Student Voice in Action by Christina Gouzd and Mary Anne Mullenax

During our world religions PBL, students were asked to address the essential questions:

• Why do religious conflicts exist?



• Are they avoidable?



• What is my role?

Unlike previous projects, students were very self-directed in choosing their teams as well as what type of project they would complete to answer the questions. During our debriefing session which centered around nine open-ended questions, students shared experiences outside of the classroom in tackling these challenges. Reactions ranged from needing more time to complete the project to being pleased with the option to choose their own groups. As usual, our students provided great insight into their views on what aspects of the project worked well and what aspects could be improved.

The students in the video clip are responding to the question: "What role did you take while working on this project?" Their responses led to a discussion about the reactions of others they interacted with during their projects. Many students interacted with adults outside of school by discussing aspects of religion with them.

As typically happens, our eyes were opened by their responses. We were especially surprised by one comment from a young lady in our first session. She felt that while we treat them as "adults" in our classroom, some adults still see them as kids and are hesitant to discuss mature topics with them.

Because we have given students voice throughout the year, many have come to expect that others want to hear their perspectives and want to be active in the learning process.

Focused Freshmen-an oxymoron?

If someone had told me two years ago that it was possible for my freshmen to work in self-directed teams and be productive and only a handful would be off-task, I'd have laughed in disbelief. That was the case this Friday in our English/World History classroom. I didn't think much of it as our students worked with each other, dividing tasks among their teams, researching with the internet, textbooks, and other print resources. It was only that evening when I compared this group-work experience to any other project I'd tried in my traditional classroom that I realized how far we have come.
Looking back to our PBLs in September, I remember that our students needed us much more (to help brainstorm, divide the responsibilities, keep them focused, research, and coach them along with their final products). Although we still have to re-direct a handful of them to focus on the task at hand, our roles are evolving to less of the "micro-managing" and more to challenging them to go further with their ideas through questioning.
How did we get here? Through their previous team-work experiences, I think our students have learned that they will be held accountable for their work and that they will not be given extra time when they didn't use class time efficiently. It took those prior experiences, many of which weren't pretty and make me cringe to think about, to get them to this more focused and independent level.
Now the question is what do we focus on improving next?

Debriefing and looking forward

Yesterday Mary Anne and I met with Matt to debrief about our Ancient Greek PBL. We'd already had a great reflection/debriefing session with our students the day before Christmas break. They were so proud of themselves, but were also able to offer ideas about what they would do differently if they had it to do all over again.
The concept that consistently comes up in our debriefing is the idea that we need to do better at what Matt calls "chunking." We need to further divide up the project into smaller "chunks" with deadlines every few days or so. This way, students complete one piece of the project at a time, receive feedback, make appropriate changes, and continue working toward the finished product. As we begin our Rome PBL planning, we need to have these smaller deadlines, or chunks, in mind.

Getting the hang of it

We started our PBL on Ancient Greece this Monday, and it seems to be off to a great start! For the first time, I feel like we have something that we'd want to use again. For the entry event, we opened with a 30 min clip of 300 and popcorn. We felt that we owed the kids a break from they typical fast pace of the classroom. They were appreciative and the day started off on a positive note. After watching the valiant sacrifice of the Spartans to preserve Greece in 300, we challenged them (via PPT) to "revive the legacy of Ancient Greece" for modern day. The houses are competing against each other in an EXPO on Dec. 20th that will showcase Ancient Greece. The prize to the winning house is bonus points, which appears to be quite the motivator!

For this PBL we grouped students according to their preferences on seven different Greek topics (wars, government, daily life, mythology, etc...). Each group will have their own display as part of the larger EXPO. Grouping students according to preference seems to be working very well. The best part of this strategy is that we don't have to convince them to be interested in the topic they're assigned which is sometimes an imposible task anyway.

We've given students packets consisting of research questions, research materials, a calendar of events and deadlines, a daily work log to gauge progress, and more.
The students are responding well to their challenge, topics, and workload so far, so maybe we (and our students) are starting to get the hang of this whole PBL thing.

Still learning "how to PBL"

Mary Anne and I have had several meetings now with Matt Anderson (PBL-extraordinaire) from WVU to develop our next PBL on ancient Greece. I'm trusting his reassurance that if we plan a PBL (or two) with him and he teaches us the structures integral in developing PBLs, then we'll be flying on our own in the spring.

We are so pumped about this Greece PBL! We're planning to challenge students (as travel agencies) to "re-brand" Ancient Greece to make connections to the modern world. They'll display their final products in an "expo" both during and after school and will have to advertise to entice visitors to their displays. They'll be competing among each of our four sections to see which agency gets the best overall evaluation score from the people who tour their section.

We're both excited and nervous about pulling this off because we'll be putting huge responsibility on our students to guide visitors through the expo, connecting ancient Greece to the modern world in a real way. We also want this event to display the wonderful work our students are doing to parents and community members. To work on their speaking and presentation skills, we're going to make these skills the major focus of their current PBL in which they're presenting proposals to a panel. To get them used to talking to people other than us (of whom they're not intimidated), we plan on bringing in upperclassmen and additional teachers/administrators to serve on these panels. Hopefully the skills they develop and the mistakes they make this time will serve them well for the expo!