to apply some of the activities but time is an issue for me because my students have to take a State Exam in Science in 8th grade and I feel so pressured to teach them everything and review areas that they were supposed to learn and remember from 6th and 7th grades. I realize that these projects help them learn and remember, I need to get out of the mind set of time, the other teachers don't seem to worry about it, so I guess I will find maybe at least one project per book that I teach and spend the time to do it right.

Sandra, I think that you will find that initially doing project based science and integrating STEM type engineering and science design projects into your students learning environments will take more time, but if you start at the beginning of the year and persevere, I believe that you may find that the logical thinking skills and the reasoning skills developed by the students underpin their content knowledge. Students are able to apply knowledge to familiar and unique situations more fully and develop higher order critical thinking skills which help them to retain knowledge. Memorizing unconnected facts and concepts often fly out the door whereas applying knowledge builds sound foundations, both for future growth as well as for taking tests. Perhaps, you can assign students to peer teach within the class when they have to review and integrate what they have learned or should have learned prior to entering your class. Cognitive research has shown that PBL and STEM enhanced learning raises student performance on standardized tests. Give it a try! The time invested in preparing and delivering new lessons is well worth it and your students will adapt to this new student centered learning and hopefully thrive for you. Have no doubt that it is trying and frustrating for the teacher, but worth the effort. Applying these strategies may even make those pesky or perky pacing guides more palatable. ~patty p.s. Let's hear others chime in, too.

Have you ever tried using a menu of tasks? When doing project based learning, I would often give students a one page "list" of skills or or tasks, all arranged under one or two learning targets. That way, no matter what they are working on, they know what their learning targe is that relates to what they are working on. So one target might be, "I can write a 1000 word essay about _____" This might have several sub-targets, such as, "I can use MLA citation style" or "I can organize my writing into 5 paragraphs"-- Then, under that target or subtarget, students are checking off skills and recording evidence of mastery of those skills. So perhaps the task is, Review MLA by going through the computer based module about using MLA. (check off) 2nd might be "Take the quiz about MLA and print off your passing score." Check and add that document to the portfolio as evidence of learning. My students would often be working on many different parts or pieces of a project, but they could tell you where they were headed with what they were doing and when they should be getting there. Each day, I reviewed their progress toward the goals. Sometimes, I would have to sign off on their papers, sometimes not. Hope that helps.

Thanks Wendy. I am actually going to do the final projects in a menu format. The biggest problem is administration that only visits once or twice a year walks in and expects a learning target for the day, when the learning targets have all been posted and taught, now the kids have to learn how to put the pieces together for a project. Because I am a STEM class and we are working on Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, 21st Century Skills, writing, reading and installing the kitchen sink all within the context of a project, they don’t get that you can’t have every learning target up on the board. They will agree that when they sit down and ask a student what they are working on and what the learning is, they can clearly articulate it. That’s where it just gets frustrating to me. Independent thinking and learning being shown by middle school students and the adults get in the way. With limited board and wall space, I am still trying to figure out what the “visible to the public” piece looks like. I appreciate your input though, it makes me feel like we are on the right track. By the way, I was only kidding about the kitchen sink part.

I really like the idea of the menus and I think that will help me know that they are learning everything they should be. I have a goal for the summer to take all the great things I have learned. Just putting it all together will be my summer project. I have been trying to put what I have been using many more inquiry-based learning opportunities currently in class. I have also tried to include STEM activities but I have to do more research on how to make STEM apply to my introductory chemistry and introductory biology sections when I do not have a lab. I feel like using the menu style will help me because I am very concerned about my students being proficient in all areas that I teach. Thank you both for your encouragement.

Thank you for all the great posts! I am looking into using more rubrics and menus with my 5th graders this year, and what a great start this will be!

Make a rubic that will cover all learners. Rubic may overlap.

Tina and Susan, these are all great ideas to consider. I am hoping I will be able to incorporate them this upcoming year. There is a possibility I may get to move to a larger room that would allow me to utilize these suggestions. Currently I have no wall space that would accommodate the large number of learning targets for the menu options and 147 students. Crossing fingers, toes and anything else I can to increase my chances of moving. This is going to be an interesting year with the new evaluation system causing all teachers to have to account for content, common core, state and national standards and 21st Century skills. I think everyone is going to have issues with learning targets as we now know them. I am laughing Tina about the “principal radar,” they do seem to find the one student in the room that has the least idea of what they are doing and why. Generally they are the one that has been absent for the last few days and has not bothered to get the notes or communicate with their group.