Project Based Learning - Reflection Element

Project Based Learning -

Reflection Element

One of the 8 project design elements for Gold Standard Project Based learning is Reflection.

In this element, students and teachers should be reflecting on what “they’re learning, how they’re learning and why they’re learning it.”

~ John Larmer, PBL Blog Editor

My plan to improve ‘reflection’    I started my new project last week in 7th grade - “Crayon Project” - as an integrated project with a fellow science teacher.  I started Module 4 last week and the Crayon Project was designed with this module in mind.  Students have been tasked to create a new start-up crayon company, create a unique sustainable crayon, and design a business plan to fill an order by OMSD to replace all crayon boxes in the District.  I am amazed at how the science teacher is going to actually have the students create a set of usable crayons from scratch - the winning set of crayons will mass produce their crayons and take them to the kindergarten students at Sultana.  In math, students are challenged with determining a percent of the total number of OMSD students that will receive a crayon box, determine the cost to manufacture their set of crayons, apply for a small business start-up loan from the SBA, and justify a selling price point to repay their loan and fulfill another upcoming product order.    I wanted to make sure I addressed ‘reflection’ better with this project so the science teacher and I decided to have students complete a ‘Research and Development’ book as they go through the project.  In this book, students will be asked at different points in the project to capture what they have learned so that at the end of the project they can give a much fuller and in-depth answer to the question.  They will be asked to capture how their learning helped them with that portion of the project.  And most importantly, they will be asked to think about how their learnings can be used outside this project context.  For me, this is the most important question that I want students to reflect on - I want students to be able to take what they are learning and be able to apply it to something else - a lifelong learning skill that we hope all our students internalize.    My hope with planning ahead for certain reflection times in a project is that at the end of the project the students can refer back to these reflections and realize that they learned and accomplished a great deal.  Then take these reflections and be able to give a full and rich prediction of how or why they can use these learnings outside of the project.    Next month I will give an update on how having students reflect more often on a project has gone for me.

Technology Resource    On a side note, I wanted to share a new assessment technology resource that I am implementing this semester - Edulastic.  Some of you may already be aware of this resource and its vast capabilities - but I wanted to share in case you have not heard about it. https://edulastic.com/ (Log in with your district Google account)    Edulastic is a free assessment platform that has a bank of questions for ELA, Math, and Science NGSS across all grade levels.  You are allowed to create your own questions and upload them or use pre-made questions from other authors.  In addition, you can create assessments and share them in a site library or even a district library.  There are many questions in the bank that are modeled after the question stems of CAASPP.  The program links to Google Classroom as well.    I just wanted to share this additional resource - I know that we have Illuminate within the District and I have used it quite extensively in the past - but for those of us looking for something else, then I would suggest exploring this possibility.

For those of you who do a reflection with your students regularly, I am trying to catch up with you.  For those of us who do not or want to improve, then I encourage you to make explicit instructional decisions and have students reflect on a regular basis in a way that is meaningful and relevant for the students -and yourself. Still Learning and Loving It, Kevin Project Updates Current 7th grade project - “Unique and Sustainable Crayons” (Module 4, Lessons 1-18) Current 8th grade project - “Pokemon Go” (Module 4, Lessons 24-29)