In my travels working with teachers about how to create their full-on Project Based Learning environments, I’m frequently asked what sorts of “stuff” do I need to have on hand as kids are building and solving various challenges, problems, and questions. You see, I believe that when kids are building things, they are engaging deeply in their learning, especially if it’s more than just doing crafts. And if it involves some level of measured danger, engagement comes along too!

I’ve created a sort of generic list for those who are new into PBL with your kids. Look it over carefully. Of course you may choose to add specialty items, depending upon what you have going in your class, but this is a good, all-purpose list.

Incidentally, you may choose to keep some items in a special toolbox at your desk for safety, depending upon the age and experience of the students. But I also think that a healthy dose of safety lessons and smart thinking can go a long way. But then again, lessons from a kid’s hand with 21 stitches across the palm also go a long way–to the unemployment line.

You make your own professional judgement with some of these tools:

Consumables
Keep a refrigerator box full of recyclables: butter tubs, toilet paper and paper towel rolls, milk jugs, small scraps of wood (cedar shims and/or lathe are great and inexpensive options), styrofoam, newsprint, clay, buttons, crafty goods, two-liter soda bottles, etc.
You can never have enough “craft supplies” from various garage sales and sales at your local crafting stores. Keep collecting throughout the year and get yourself a great organizer shelf for the smaller items.

Handtools
hammers (claw, ballpeen, tack), phillips and standard screwdrivers (also precision screwdrivers), SAE wrenches, box cutters (special toolbox), hacksaw, cross cut saw, mallet, power drill, various sized bits (special toolbox), tape measures (10′ and 50′ — the 50′ stays in your special toolbox), pliers (standard, needle-nose, vise grips), wire-strippers, wire cutters (dikes), clamps, a variety of sand paper grit, safety goggles.

Fasteners
household screws, nails (finishing and otherwise), hot glue (special toolbox, depending on age), wood glue, JB Weld (special TB), super glue (special TB)
duct tape, packing tape, blue painter’s tape, masking tape, electric tape, scotch tape

Extras
cardboard, poster board, foam core, fabric remnants, thread, needles, wire, fairy lights (xmas lights)

As I compiled this list, I was surprised that my PBL classroom supplies were suspiciously similar, identical, in fact, to my MakerSpace supplies.

So how do I gather all this stuff?
That’s a great question. At the beginning of the year or around the holidays, I shared a Google Doc list of things I’d like to have for my classroom. Parents and grandparents were usually very glad to help out. Some had to quiz me on my workshop safety measures and I can appreciate that. :)

I usually asked parents to donate what they could and over the period of a year or so, we got a pretty solid supply room — and by “room” I mean “toolbox” and “refrigerator box.” The recyclables are usually filled by a couple dedicated parents. HINT from my science teacher: Be sure the supplies are well-cleaned first, or they start to stink. Blech. 

The hand tools I asked for from families who might have a few extras lying around. And I always kept an eye on the big box stores around Christmas and Father’s Day. They always have very inexpensive kits for sale. And while the cheap sets break more easily (a true safety issues), the kids are usually going to break the tools first because of misuse or accidents like dropping or losing them. So I have one nice thing that goes into my special toolbox that only I use. And the kids get the ‘beginner level’ tools.

Finally, garage sales are great places for crafty supplies. I loved it when an older crafter was hanging up her apron. I swooped in, based on inside information from parents. I sometimes had parents pick up goodies for us and I paid them back later. Also, the fabric remnant bin at your local fabric department is a great place to pick up odds and ends for a buck or two. You don’t need to have a project in mind. Kids can get creative or get their own supplies. Most choose to get creative!

You can’t get this all together by this fall? What’s the bare bones list? 
I’m glad you asked. To start, you really do want to have the following items:

• a couple hammers and finish nails
• screwdrivers, Phillips and standard
• box cutters
• safety goggles
• hot glue
• duct tape and packing tape
• cardboard
• fabric

Then build your supply cache from there.

Is there something I missed?

I was sent this question the other day from a young man who used to attend classes virtually at my school and who is now in his own teacher ed prep program. As I was constructing a response, I figured it might make a nice post. So here you go!

Question:
Ginger, If you have the time, what were some of the strategies you used to catch your students “doing something right”.

First of all, I love this topic. So much of our time as educators is spent “correcting” kids or helping them to do better, which pre-supposes they’re doing something wrong. No, I believe to the very core of my soul that if we want kids to do better, we have to start from and build on the foundation we want to grow. We need to build on the foundation of kids doing Right.

So in response to that question above, I submit 10 ways we would catch kids doing Right:

Answer:

1.  I intentionally looked for it.
2. I put them into situations where they got to work in their strengths. In their learning styles.
3. I asked them to do work that they loved or were excited in.
4. We laughed and had fun. A LOT.
5. We created an environment of caring and sharing between students and students-staff.
6. I asked parents what their kids were good at. What they liked. What they wanted.
7. I asked kids what they were good at. What they liked. What they wanted.
8. We always celebrated doing the Right thing.
9. We made it ok to be weird (Everyone is somebody else’s weirdo. You think you’re normal? How weird is that?!), so it was a safe environment to be someone they might not normally be. To try new things.
10. I intentionally looked for it. (I put that twice because it’s doubly important, especially for those kids who NEED us to catch them doing right.)

What did I miss? What needs revised?

Today's featured LifePractice PBL recipe card for free download is "All About the Mayas" where students are challenged to create a book, audio, or video-based story that tells about the Mayas. Granted, that is a pretty open challenge, but the cards are designed to leave a layer of "optimal ambiguity" in the work so students and teachers are able to put their own spin or emphasis to their creations. And that's what we're going to be doing in this blog post. In addition to giving out a free sample card (download that card here), we'll also be highlighting a few of the possibilities for how a teacher might use this card with her classes, based on the questions that I'm frequently asked by real teachers with real kids in real classrooms.


But let's start at the beginning.

Project Based Learning is about learning by doing.
With this PBL card, students are being given a challenge that in order to solve it, they have to gather/learn information and develop skills in the process of answering the challenge.

The role of the teacher is to...

• guide the learning by helping to keep the interest high by creating interesting and challenging trails to follow.
• help students connect with expertise and
• assist the students in citing  high-quality sources of information. And most of all,
• facilitate successful group work and independent thinking, and
• help to create a sense of urgency to completing the work.

Her role is more about facilitating discovery & learning and less about only delivering facts and content. She's helping the students to become learners instead of passive students consuming information.

Students are encouraged to take an active role in exploring the mysteries of the Mayas and discovering what was interesting, as well as the bigger picture of their civilization. They then are asked to synthesize that information into a product that is informative and engaging.

So now we've heard the basics, how is the card structured?
If you look to the picture in this post, you'll see that a story-telling challenge is given. You'll also see many driving questions that are categorized into the core content categories of Social Studies, Science, Math, Reading, and Writing. While these questions are standards-based, it isn't an all-encompassing list of all possible questions. It's impractical to post all potential questions/topics that could be incorporated. Therefore, as you're looking at the card, if you have other ideas for questions that might be explored, please do add them for your own classes! Additionally, in reviewing the potential driving questions, perhaps you can see something you can hone in on for deeper learning. Go for it! Have the students dig deeper in that one content area. Nonetheless, we have created driving questions within each of the core content areas so that the projects are able to be as integrated as possible. If you see other questions in other content categories you might feel comfortable incorporating with the assistance of a co-teacher, that is highly encouraged.

Should teachers just put the driving questions onto a worksheet to hand to the students?
Honestly, that was not the design of the card, nor is it in true PBL form. The questions are meant for teachers to ask to students as they're in the process of learning. As they are exploring a particular thread of a project, the teacher should regularly be asking driving questions to spur the exploration deeper. However, a teacher may find a plan that is different. As long as we remember that it's "learning by doing," and that the teacher isn't the deliverer of information, we'll understand that authentic, engaged learning doesn't come from worksheets and will be fine!

Who can use this card?
The LifePractice PBL cards are purposefully designed to be highly flexible in order to address the needs of elementary through high school learners and this card is no exception. A teacher can ascertain the ability levels of her students and decide to go into deeper or more complex learning by deciding which questions she asks the students in order to go deeper into the desired content. Or she might decide that the age or readiness of her students calls for less-complex work. That's fine!

Likewise a teacher doesn't need to know all the answers to the questions that might arise in an investigation; this Maya card calls for students to know how to find high-quality information, how to cite their sources, and sometimes even to triangulate multiple sources in order to prove a fact, freeing them up to bring new information to the project that the teacher may not have originally intended to include or even known about. Now that's true PBL!

Do we have to create videos or podcasts to make this work?
Not at all. Again, the cards are designed for ultimate flexibility so that if you're in a school with limited (or no) technology, you'll still able to create a strong learning environment by having the students create a reader's theatre, skit, poetry, or other live performance where storytelling is elevated to an artform. Likewise, if you're decked out with the latest in software and hardware, you will certainly be able to make use of all the tools you care to. Consider what is important information and skills that you want your students to practice and learn and get going!

Does this project have to be done in one day? Or will this take a week? Or a month? or...?
The timeline for implementation is your choice. It is easy to allow projects to be "time vampires" for our classes, as we watch the days continue to tick away and the students continuously begging for "just one more day." That time issue will never go away. Therefore, before you begin the project, be sure you're clear in your mind regarding how much time you have available and help the kids learn how to prioritize their time and plans with the use of mid-point re-group meetings.

Or, if you have the students for a full day, this project can be done in one day.

Or it can be done in 3 days, in 1 hour increments.

Or it can be done in ... do you get the point? You could very easily work on this project for an entire semester. It all depends upon the depth and time you're willing to ask the kids to put into it.
My strongest suggestion is that if this is one of the first projects you'll be doing with your students, you'll likely want to err on the side of providing a shorter time period than longer. Sometimes, before students have developed a sustained attention span and a tolerance for the "optimally ambiguous" learning environment, they need shorter projects to keep frustration to a tolerable level for both the teacher and the students.

Can I do this with multiple classes?
Each class could create their own story. Or you might have multiple groups inside each class creating their own story. Or they could create a "chapter" of one larger story. Or you could have all your classes working on one story that has to mesh together. Or you could partner up with classes from another school to collaborate on the story.

Can you tell the variations are endless for this "All About the Mayas" card? That's the flexibility of PBL. If you run across someone who gives you lots of templates and tells you that PBL is prescriptive, that there's only one right way to do it, they are likely wanting to sell you a high-priced system that will end up not being PBL in the long run. As mentioned earlier, these strategies outlined in this post are only a few of the learning possibilities that can be created with our cards. And all of them can be transferred to each of our LifePractice PBL cards.

Download the free recipe card, available today only, and check out the other LifePractice PBL cards we offer as well.

And be sure to let us know if you have any questions or if you'd like us to come work with your colleagues and students!

Related articles

• Featured PBL: The South's Civil War Submarine, the H.L. Hunley (gingerlewman.wordpress.com)

As adults, the reason we learn new things is because our lack of knowledge gets in the way of something we want to do. So we go out and find a way to learn what we need to learn. Right? Our recognition of our lack of knowledge and our need to know leads to learning. Authentic learning.

But school isn’t set up that way at all. School is set up for us to be “fed” all the information that we’ll ever need to know before we’re asked to use it. Before we even know that we might need it. Before educators even know that it’ll be useful for us. It’s all based on the assumption that “they” know what “we” will need to know.

What if school was set up to help us practice learning how to learn instead of spending time asking us to prove that we’ve retained something that’s been fed to us? Because in the real world, rarely is the information we need to know for our jobs, for our lives, fed to us. We have to go out and find that information.

Well, that is, unless we’re working on an assembly line that requires very little original thought or initiative.  —— long pause ——  And just how many of us in the US have those factory based, assembly line types of jobs now?

Right.

So if we’re preparing our kids for the real world, why isn’t school set up with a series of challenges that made us need to learn information-gathering, idea processing, and content creation? And the kids learn what information (and skills) they need to know through those challenges? And best of all, why couldn’t the challenges be set up in ways students would want to complete them?

And why is this concept so difficult for us to try?

If you’re intrigued, let me know. I think I might have answers but I can’t complete this challenge alone. I need your help too.

My PBL partner, Kevin Honeycutt and I are frequently asked questions like, “Do you know anything about PBL for (insert curriculum topic here).”
Usually the topic is something like “Financial Wellness for New Mothers” or “Religion of the 18th Century” or “Spanish for the Deaf” or “Advanced Mathematics for Budding Actuaries.” Really, it doesn’t matter the title of the class. What’s happening is that the school leader is struggling to help a teacher in a specialty area feel included in shifting education from something being done to kids to something that the kids are doing. And they see that PBL has helped in other classes. They’re really saying, “Can you help by giving this teacher resources that are specific to her area?”

Kevin and me, working with a great group of teachers in Texas.

The answer for this is yes, we can help that teacher with Project Based Learning, if that teacher is willing to work alongside sharing his/her content knowledge to build projects. But if that teacher is looking for a set of scripted lesson plans s/he can buy off the shelf and just “follow” for his/her specialty class…well, we’re probably not going to be able to help with that.

Because you see, Project/Problem Based Learning isn’t about a set of “wash n wear” lesson plans. It’s about engaging kids with the topic — whatever topic it is — in very active ways. If a teacher understands PBL, then any known academic content can be integrated. If you want to help that specialized teacher find lesson for that specialized content area, then allow him/her to learn the basics of PBL and s/he’ll be able to build the PBL for that specialized space.

So what about our LifePractice PBL recipe cards? Aren’t those lesson plans?

Actually, no. If you check them out closely, they’re not scripted lessons; instead they provide ideas and seeds for the toughest parts of PBL: driving questions, integrating, creative product, and creative grouping. They are not about someone who has never had any PBL training picking them up and using them like a traditional lesson plan. Like anyone picking up a recipe card for the first time, we still have to have the basics of cooking in our tool belts. And so would any teacher using our LifePractice PBL recipe cards need some initial training and practice in PBL. They don’t have to be experts to use them, but they do need some training.

If you’re a school leader who’d like to implement PBL in your schools, we’ll be there 100% for you and your teachers, providing engaged training to help all of your teachers partner their content knowledge with the tenets of PBL. If you want that specialty teacher to have assistance in moving her classroom toward a PBL approach, the first place to start is with high-quality learning for her.

Contact us for more information.