A day or two with Tom Markham

This week I spent one and a half days working with Tom Markham who is an expert in Project Based Learning.  I feel like I got a lot out of my one and a half days and I know that this blog post is one I am going to refine as I probably won't do it justice.  I have come away with a much better understanding and appreciation of PBL and the opportunities it will afford our children. 

This is such a big topic to blog about but here are a couple of things that resonated with me during the course

• Being a good PBL teacher comes about by talking and sharing skills and working together.
• PBL can be quite demanding- beyond the usual skills for teacher ( I like that it challenges me FYI) 
• Ice burg effect- the tip is the results that we can see but nowadays we need to dig deeper below the iceberg- persistence, failure, sacrifice hard work etc. are the things we don’t see and these are some very important skills.
• Social emotional development is achieved in high quality PBL.  Great projects encompass social emotional learning. 
• Rubrics are an important part of the assessment process. You need to have a set of great rubrics so that you can assess a number of different skill sets
• “If it doesn’t challenge you it doesn’t change you”- Fred Devito

Many changes in education are driven by societal pressures, not so much by ministries because the way in which children need to be prepared to enter the world we live in today has changed significantly.  We work in different ways.  We are more collaborative and there are different skills that have emphasis placed on them if they are to be successful in the 21st century world.

The four c's are important in PBL

Collaborate (this can look different at different times.  At times the collaborative approach can be formal and other times this looks less formal.)

Critical thinking (we need to incorporate and deliberately teach these skills)

Creativity 

Communication

Through PBL we are setting children up to realise that we are learning at school, but we will never stop learning.  We learn everywhere and all the time.

Some of the things that can be challenging for the PBL approach in the beginning include

• Controlling mindset- it is hard for some teachers to let go and shift their mind set.
• PBL works best when we shift some of the control to the students but certainly not all of the control.
• It follows a process as illustrated below and for some, this is challenging.

The Driving Question

The driving question is considered by some to be the hardest part of PBL. It is rare for the first question drafted to be the final choice of driving question.  We spend a lot of discussion and time refining this.  The "why" behind the question is really important.  It is important that we know the reason why these children will be interested in this project and why we have chosen this (what is the benefit to the children.)

The Critical Friends Protocol was a very valuable exercise that was conducted with the teachers.  This could be very valuable for the students also.  The language of I like, I wonder, I suggest was especially useful.  In fact I saw many situations (not just in PBL) where this could be useful.  I noted that no project should be entering the classroom without having gone through this robust process.  

Rich attended the parent evening and I thought it was interesting to note what he got out of it.  He felt he didn't know a lot about PBL prior. (Clearly he doesn't listen to me as I suspected!!!!!!!!!!)  He was impressed with its application- He liked the fact that it can mature children earlier because their behaviour improves due increased engagement.  The proposals (driving questions)  put in front of kids need to be well prepared and researched to make sure that it challenges their thinking.  In order for this to be successful, you cannot just throw them int he pool of PBL, they need to be coached to be Olympic swimmers through a well thought out design.  It teaches them soft skills earlier such as self-management and problem solving, critical thinking, empathy, communication.  Something that he found challenging was understanding  how do you manage late adopters?

This was a great couple of days and it is always a bonus when you get to have a facilitator who was so friendly and genuinely passionate about his topic.