Meshehdia and I spent a morning sharing and discussing our approach to PBL using a ‘Design Thinking’ model introduced to us by Tom Barrett, with children in Y3 & 6. We were trying to put our thoughts and experiences together to try and come up with a useable model for teachers to use throughout the year and across the school.
I should point out that there are some essential differences in our circumstances, apart from the age of the children. I teach Y6 for one afternoon per week and the rest of their learning is more traditional, although they are seated in Kagan teams and they are used to running projects, albeit ones that are much more teacher controlled. Meshendia teaches her class full time and these children have been learning using Negotiated Learning for 2 years.
In this post I will only be able to discuss, in any great detail, my planning and execution experiences so far.
Initial Idea
Both of us started this process with an idea of which area/s of the curriculum we wanted to explore. Mesh wanted the children to have some learning experiences around Geography as they were missing coverage in this area, whilst I wanted the children to think about sustainability and how that links with Science, Geography and DT.
Mesh developed her initial idea through a conversation with Tom, who used some key questions to challenge her thinking
• Does it pass the “So what?” test?
• Is it epic and big scale, not tiny and ‘fake’?
• Does it cover more than just one curriculum subject or topic, or have four or more ways of solving it?
• Does it spark natural curiosity?
• Is there enough potential material in which learners can immerse themselves?
Can it be made accessible, feasible to access for every learner?
They then came up with a title for the project - London is Full. Evacuate, which became her initial starting point. My journey to this point was different in that I was inspired by a trip to the North West coast of Scotland, which generated images rather than a title.
Immersion
To immersion the children I was working with, I created a series of visual and audio images, including clips from TV programmes, montages from YouTube, photographs, web sites. There was no title given to the project but every image had the wind as its central idea. After this, the children were then allowed to explore further any ideas that had captured their interest. I know that Meshendia’s Immersion period was a lot longer. I felt that as I only see the children once a week, I needed to concertina this phase a bit so that the children didn’t lose momentum. I realise that the disadvantage of this is that the children have less time to explore and develop ideas.
Synthesis/Project Brief
It is at this point that the children start to pull together their ideas to create a line of enquiry or Project Brief. During her discussions with Tom Barrett, Meshendia had talked about the need to ‘keep this epic’ and meet the criteria mentioned above.
I organised a format for the children, to structure their project brief, which asked them to think about
· A wish list for learning
· The outcome of their project
· The audience for the final outcome
· How their outcome will be used
· A maximum of 6 learning outcomes for their project
Having written the brief, the children worked together in their groups to create a ‘Project Pitch’, which had to include visuals and an oral description/explanation of their project.
First Evaluation Phase
The children then had to pitch their project to the rest of the class for evaluation. I structured this session with Kagan Cooperative Learning structures to ensure engagement and participation. All children in the group had to be ready to pitch as they did not know who was going to be selected. Once one child was selected I used ‘One Stray’ to facilitate them pitching their idea to all the other groups. They had 2 minutes with each group and we had talked about the criteria and thought about good coaching questions should the pitch not last the full 2 minutes. After that we used ‘Carousel Feedback’ so that each group received written feedback about their pitch. After this each group had some time to redefine, change or abandon their project as a result of the feedback.
Three groups abandoned their projects as they felt that what they had decided on was unachievable or didn’t make sense or had no purpose. They went back to the Immersion Phase during the next lesson, whilst the other groups moved on.
Prototype
The following session saw all the children who were ready, move on to creating a prototype. Tom and Mesh had discussed the importance of this being a paper prototype so that it wouldn’t be difficult to ‘screw it up and throw it away’ after it had been evaluated.
Second Evaluation Phase
Next week we will evaluate the prototypes as a class. Again using mainly peer to peer evaluation and using Kagan structures. After this the groups will need to write a timetable for their project, think about what support they will need and cost and source resources.
Meshendia and I discussed the need to ensure that there is a proper evaluation at the end of the project that involves peers and the target audience. This needs to be built into the project timeline so that the children can think about how they will know if their product has been useful to their target audience, which will also ensure that the children will know when their project is finished.
More to follow as we move on!
