It’s back to school time again, so I thought I might share one of the frequently asked questions I get in many of my workshops. The question usually goes something like this:

My incoming students don’t know about PBL or working in that type of environment. They come to me with poor work habits and they’re certainly not self-directed learners. How do we get them to understand how this environment works? Surely you don’t just throw them into a big project? Surely you teach them some basic skills first. How should we start?

Love it! This is one of my favorite questions to answer. There are several facets to the question, with the two main components being skills development and first-days projects. I’ll try to address both.

Incidentally, this advice can be utilized at any time during the school year. Say you’re starting to move toward PBL in October or February? No problem. Many of the same suggestions can still apply at those times as well.

PBL Skills Development  
The truth is most of our kids come to us not necessarily knowing how to be good learners. And the older they are, the more likely it is they’ll come to us with a good deal of “institutional damage,” meaning they’re really good at sliding by, not caring, or simply perfecting strategic compliance. So how do we get them to develop the skills of an active, engaged learner as soon as possible? While each class and each group is different, the answer is usually the same: they learn these skills by using them in a context that’s meaningful to them.

• Do I pre-teach them how to work in groups? Nope.
• Do I pre-teach them how to research? Nope.
• Do I pre-teach them how to communicate their needs with clarity? Nope.
• Do I pre-teach them organizational skills? Nope.
• Do I pre-teach them the tech tools they’ll be using? Nope.
• Do I pre-teach them …? Nope.

They come to us knowing little to nothing, if we’re lucky, but usually with deeply ingrained bad habits (most likely). To do a “lesson” on developing any sort of skill is to give them more “school.” I want to spend a good deal of time helping them unlearn the previous routines of school by experiencing fun engagement and “accidental” good learning, which isn’t accidental at all. It’s carefully designed to walk them though various situations where we begin to develop trust in one another, teacher : student and student : student.

I want them to have to develop those vital skills because they want to. Because they see a need to. Because they recognize that their lack of those skills are currently holding them back from building what they want to build and from what they want to be.

So that being said, let’s move into…

First-Days-Of-School activities and other beginner projects
I’ve dropped these activities here in a sort of order that I might use them, but you are absolutely welcome to change them up, skip some, and even add your own. I’m very interested in how your mileage varies on this, so please do drop me a line.

Creating Class Norms/Rules, Branding, etc
There’s a good deal of time kids need to spend unlearning bad habits and learning how the community operates. Likewise, this is a great time for teachers to get to learn their kids. Therefore, I believe the first few days ought to be spent not on heavy content (gasp!), but instead on fun ways to create our community.

Who do we want to be? How do we want others to interact with us? How do we as a class and as individuals want to be thought about? talked about? When we connect with people outside of this school, what impression do we want to leave them with? Do we need a logo? A mascot? A song? A mission? A creed? Really? Do we need these? Maybe.

Are the kids ready to be those people they’re envisioning? Of course not. It’s a series of goals. Something to shoot for. So now, dear teacher, how are you going to use their goals as anchoring lessons throughout the year?

Creating Class Spaces
We might ask kids to create some of their own learning spaces. Are you someone who creates a beautiful space before the kids arrive? How do they get to see themselves in that space? All they see is you and your vision. Where will they ever see themselves in your space? When will they get a chance to make their own decisions?

Perhaps we might intentionally leave some of the classroom space undefined, undesigned, and let the kids decide what they’d like to have there. How will they decide this? Brainstorming, communicating, deciding what they need vs what they want? And you’ll be spending a good deal of time guiding, but not leading, these discussions. You help kids ensure that all voices are heard. Will some talk over classmates? Good! You now have a teachable moment! I wrote about creating teachable moments here, if you’re interested in reading more about designing and capitalizing on those situations. Creating class spaces at the first few days of the year is not laziness. It’s an intentional activity that allows kids to learn how to think about and share their opinions — and that those opinions matter. And most of all, that we do things differently in this space. So get ready for what’s to come! ;)

Dispel the Myth!
I love this project because it’s a lead in to the community and wider global connections that students will be engaging in later in the school year. Students consider their own local community and what they think people think of it; not only locals, but those farther away. If you have younger kids and they have no idea what others stereotypically think of who they might be based on where they live, you might consider doing some Mystery Skypes. Or have them poll older students/people to get their points of view.

So what are those myths that people think of? Who are these people? Are they in our own community? Are they on the other side of the country? the globe? Why might they think these things? How do we collect accurate information and package it to help people know who we really are? Help the students find their own answers to these questions and develop how to tackle the completion process, including developing a flexible working timeline. Help them figure out how to know if the final products are actually convincing enough to create a broader awareness.

This beginning project helps kids to see themselves through others’ eyes, a skill that most people under age 25 are really bad at unless they’ve had practice thinking outside of themselves. And they can work in groups to tackle separate myths. And you can include the wider community as much as you want — and by you, I mean your students, with your guidance, of course. They’ll be learning how to talk to people and ask questions, all while building confidence in how to talk to adults as near-equals. Timelines, task management, and group work are all introduced, especially if we have a hard deadline with a broader audience. This project might take as few as 3-4 total hours. Or it could take an entire year. But as a beginner project, I’d err more toward 3-4 hours of work for a quick in/out project so they don’t get topic or group fatigue.

Find ways to “accidentally on purpose” create wins for them in these first few days because the process of unlearning bad habits is tough enough.

PSA’s: Public Service Announcements
This is another quick in/out type of project that introduces some of the skills kids will need to use all throughout the rest of the class their lives. It doesn’t really matter what the PSA is about, as long as the kids care deeply about it:

• healthy lunches
• bullying
• hallway or playground safety issues
• gender issues
• pretty much anything is fair game as long as the kid cares about the topic and it’s not breaking rules.

For a beginner-level project, regardless of the students’ ages, I’d offer a few topics to the class to pick from and have kids group themselves in 3-4 kids per group that I approve, based on ability-levels and their interest in the topic (see my passionate posts about grouping here, here, and here, and in that order). Once the kids have more experience with being PBL learners, they can pick their own topics and their own groups. They’re just not quite ready for that now. After all, you’re helping them unlearn bad habits and heal their previous institutional damage from poor grouping experiences.

And again, this is at maximum, a 5 hour project. Of course it can be a year-long project, but with PBL beginners, we shoot for quick in/out experiences for sure-wins.

 A sum-up
At the risk of writing too-long of a post, I’ll close it with these thoughts. I don’t like to pre-teach anything because kids simply don’t know (trust?) they need the info until they have a need to know it. My job is to intentionally create the need to know…then, if the project challenge, question, or problem is tasty enough, they’ll lap those lessons right up and put them immediately into play. And that’s a win every day.

Will kids truly remember the lessons forever? Will they simply experience the desired skills and be automagically transformed into lifelong learners for always? No. Not all kids. Not all lessons. Remember it takes time to break bad habits, and some kids have had years of practice developing bad habits.

So what skills do they being to learn in these first-days projects?

• how to work in groups
• how to research
• how to plan and conduct interviews
• how to communicate their needs both verbally and in writing with clarity and professionalism
• how to get organized and manage their time
• how to use some the tech tools at our disposal

Remember our role as PBL teachers/facilitators is to walk them into independence. Right now, too many kids are lost too deep in the weeds. Each kid will travel at her own pace, along her own path eventually.

Help her find it. Help her see it. Help her construct it.

And we’ll all be better for it.

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?

From time to time, I receive questions about Project/Problem Based Learning implementation as teachers take their first tentative steps into a project, or even as this teacher has, gone full-time PBL in all of her classes! Kudos to this bold educator!

Question:
Is there an advantage or is it appropriate in PBL for me to research and share info?  One of the students and I were talking about the Olympic flame and whether it “never goes out.”  Neither of us had the definite answer but it was a topic that I wanted answered for myself but the answer was not vital to the project.  My inclination is that I should research and share – to model enthusiasm for learning.  Or is that something I should just have encouraged her to research and keep the info to myself? I’m not sure that I’m understanding PBL as well as I thought.


Answer: There are many flavors to PBL, so I always default to enthusiasm and Learning. So if you feel that you need to dig in and work alongside a kid, do it! I have. A lot. Doing so role models curiosity and, as you said, enthusiasm. Tell her you don’t know and that you’re going to look stuff up, too, and you’re looking forward to hearing what she has found. . If, once you get your heads back together, she has brought info back from your independent searches, you can feel confident to share the info you found freely, comparing notes, and giving TONS of high-fives and love. Such an awesome scenario!Be sure to have her share her info before you share yours. This will give you some options in case she hasn’t brought any research back. If she has found nothing and you’re guessing it was perhaps due to a lack of effort, then you can tell her that you’ve buried a lie or untruth in your information and she needs to find that lie or risk putting out some bad info.  Plan the lie in advance in case you might need it.Or instead of a lie, or if you think that she has put effort in and simply wasn’t able to find the right places to look, drop her some good links to look at–ones that you know have the answers. Or hand her a book with a few encouraging words.In this way, she can still have success through her own effort and you’re still  providing high-quality, student-centered learning by scaffolding and role modeling growth!

A mantra of mine comes from Dr. Sylvia Rimm: The surest path to high self-esteem is to be successful at something one perceived would be difficult. Each time we steal a student’s struggle, we rob them of an opportunity to build higher self-esteem. Students must experience success with difficult tasks to feel capable and competent.

The takeaway:
Kids who aren’t experienced being learners sometimes need a little extra love and support figuring out how to shift away from the role of Student (being told what-to, when-to, how-to) to the role of Learner (knowing how to suss out answers). And some kids who are great learners, but who have hit a sticking point in their work, might just need a little help getting unstuck.

Knowing how to balance it all is the (he)art of teaching.

When do we assess learning in a PBL classroom?

Assessment of student learning is an on-going process, from formal feedback during the teachers’ project planning and preparation, to observations during the launch event, to individual conversations with every student, and all throughout the project.

And in order to do this, we must move our minds from thinking only about pencil/paper tests. While it can include those, true assessment of learning is much deeper than that.

Teachers move like hunter-gatherer nomads, searching for each morsel of mastery that the ripe student mind has produced. We’re constantly looking, digging, and searching for evidence of learning in whatever form it presents itself. We assess content knowledge. We assess skills development. We assess their growth as human beings in this world.

So when do we assess?

The answer is we assess every single moment we are with our students.

For more specific examples, check out my LiveBinder called Beyond Multiple Guess: Rubric and Assessment Options for PBL. It is positively full of ideas for your PBL classroom!

Listen, I get it. We all want our tweens and teens to be better readers. Better writers. Better thinkers. So we ask them to write in our classes. We teach them to “write across the curriculum.” We teach them the strategies that good writers use. They practice writing all kinds of writing styles. They write and write. Yet so many struggle with their basic writing skills. So we provide remedial support. We take them back to even more basic skills building. We spend an extra hour a day breaking down all the tiny components it takes to be a good writer.

And do they become better writers? Some do. Many just learn to hate writing, hate school, and solidly label themselves as “stupid.”

And we do the same with reading. We do the same with math.

And we have hundreds of PhD’s who are developing more ways to do it with more intensity. With more fidelity. And we have thousands of consultants writing books and manuals about how to do that to your kids, today, in 5 easy steps.

I’m sorry if I don’t really have the faith that those strategies will work so well.

I wonder…

I wonder if we stopped with the microscopes and needling and the … whatever else you want to label it …
I wonder if we went back to something way more simplistic. More basic. And this is going to sound dumb, I’m sure.

I wonder if instead of having kids practice writing/reading/math, if we could instead get them to be writers. To be readers. To be math.

*duh. That’s what all that other stuff is for*

But no, seriously. What if kids saw themselves as Hemmingway…as Vonnegut…as King…as Wilde…as Woolfe…Rowling…Card…Collins…Meyer (yeah, of Twilight fame…you may not like her style, but if a kid does, maybe it’s not for us to judge).

Sure, maybe the lifestyles of those writers may not be exactly the ones we want our kids to emulate, but the reality is, we don’t want to be copycats of others. We want to be our own best version of ourselves, right?

But to begin to imagine ourselves as a writer? To consider how a writer might live? To think about how their day is scheduled? Kids would no longer be students, per se, but instead, writers. To learn to seek, see, find, and develop inspiration. And I’m not talking about holding a Writer’s Workshop here, although that’s a great start. Let’s take it further.

What would a day/week/month/year in the life of a mathematician look like? An engineer? A statistician? An entrepreneur? What conditions would have to exist for kids to not “do math” but to BE one of these people? To pretend? To imagine? To become?

What would it be like to not just learn about science, but to actually BE a geologist? A botanist? An agricultural breeder? A biomedical engineer? A bio informatics scientist?

I want my tweens and teens to play at these careers now. To decide which mantle might fit them best. Maybe we’re talking about re-thinking schools in the most radical way…creating mini apprenticeships? But certainly we can begin with regular and sustained job shadows. Sure, maybe we don’t have all those careers in our locality. Maybe as a teacher, I don’t know how to help kids replicate all of the higher-level careers.

I can’t say I know how to make this all happen. But I wonder if we might start with writing. Helping kids to BE writers.

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?

What’s more exciting than daydreaming about finding buried treasure on ancient shipwrecks?


What if we asked students to imagine themselves discovering the secrets held inside ancient Greek and Roman shipwrecks? Imagine hunting for them, deep in the murky depths of the Black Sea as the lights from our high-tech, submersible, underwater vehicles sweep left and right across the sea floor. Imagine what it would be like if we not only found them, but when we uncovered them, we actually found them completely intact, precisely as they looked when the ships went down. All the cargo still in the ship’s hold. All the sailors still aboard.

You see, that’s possible because of two amazing phenomena that happen in the Black Sea: the sea floor is a unique gelatinous substance that envelops anything of substantial weight that falls down to it; the water of the Black Sea is anoxic at a certain depth, which does not support the organisms that would normally consume the wood or other carbon-based materials that fall to the bottom of other bodies of water.

The potential to find complete shipwrecks in this environment is extremely high.

If an explorer could get into these waters, which were politically difficult to navigate for much of the 20th Century, what might we find? What would those ships have been carrying? What secrets of history are held in timeless suspension? Currently, Robert Ballard, the man who found the Titanic and the HL Hunley, is working hard to uncover and share these portals to history with today’s world.

…biology, history, geography, politics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, archaeology, research, writing…

These are all topics ripe for exploration as students are asked to learn about the Ancient Merchant Ships of the Black Sea.

“We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams;--
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.”

Arthur O’Shaugnessy (Ode – Music and Moonlight (1874)

Today’s free LifePractice PBL recipe card is the “Martian Colony” where students are asked to design a plan for a Martian colony. Kids’ brains go into imagination overdrive as we weave in space science, engineering, biology, atmospheric sciences, technology, math, and yes, even pioneering history, if you’d like! Read stories from early imagineer, Ray Bradbury! Read actual primary documents from NASA about what Mars is really like!

Ask your young imagineers to write expository or technical explanations for the people left behind on Earth. Ask them to let their brains go wild with narrative writing. Create new space-level Jacques Cousteaus, as the kids take you through their new Martian landscape with a video story, complete with a soundscape soundtrack!

Build it big…big enough to fill an entire gymnasium!

Build it table-top size so the gravity of earth creates no boundaries!

Use a green screen technology to bring in the Martian landscape!

This is a wonderful project for beginning space science to the most complex engineering classes you offer.

Let YOUR imagination go wild with Martian Colony, a LifePractice PBL card, free to you, just today!

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)