Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs. In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year. Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home. I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
When students have completed and presented their work, the project isn't over. We don't just throw it out like the trash.
One of the key design features of Gold Standard Project Based Learning is reflection. We ended our first project in AP Physics 1 today, and I asked students to reflect on the project process and reflect on what helped them learn and what improvements could be added to the system. So, here is what they said was good for their learning.
The other comments include AP review sessions which aren't necessarily tied into the project based course. It is a strange situation. We are on the block, so I'll be done with my students in January and the AP test is in May, so we will need to have several review sessions in preparation. I did 5 last year and about 20% of students attended. We'll see what the turnout is like this year.
The big takeaways for me are that although I assign problem sets to be completed outside of project time, they still find them beneficial. Project time does take away from the ability to go over problem sets together or correct them as a class. So, having a posted solution has been key. Also, I have the feedback board where students can list problems that we can go over as a class when necessary. We used this a few times in the momentum unit and I though it was a great way to help with the most difficult problems that I'm guessing most students had problems with but we're afraid to ask about.
The next feedback board features what we did that did not help. Looking at the first point, there seems to be some disagreement about the comment. I didn't have time to talk about it today, but we'll definitely need to clear that up. The next comment about not wanting to derive formulas in lectures goes to the what students want when we take the time to go over information, if they really want to see the derivation of formulas, they could do that in the book. That is not what is going to help them complete the task at hand.
The last category of feedback was to see what we should be doing that we are currently not doing. The biggest thing is more quizzes as a class. Now remember these are the practice quizzes we use to track progress. I look forward to building more of these in to help break up a 90 minute class period of project time. But, as you can see students were still asking for more time to work on the video. Hopefully as time goes by, the students will become more familiar with the workflow of creating the video, but I understand the desire for more time. But, we can't have more quizzes and example while still adding more project time. If we tried this we wouldn't be able to cover all the required AP content in the course.
The other comments include AP review sessions which aren't necessarily tied into the project based course. It is a strange situation. We are on the block, so I'll be done with my students in January and the AP test is in May, so we will need to have several review sessions in preparation. I did 5 last year and about 20% of students attended. We'll see what the turnout is like this year.
Moving to a curriculum that is not focused on testing as the primary summative assessment, it's interesting to see students ask for a practice test. I think it could be interesting to assign a practice test and go over it in class the following day. I'll definitely take this suggestion to heart.
As my stu dents continue to move forward with more projects, it'll be interesting to see what the feedback will be like as it relates to the projects. Right now, though, it seems like the major feedback is trying to find a way to include a little more assistance with content not directly tied to the project work.
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