Classroom Set-Up
In order to create a conducive environment for student collaboration and teamwork, our students will sit at clusters of desks in groups of four. If your classroom has lab tables instead of desks, students will sit at the lab tables with their group throughout the entirety of the unit (See Below).
http://www.histoirede.org/opinion-classroom-floor-plan-that-fosters-language-development/
Example Tools and Techniques for Student Engagement:
Since our project spans the course of two-and-a-half weeks, keeping students engaged for the entirety of the project will be a major task for the instructor. To encourage student engagement, we suggest the following techniques:
- Have an open-ended driving question and allow groups to create an inquiry list and choose subtopics to focus on that interest them. This way, they are engaged in the project because they are invested in that topic.
- Time will be spent on creating classroom culture previously in the school year. Teachers will know students' strengths and weakness, work ethics, and personalities. By knowing your students, you can tailor the classes and project to keep the students focused and engaged.
- Students will be held accountable for each step of the project. We will provide students with rubrics for what they need to be focused on, as well as allow time for groups to create a list of promises to form a team contract. Students will also be required to evaluate their teammates which will keep them focused and engaged.
- Providing activities and labs that allow students to use technology, social media, and other avenues that they are interested in
- Students have choice in the project and are given ownership in the development in the project and the classroom environment. Classroom environment will be developed through allowing them to contribute to the classroom environment by requiring them to develop and sign a team contract. Groups will have a student-driven inquiry list of questions pertaining to the driving question, which will allow students to have a unique, motivating purpose to be engaged in the investigation.
- The teacher will ask students provocative or open-ended questions that help to get them think critically and interested in the material, and take charge of their own learning.
- Checkpoints (exit tickets) will be in place so that students will be assessed throughout the unit, and work towards showing mastery of the content
Directions for How Groups and Group Roles Will be Assigned:
Behind the Curtain - Grouping Students:
Defining and Redefining of Group Goals:
- Students will take a survey at the beginning of the unit asking them their opinions on water and water activities and student strengths and weaknesses. Students will then be grouped based on similar interest and matching up strengths and weaknesses. This will be done so that students have common interest and hopefully have common direction for their project.
- Grouping based on strengths ensures diversity within the group (ex: one single group will not have 4 students that all are very creative, but all members struggle with time management.)
- Students will also be grouped so that students who have not worked well together in the past will not be paired.
- Teacher will meet with groups during work time to help them assign group roles.
- Roles should evolve naturally because students with different strengths will be grouped because groups have been intentionally created.
Behind the Curtain - Grouping Students:
- The teacher will take student survey responses and use those to group students.
- If students have not demonstrated ability to work together, they will not be grouped.
- Grouping is to ensure that students will work efficiently in their group.
- Because students are grouped by interest, students should be more intrinsically motivated.
- Students will assess group members based on participation to ensure that all students are participating equally.
Defining and Redefining of Group Goals:
- Teacher will meet with groups sporadically during work time during week 1 to check on student goals for the project and help them refine them as they move through project.
- Teacher will do this through targeted questioning, and asking questions to focus the group.
- Students are required to present a proposal during a gallery walk at the end of week 1.
- The gallery walk will give students opportunities to get feedback on direction of their project from their peers.
- Students will be encouraged to reflect on goals after receiving feedback in gallery walk.
- Teacher will continue to meet with groups during work time to give feedback on direction and ask questions to refocus group.
- Example question: How does the addition of the filter improve water quality?
Prompts & Activities to Help Students Reflect and Debrief:
- Exit tickets will geared to help students reflect on the lesson and reflect on content covered on lesson.
- Debriefing gives time to address areas students struggle in. This can also be used as a time to address questions or concerns as a class.
- Checkpoints are target dates, where students should be in their projects, so that they know if they are progressing at the right pace.
Detailed Description of How the Students and Environment Will Be Prepared:
Facilitation and Questioning Strategies:
The use of facilitation and questioning throughout the PBL unit is beneficial for student learning and engagement, and is a hard task for the instructor to tackle for the first time. Questioning techniques will be used to help students critically think and problem solve, rather than having students simply always responding with correct answers. Questioning will be used so that all students in class will participate in some way, whether or not they actively volunteer to answer the questions, to demonstrate an understanding. In creating effective questions, they will scale Bloom’s hierarchy of higher-order thinking skills. We will strive to ask questions at the higher-level of thinking, while minimizing questions at the lower level.
Level 1: Remembering
Resource: http://www.henryclayschool.com/uploads/1/9/8/2/19820597/bloomtaxonomy_questions_prompts.pdf
Collaboration with Students to Not Provide Answers:
In order to facilitate student-driven inquiry, the teacher must collaborate with the students and not specifically just give them the answers. This way, students will be prompted to think on their own and conduct the research necessary to find the proper answers and solutions. Furthermore, questions should be open-ended to promote a variety of responses from the students and to properly direct the conversation.
Directions for Preparing Students for Group Problem Solving and Collaboration:
Detailed Plan of How Students Will Be Scaffolded to Take on Responsibility:
Detailed Plan When Scaffolds Will Be Used and Removed:
The Beginning of the school year will be utilized to scaffold classroom culture in the following ways:
- The teacher will post motivational material around the room.
- Students will choose team names and bracket competitions.
- Students will conduct dress rehearsals for collaboration, have discussion, participate in teamwork, gallery walks, and presentations.
- Students will decide on the group rules so they can feel safe to take risks. This will be conducted via a group contract. A list of the expectations for general conduct for all groups, as stated on the contract, will be posted in the classroom. Some additional ideas to prompt student thinking about accountability include: confidentiality, participation, honesty, listening to others' opinions, what to do if the rules are broken.
- Students will be introduced to the process of PBL with a gradual implementation. The teacher will start with lower level projects to ease into this particular PBL.
- Students will evaluate each other via the peer evaluation processes.
Facilitation and Questioning Strategies:
The use of facilitation and questioning throughout the PBL unit is beneficial for student learning and engagement, and is a hard task for the instructor to tackle for the first time. Questioning techniques will be used to help students critically think and problem solve, rather than having students simply always responding with correct answers. Questioning will be used so that all students in class will participate in some way, whether or not they actively volunteer to answer the questions, to demonstrate an understanding. In creating effective questions, they will scale Bloom’s hierarchy of higher-order thinking skills. We will strive to ask questions at the higher-level of thinking, while minimizing questions at the lower level.
Level 1: Remembering
- Questioning at this level will lead students to provide a correct answer. Verbs to be included in these questions can include define, identify, name, repeat and list. Examples of these questions in our unit could include:
- Define surface-area-to-volume ratio.
- List common impurities found in our drinking water.
- Questioning at this level will show that the students have done more than just memorized the facts at hand. Verbs that can be used in these questions could include discuss, describe, recognize and explain. Examples of these questions in our unit could include:
- Discuss the factors that make drinking water impure.
- Explain why certain substances are contaminants in our drinking water.
- Restate in your own words what nanotechnology is.
- Questioning at this level will show that students can take aquired knowledge and apply it to novel situations. Verbs that can be used in these questions could include interpret, apply, use and illustrate. Examples of these questions in our unit could include:
- What would happen to fish if the levels of iron in water increased?
- How would you use current water treatment techniques to solve the global water crisis?
- Questioning at this level shows that students can solve problems using learned information. Verbs that can be used in these questions could include analyze, categorize, compare and contrast. Examples of these questions in our unit could include:
- Compare and contrast water qualities in your community to a third-world country.
- Investigate current methods for water treatment in your community.
- Questioning at this level allows students to assess claims and critique the data researched for the project. Verbs that can be used in these questions could include justify, hypothesize, assess, and validate.
- Hypothesize what types of contaminants may be found in your local drinking water.
- Validate whether local water reports are correct based off your test results.
- Questioning at this level will allow students to develop solutions to the driving question using critical thinking and problem solving skills. Verbs that can be used in these questions could include construct, create, design and develop.
- Construct a model of your water purification system to maintain drinking water quality.
- Design a nanotechnology system that removes impurities from drinking water.
Resource: http://www.henryclayschool.com/uploads/1/9/8/2/19820597/bloomtaxonomy_questions_prompts.pdf
Collaboration with Students to Not Provide Answers:
In order to facilitate student-driven inquiry, the teacher must collaborate with the students and not specifically just give them the answers. This way, students will be prompted to think on their own and conduct the research necessary to find the proper answers and solutions. Furthermore, questions should be open-ended to promote a variety of responses from the students and to properly direct the conversation.
- Questions that can be asked to direct their their research:
- How does this relate to the driving question?
- How does your solution relate to nanotechnology?
- What led you to this conclusion?
- What did you observe when you conducted this experiment?
- Were you surprised by your findings?
- How has what you learned in this experiment relate to your findings?
- How can you relate what you found to the global water crisis?
- Questions that can be asked to facilitate inquiry:
- How could you find out more about...?
- What related topics could you investigate?
- What other resources could you use to...?
- Where can you find...?
Directions for Preparing Students for Group Problem Solving and Collaboration:
- Students will do a 2 day small group activity in which they will work in groups of 4.
- Groups will be assigned to solve the post hole problem "what is the best way to represent how much of a chemical is in a solution?"
- The post hole gets the students thinking about concentration.
- The post hole will get comfortable students comfortable working as a group to problem solve.
- Students will have received group work training throughout the year to get them comfortable working within a group
Detailed Plan of How Students Will Be Scaffolded to Take on Responsibility:
- 1st the teacher works - The teacher models thinking aloud using a graphic organizer.
- 2nd the class works with the teacher - The students work together to help the teacher fill out the graphic organizer.
- 3rd the group works together - The students work with a partner(s)to finish a graphic organizer.
- 4th the student works unaided - The students can show that they can do the graphic organizer without help.
Detailed Plan When Scaffolds Will Be Used and Removed:
The Beginning of the school year will be utilized to scaffold classroom culture in the following ways:
- Start with the student's strengths. Have the students give a short presentation over a topic that they are knowledgeable about. Assist the students to succeed early on in order that they do not become frustrated.
- Help students fit in with their peers by sharing commonalities. Start with a simple task that has many answers, so that multiple solutions are correct to build confidence. Examples: paper folding, mystery bags, puzzle challenges.
- As soon as students show they are proficient, let them work independently.
- Students will be scaffolded in previous units by the teacher guiding them through basic lab procedures and safety videos. Students will agree to a safety contract before performing any labs. The teacher will also model how to set up of the lab notebook and collect data (this will also include how to set up data tables). In previous units, students will practice reading and writing lab procedures and writing and communicating in a scientific manner. At the point of the implementation of the PBL unit, students will be expected to be at a place where they are able to conduct a lab by following directions provided. The teacher will scaffold by modeling lab techniques that have not been used previously in the school year.
- Students will learn about dimensional analysis with one step examples, and may need to refer to the tutorials provided here. After demonstrating mastery, they will be introduced to more difficult, multi-step problems. After mastering multi step problems, students will practice using concentration and molar mass to make solution calculations. When students have shown mastery of this concept through worksheets and practice problems, they will be ready to make a solution in the lab.
Strategies to Address Misconceptions Clink link to see misconceptions.
Self Questioning
- Student self questioning will be facilitated within teacher guided parameters, where students will have specific time frames built in to the unit where they will be asked to self reflect using question prompts.
- Question prompts will be posted in the classroom to help them engage in the self-reflection process. Prompts may include:
- What would have happened if…?
- What would it be like if…?
- What other ways could…?
- How would it be different if I changed ____?
- View an extended list of prompts that will be posted at the link here.
- Time will be built in throughout the project for self reflection.