Hello. Thank you for joining me today to discuss PBL or constructivist lesson development for a 1:1 or BYOD environment. Today's essential question is, how can I update a lesson plan focusing on PBL or constructivist learning theories for the 1:1 or BYOD classroom? I have a couple of reminders before we get started.
We're going to use a Marzano lesson design question to help us plan this lesson. The question is, what will I do to help students generate and test hypotheses about new knowledge? This lesson is going to have a PBL, or Problem Based Learning focus, which means the teacher will be posing the question to the students. And the lesson objective is as follows. Eighth grade students who have just been exposed to Shakespeare for the first time are tasked with finding a way to help make Shakespearean texts more accessible.
Let's review. PBL and constructivism. PBL is an extended process of inquiry in response to a question, problem, or complex challenge. PBL is rigorous. And its carefully planned and monitored by the teacher. In a PBL classroom, the teacher acts as a facilitator. And PBL allows for a lot of student choice because even though they're not creating the question themselves, they're creating the hypotheses towards answering that question, and they're creating the solutions.
Constructivism is when students learn by constructing or creating their own meaning. This is also a learner-centered theory. And it allows for student choice. A lot of times in constructivism, the students are creating their own problems to solve. It is inquiry-based, and it also has the teacher acting as a facilitator.
We're using Marzano's lesson design question of, what will I do to help students generate and test hypotheses about new knowledge to help us form our lesson? There are a couple elements that fall underneath this question that we can look at more closely while planning. Element 21 is organizing students for cognitively complex tasks. Element 22 is engaging students in cognitively complex tasks involving hypothesis, generation, and testing. And element 23, providing resources and guidance.
We're going to look at how we address each of these elements within the lesson plan. So here is the lesson plan redesign. The original lesson plan objective was for students to read and translate Shakespeare. They will prove their understanding through an in-class assessment with a variety of cold-read passages and questions that test understanding and comprehension. This would be an individual activity.
The PBL lesson plan objective, which is an updated objective, is students will read and translate Shakespeare. They will prove their understanding by creating a way to help other students understand Shakespeare. Students will work in small groups. Students will generate ideas and hypotheses and then test these. Students will take on roles in the groups. And students will have access to technology, as this is in a 1:1 or BYOD classroom setting.
So let's look at each of the elements that would fall underneath a PBL lesson plan or constructivist lesson plan. One element is strong student engagement. I am saying that my students are strongly engaged because there is a high interest level in this assignment. It's based on a problem, so the students are tasked with solving a problem. And it's a problem that they're interested in. Maybe they struggled with Shakespeare. So they're really interested in making it more accessible for others.
There's also a lot of student choice. The students don't get to choose the problem that they're solving, and they might not even be able to choose their groups. But they do get to choose the different hypotheses that they test, the way that they test these hypotheses, the way that they problem solve, and the way that they come up with a solution. They also get to choose the type of technology that they're using. They might use technology to do research. They might also use technology as a solution, for example, creating a translation app.
There is collaboration. The students are constantly collaborating with one another within their groups. They might collaborate outside of their groups. And they're definitely collaborating with the teacher by bouncing ideas off of him or her. And students are using devices, which always ups the strong student engagement. If this is a 1:1 classroom, there's one device for every student, probably a laptop. If this is a BYOD classroom, the devices might range from laptops to tablets to cell phones.
Learning tasks and activities are relevant and authentic. These are relevant and authentic because it involves creation, and it's using technology. It's also a purposeful assignment. We want them to create a way to make Shakespeare more accessible as they're moving on towards high school, and they'll be reading Shakespeare in every grade level there.
They can use these same skills, as you'll see when it's transferring new knowledge, into other areas that they'll see in high school. Collaboration. We've kind of touched on this already, but there's definitely peer collaboration within the group and peer collaboration within other groups. And there's also student/teacher collaboration.
There is student voice and choice. The students really show their voice the most in their problem solving and the hypotheses that they come up with and that they test. There's also voice and choice in inquiry. What kind of inquiry are they doing? How do they want to approach the task that they've been given? Maybe they want to re-enact Shakespeare to make it more accessible. Maybe they want to create a dictionary. Maybe they want to create an app. It's up to them.
Their demonstration of mastery is also up to them. How are they going to prove that they can, in fact, translate and understand Shakespeare? Is it going to, like I said, is it going to be through the creation of a movie? Is it going to be through the creation of a dictionary or an app? They also have voice and choice in the sorts of resources. Are they going to use the teacher as a resource? Are they going to rely solely on technology as a resource? What are they going to do? And again, in the different hypotheses that they're testing, because they're generating them.
Students are owning their learning, and they're constructing new meaning. They're owning their learning because this is an authentic, real-world assignment. They're creating something, especially for the students who decide to take a more technological approach to this. If they create an app, that is a skill. They're learning how to write code. It's an authentic, real-world thing.
They have an audience. They're presenting this creation not only to the teacher but to their classmates and to some of the high school teachers that they'll be having next year. And there's transfer of understanding. They might be able to use the same techniques for other areas that seem difficult for them to tackle once they get to high school.
There are higher-order thinking skills. They're actually participating in every single one on Blooms Taxonomy. They have knowledge, which is their basic knowledge of the Shakespearean text. They have comprehension, which is their understanding of the text and being able to translate the text.
They have application. They're applying the texts or the words to what they're creating. They have analysis. They're analyzing the problem and how to solve it. They have evaluation. They're evaluating whether or not their solution is effective. And then they have synthesis.
They're also engaged in inquiry because they're creating their own hypotheses, and they're also creating new questions. Students learn and understand varied perspectives. This is definitely going to happen because students are going to be working in a mixed ability group.
So one might walk into the group thinking the only way to make Shakespeare more accessible is to give it modern settings and re-enact it with modern language. Another person might say, no, no, no. Maybe we should create an app that translates Shakespearean words into modern English. They're collaborating with teachers and stakeholders as well, so that's going to give them different perspectives. And then there's a reflection on learning. The kids will reflect. They'll reflect with small group discussions and also through individual journals.
A couple of things to note. One is, in a BYOD classroom, there's always an issue of accessibility. So I'm going to plan my groups based on the number of devices that I have. So if not everybody brings a device, I'm going to make sure that there's at least one device per student. Accessibility also plays a role if you're in a BYOD classroom and you want to make this assignment part of homework. Obviously, if kids don't have devices, it's going to be really difficult to follow through on this assignment.
With that being said, if you're in a 1:1 always learning classroom, you really can assign a lot of this for homework because the kids can get together via an online meeting space, or they could create a Google doc so they could communicate with each other outside of the classroom. Let's reflect. How can you use Marzano's lesson design questions to inform your planning?
So today, we answered the essential question of, how can I update a lesson plan focusing on PBL or constructivist learning theories for the 1:1 or BYOD classroom? For more information on how to apply what you've learned in this video, please view the Additional Resources section that accompanies this video presentation. The Additional Resources section includes hyperlinks useful for applications of the course material, including a brief description of each resource. Thanks for joining me and happy teaching.
Overview
(00:00-00:50) Introduction
(00:51-01:37) PBL and Constructivism recap
(01:38-02:12) Marzano’s Lesson Design Question
(02:13-07:19) Lesson Plan Re-Design
(07:20-07:48) Notes
(07:49-08:09) Reflection
(08:10-08:40) Conclusion
Integrating Technology and Problem-Based Learning
This article from the Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning focuses on professional development and implementation of problem based learning in a technology-rich learning environment.
http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1255&context=ijpbl
50 Ways to Integrate Technology for PBL and Student Projects
Through the use of links, this post on the Discovery Education blog includes useful advice and resources for teachers who want to implement technology-rich PBL in their classrooms. In particular, the first link (PBL Checklists) is a terrific planning tool for integrating PBL into your instructional design.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/scscho...