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4 Ways PBL is Like Watching TV

Ruth, Ozark’s best character, in the dark

Last year I was trying to watch Ozark on Netflix. The show is quite dark, and I could not tell what was happening. As it turns out, my daughter had messed with the TV settings for a show that she had been watching with her friends. Great for them, but it made my experience unwatchable.

So I had to play around with the settings until my TV show appeared as it was supposed to. It reminded me that sometimes we have to adjust what “ideal” PBL looks like to our classroom context.

I have been reflecting lately on what teaching with a Project Based Learning framework is actually like. Most teachers have so many curriculum and assessment mandates that shifting to PBL can seem overwhelming.

Add to that the SEL push since Covid, negative stories in the media, and in some places, attacks on teachers from the local community. Teaching is hard right now, and due to outside forces or interior stress you may be unable to fully implement PBL.

At its heart, Project Based Learning is a philosophical framework centered on students. PBL does NOT have to be an all or nothing endeavor. Here’s four TV analogies that realistically explain how to start PBL for the first time.

Adjust the Settings

In order to watch Ozark I had to go to the TV settings and adjust. I turned up the brightness a ton and the color a little bit. I didn’t mess with the sharpness or tint at all. If I turn up all of the settings to the highest level, they fight against each other and the picture is actually worse.

Project Based Learning works in a similar way. HQPBL lists six aspects for a high quality project. In an ideal world, every project that students did would excel in every area. But in reality, different projects are stronger in particular aspects. Projects do not need all of the settings set to high all of the time.

HQPBL

Once or twice a year I try to have a project that truly emphasizes all six aspects. The DQ is focused on a local issue, and students collaborate with the community to attack it. They present their solutions in a noticeably public forum. We turn it up to 11! These projects are some of the most impactful and memorable.

But neither the students nor myself can maintain the highest level of focus in every project all year long.

We would burn out. So on some projects we turn down some of the settings. We still have a DQ centered on inquiry, but may not have as flashy final product. Students still collaborate with each other in teams, but without a strong community connection. Students reflect on their learning, but our final presentations are in class only instead of a large production.

You may teach in a setting that has structural obstacles to high quality PBL. It may be mandated curriculum, class schedules, or required common assessments. It’s OK for you to skip aspects of PBL at times. Adjust the PBL settings so that they work for you and your students. The gradual philosophical shift to giving students more active voice in your room is more important than making sure that you hit every checkbox for high quality PBL.

Variety of Genres

I don’t like to watch the same type of shows all of the time. It depends on my mood. Sometimes I want an intense show that I have to focus on the plot lines so I choose a dystopian saga with multiple seasons, but sometimes I just want to relax with a light comedy.

Other times I watch reality TV, by which I mean live sports (not scripted, fake reality TV shows 🙂 March Madness is here and is my favorite TV show of the year! Sometimes I am busy planning for class or grading papers and I just have some science fiction fluff on as background noise that I am not really paying attention to.

It is nearly impossible to maintain enormous, high profile projects all year long. Mix in shorter ones with less grandeur for your own sanity, but for students’ sake too. Try to time the variety of projects to the rhythms of the school year, paying attention to upcoming breaks and longer stretches without any. Students can get fatigued from constant pressure of showcases and exhibitions.

The best TV settings depend on the genre that I am watching. Dystopian shows tend to be dark and brooding, whereas baseball or football games are outdoors in a light setting. If I leave the brightness up for an outdoor sporting event it can make it look washed out and overexposed.

Just as the genre of TV influences how to adjust for the ideal settings, the context of your classroom matters for how well you implement PBL. Some questions to consider:

  • Is this your first attempt at PBL or have you been doing projects for years?
  • What is your students’ experience level with PBL or similar student centered learning frameworks such as Montessori or Reggio Emilia?
  • Do you have a community partner that needs a distinct problem addressed or specific final product?
  • Do you have building level and district administrative support for PBL?
  • Do you have professional freedom to change your curriculum and assessments or do you have mandates that must be followed?

The context of yourself, your students, your district, and your community greatly influences where to start with PBL. Even if you are a veteran PBL teacher, if it is new to your students and your district you will want to start small and gradually introduce them into the process.

If you feel that you may not have the support of your administration, ask for permission to pilot a project with your class. If finding a community partner is too much for you right not, have your students present to a younger or older group of students in your school. Maybe students will not be working outside your school at all for the project and that’s fine too.

As your students start to acclimate to the PBL philosophy you can give them more voice and choice over their projects and audiences. Other times, even with experienced PBL students, you may have a need for a specific final product for your client. This may limit student voice and choice but is highly authentic. Adjust your PBL projects to the genre or context of your school situation.

Closed Captioning

I like to watch TV with closed captioning on. My wife teases me about my hearing loss, due to my construction days, but apparently there are legitimate reasons why we all need to use closed captioning now more than ever.

Closed captioning was originally invented to help the hearing impaired community but so many other groups benefit including me. With the ubiquitous access to international films and TV, we now can watch programs in any language with subtitles. Many people around the world use subtitles to learn a new language. Closed captioning reminds me of the curb cut video that explains the universal benefits of scaffolding originally designed for a specific subset of individuals.

In PBL we encourage all students to use whatever scaffolding they need. Project Based Learning has been demonstrated to be an effective structure for diverse learners including English Learners, special education, and neurodivergent students.

Don’t be afraid to “turn on close captioning” with your students during PBL. We want independent problem-solvers, but we must first support students in developing the skills and mindsets to get there. PBL teachers provide templates, sentence stems, all forms of scaffolding, protocols, organization strategies, management tools, personalized coaching, and even direct instruction to help students meet their goals.

Binge Watching

A great PBL project is like binge watching your favorite show. I enjoy Ozark because it has a complex story that develops over multiple seasons with interesting characters and surprising plot twists. I wanted to keep watching it whenever I had free time and often stayed up too late on school nights to finish just one more episode.

When a project has structured inquiry that builds throughout, students stay engaged as they dive deeper and deeper into their learning. As they answer their need to know questions, they discover fresh new questions while considering multiple points of view. They get hooked into the story of the project.

In a compelling PBL project, students get into a state of flow and lose track of time. They are upset when class ends and want to keep problem solving. They work on the project at home, even when no homework is assigned. Students talk about the project with their friends and family. It shifts from a school assignment to something that they care about.

Not everyone enjoys binge watching the same kind of shows, and not every students gets as excited about every project. My goal, over the course of the year, is to try to connect each student to at least one project that they feel passionate about. Along the way, we focus on developing our SEL skills so that no matter what, students finish with personal growth in who they are.

Learn with me!

Are you interested in professional development for your school on how to implement PBL? I would love to have a conversation on how I can help. I am now scheduling summer workshops and book studies. Check out my workshop page or drop me an email at mikejkaechele@gmail.com. I would love to chat and co-plan meaningful PD for the educators at your school.

Would you like to explore more deeply how to integrate SEL into daily classroom activities? Check out my book below for tons of practical ways that can be immediately implemented in any classroom.

Pulse of PBL

Whiteboards Aren’t Just For Math

Trapezoids with an area of 20 and height of 4

This school year I have been using vertical non permanent surfaces (VNPS or boards for short) extensively in my 6th grade math class. Boards have been magical as students love them and they give me an easy formative assessment opportunity. My goal in using boards is to get students actively thinking and that is something all teachers desire.

Therefore working in random teams at whiteboards is not a strategy limited to math class. It can be effectively implemented in any content or age level. A couple of the things that make boards so effective are the academic conversations and deeper thinking they encourage. Boards are an excellent way to get all kids participating in a discussion around your class content. Here are some specific examples from across the curriculum (math is not spelled out but it is applicable too).

Brainstorming

Anytime that you are looking for students to come up with their own ideas, place them in random groups of three at the boards. They might be designing a science experiment, listing research topics for an essay, or coming up with a new project idea in PBL.

Boards work great at the brainstorming stage of design thinking as students can quickly discuss and list their ideas of either potential questions to tackle or solutions to try to a chosen problem. Follow up the brainstorming session with a carousel protocol by having students rotate around the room to see each other’s ideas.

Topic Introduction

Give students a small list of topics (3-5 big ideas) and have them list everything they already know about them at the boards. This is a great way for both you and they themselves to access their prior knowledge before launching into a project or lesson. As a bonus, students with broader knowledge on a topic will be pre-teaching others in their group.

In my U.S. history class I introduced a project on women’s rights by writing “male” on one board and “female” on the opposite side of the room. I had the girls write stereotypes about males and the boys write stereotypes about females. Afterwards we had a rich conversation about the hypocrisy that was clearly apparent.

Vocabulary

Instead of introducing vocabulary with a lecture and notes, give students a list of new words and the resources (textbook, computer, or dictionary) to define for themselves at the boards. Challenge students to describe each term in their own words and come up with an example context to use it properly. An extension could be to have them use the vocab words to create memes to post on your walls.

Mind Maps

Make a list of your key vocabulary or content topics and have students create mind maps at the boards. Encourage them to look for connections between the content and their personal experience. This open ended protocol can be used for any content or text including textbooks, novels, or research articles.

Other variations are card sorts, making meaning, and hexagonal thinking. Anytime we can get students talking about connections with our content it builds on their prior knowledge and cements new learning into their long term memories.

Test Review

List major topics for your upcoming test on different boards in the classroom. Use a Chalk Talk protocol to have random student groups rotate around the room adding their ideas to each question. Consider using a timer for each station.

Students will not only be sharing what they know, but in reading their classmates’ contributions they will be filling in gaps that they may have. Conclude class with a whole group discussion on any areas of confusion or disagreement.

Cause and Effect

Cause and effect is deep analytical thinking about your content. Give students a list of causes (or effects and work backwards) and ask them to explain, draw, diagram, chart, or mind map the historical or possible effects of the action depending on context.

Students might describe the results of a science experiment or an error analysis report. They could link key events in history or make predictions in a whole class novel. In P.E. class it might be analyzing healthy and unhealthy life choices.

Outlining

Before students start a major product or paper, have them collaboratively outline at the boards. This gives them an opportunity to flesh out their ideas, research, evidence, or understanding of a topic before diving into the deeper work of writing/creating the final product. Students may discover areas of weakness that require more investigation or research.

This is especially powerful for students who struggle to start major assignments due to lack of confidence or just not knowing how to begin. As the teacher you can quickly see which students are ready to begin and which ones need some scaffolding support from you to be successful.

Controversial Question

Post a controversial question or ethical debate from your content and ask students to discuss it in random groups at the boards. Rather than taking a position on the issue, challenge students to list multiple viewpoints with their respective strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps give each student team a specific point of view to analyze the question from and present to other groups.

Instead of a T-chart, which encourages polarized thinking, have students list a spectrum of opinions on the topic. Students should see that there are many viewpoints with credible conclusions. Consider a Venn Diagram with a circle for each major view to demonstrate nuance and demonstrate overlap.

Analyzing Text

In social students give each group the same primary source to read and analyze at the boards. Encourage them to outline a summary and mark up their interpretations. Or jigsaw different primary sources for each group and then have them explain to the whole class their piece. Don’t forget to include multiple forms of media including pictures, graphics, charts, video, and data.

In ELA, place a selection of poems or short stories on the boards to have students discuss and evaluate. In science or other content areas students could evaluate articles from a professional journal or a kid friendly source. Breaking down written content (even textbook assignments) is challenging and students benefit from working in collaboration rather than struggling in isolation.

Novel Reflections

Rather than the traditional book talk or whole class book discussion which is usually dominated by a few, have your students discuss novels in small groups and outline key points on the boards. You could include any questions or guidelines that you typically use, but this way all kids will be talking rather than a select few.

Focus your energy on groups who are not showing much activity and ask probing questions to deepen their conversations. This can be used whether students are all reading the same book or have individual choice books.

Early Elementary

What about in early elementary where students are just beginning to write letters and read simple words? Student teams can draw pictures or mind maps to demonstrate their thinking. Encourage those children that can to practice writing, but all kids can contribute their ideas in some way.

The teacher can always summarize the class thinking in an anchor chart after time working in groups at boards, but giving students of any age a chance to share their thinking with their classmates in small groups is powerful!

One of the great think about working at boards is that you don’t need to design all new lesson plans but simple adapt your existing assignments.

Helpful Hints

  1. Adapt, don’t create. Ask yourself how you could turn any existing assignment or assessment into a collaborative activity at the boards?
  2. Use protocols. Choose a protocol to use at the boards to structure and scaffold student-thinking. Consider using a visible thinking routine.
  3. Take pictures. Use your phone to document thinking and encourage students to take pictures too.
  4. Encourage messy. Board work is meant to demonstrate half baked and emerging thinking. Students should be comfortable sharing their thoughts without judgment.
  5. Don’t grade it. The power in boards is the conversations and deep thinking. You will sacrifice that if you make it a graded activity.

Learn with me!

Are you interested in professional development for your school on how to infuse whiteboards? Of course, I highly recommend PBL as the ideal framework to use. I would love to have a conversation on how I can help. I am now scheduling workshops and book studies for this summer. Check out my workshop page or drop me an email at mikejkaechele@gmail.com. I would love to chat and co-plan meaningful PD for the educators at your school.

Pulse of PBL