Project Based Learning - Eva Varga

I have coordinated a Roots & Shoots club in one form or another since I first heard Jane Goodall speak at an Oregon Science Teacher’s Conference in 1997. She has been an inspiration to me since I was a little girl. Taking part in Roots & Shoots has not only enabled me to meet Jane Goodall, but has encouraged me to work hard to make a difference.

“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference, human and non-human alike.” ~ Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots is the youth-led community action and learning program of the Jane Goodall Institute. The program builds on the legacy and vision of Dr. Jane Goodall to place the power and responsibility for creating community-based solutions to big challenges in the hands of the young people. Through the program, young people map their community to identify specific challenges their neighborhoods face. From there, they prioritize the problems, develop a plan for a solution, and take action.

“What you do makes a DIFFERENCE. You have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” ~ Jane Goodall

Service learning projects combine learning goals and community service in ways that can enhance both student growth and the common good. Service learning can help your students become better learners, classmates, and citizens, and can help them make a valuable contribution to their communities.

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This past summer, Roots & Shoots dramatically redesigned their website and the teaching tools they provide for their group leaders. They offered a four week course titled “Turning Learners into Leaders: Empowering Youth Through Service in Education” and I was delighted to have the opportunity to take part. It revitalized my approach to service learning and renewed my enthusiasm for Roots & Shoots.

I discovered that effective service learning emphasizes the following elements:

Integrated Learning
Community Need
Student Voice
Collaboration
Civic Responsibility
Reflection
Evaluation

There are many opportunities to engage students in service learning. Read about some of the projects my Roots & Shoots groups have undertaken over the years. I have color coded them to coordinate with the Roots & Shoots formula for success (Get Engaged, Map It, Take Action, and Celebrate).

Passion is something that is cultivated. True passion arises after you’ve put in the long hours to really become a craftsman in your field and can then leverage this value to really have an impact, to gain autonomy and respect, and ultimately, to control your occupational destiny.

To paraphrase Steve Jobs’ famous Stanford Commencement address: You’ve got to find what you love, don’t settle.

passions_pianoguys

Attending a Piano Guys concert this past summer.

I certainly have no idea where the interests of my children will lead them in the future. My role, as their parent, is to provide them with the tools (academic knowledge and skills) and resources (knowing how to find answers to their questions and the ability to work with others) they will need for success as an adult.

Our homeschooling style has evolved over the years; we go with the flow and our approach changes with the tides. At our core, however, is interest-based or child-led learning. Today, I share a simple five step approach to cultivating passions in children.

Interest-based, child-led learning emanates from within the child outward. As parents, we can be careful observers who translate what we see into additional resources that can feed the flame of passion within the child.

Our wisdom and experience as parents is absolutely needed. It is what we are exposing our children to within our home and outside those walls in the greater world or through the great, intellectual resources of computers and technology that can help our children stumble upon an intriguing interest. It is also taking what they become passionate about and feeding the flame from within outward.

Meeting the incredible pianist, Alpin Hong, after an evening performance.

5 Steps to Cultivating Passions

1. Gather Sparks of Curiosity

Allow the whims and interests of your children guide you. Those little sparks of interest can lead you to great places. Follow the bunny trail. Trust your intuition and use it to make small investments in things that are potentially interesting. Read different books, take on different activities, and don’t be afraid to meet different people.

2. Fan the Flames of Interest

Build upon the little sparks of interest and opportunities that come by your life. If your child reads a book about sailing and likes the subject, sign him up for a sailing class. If your child enjoys playing with Lego, consider buying iStop Motion and playing around with making your own animated short films together.

There have been many rabbit trails along our homeschool journey. Here are a few whose initial sparks have ignited flames:

passions_riveroaks

Volunteering at a local retirement home, a weekly service he initiated on his own.

3. Cut Out Distractions

Cultivating whims and exploring new passions requires time. If their interests are genuine and worth exploring, it shouldn’t be too difficult to eliminate the non-essentials. Distractions such as television, excess internet usage, and video games only take a bit of conditioning to let go. Like many modern families, this is an area we are still working to balance, little by little.

When the kids are passionate about something, however, you will find they truly want to spend time honing their skill. Jeffrey, for example, is a very active boy of nearly 10 years. Like most boys his age, it is difficult to get him to sit still for very long. However, he spends hours watching videos of Alpin Hong or The Piano Guys on YouTube and then trying to emulate them himself. Inspired by The Piano Guys’ Charlie Brown Medley, he recently began volunteering to play the piano at a local retirement home.

While Geneva has had music lessons for several years (first in piano and now with violin), seeing The Piano Guys in concert sparked a desire to improve and invest more time in cultivating her own skills. Shortly after our return home, she expressed interest in auditioning for Youth Symphony. She worked hard with her instructor and was over-joyed to be selected for second chair.

Upon auditioning for Youth Symphony

4. Create Value

Down the road, if you or your child have a skill that creates social value and can fill human needs, you can also consider a process for gaining income. This certainly isn’t necessary for all interests and monetizing a passion takes skill, as any entrepreneur can tell you. Some passions are easy to translate. An interest in fly tying could allow you to design and sell your own flies. Other passions are more difficult.

My daughter loves hand tying her own flies for fly fishing and at Fish Camp last year received acclaim for a design of her own. She recently set up a booth at a local craft faire and sold her entire inventory!

Volunteering to tie flies at a local fly fishing workshop

5. Repeat

The process of following whims, cultivating passions, turning them into valuable skills, and then finally earning revenue (if interested) is a lifelong pursuit. Just as you should not expect that all their passions will lead to a job they love, do not obsess over failed attempts or that their interests change as they grow.

The sensation of excitement about a particular idea is often a different sensation than the type of deep passion that drives people into a fulfilling career. Excitement comes and goes.

If you desire to allow your children’s whims and interests to guide their learning and wish to cultivate their passions, you may be interested in reading my earlier post, 7 Steps to Successful Project Based Learning.

As a homeschool family, we have read about the first European colonists in the Americas and constructed paper models of Jamestown. We have explored the ecosystems of North America and created posters to illustrate food webs. We have created travel brochures to teach others about Alaska. We have even created multimedia news reports to share our experiences at Chinese New Year. And the lapbooks. When we first started homeschooling, we created many, many lapbooks. Sound familiar?

These are common examples of the kind of assignments that teachers and homeschool parents bill as projects. A classroom filled with student work may suggest that students have engaged in meaningful learning. However, it is the process of students’ learning and the depth of their cognitive engagement— rather than the resulting product—that distinguishes projects from busywork.

A project is meaningful if it fulfills two criteria. First, students must perceive the work as personally meaningful, as a task that matters and that they want to do well. Second, a meaningful project fulfills an educational purpose. Well-designed and well-implemented project-based learning is meaningful in both ways.

Many students find schoolwork meaningless because they don’t perceive a need to know what they’re being taught. They are unmotivated by a teacher’s suggestion that they should learn something because they’ll need it later in life, for the next course, or simply because “it’s going to be on the test.”

With a compelling student project, the reason for learning relevant material becomes clear: I need to know this to meet the challenge I’ve accepted. Teachers can powerfully activate students’ need to know content by launching a unit in a way that engages interest and initiates questioning. This can take the form of a video, a lively discussion, a guest speaker, or a field trip.

Come along with me as I share an example of one particular project we have recently undertaken utilizing the Project Based Learning Cycle. You’ll discover that the cycle isn’t a concrete, step-by-step approach, but a fluid, natural progression of learning and growth.

6 Steps to Project Based Learning

1. Identify the Problem

A good driving question captures the heart of the project in clear, compelling language, which gives students a sense of purpose and challenge. The question should be provocative, open-ended, complex, and linked to the core of what you want students to learn. It could be abstract (When is war justified?); concrete (Is our water safe to drink?); or focused on solving a problem.

On a Roots & Shoots nature walk a few months ago, we observed that the population of native pond turtles had significantly declined. In the past, we had observed many pond turtles basking in the sun but this time, we saw only two native turtles and a large number of non-native Red-eared slider turtles.

This led us to question, “Why the change in population size? What was happening to the native pond turtles and what could we do to combat the decline?”

2. Analyze the Problem

In terms of making a project feel meaningful to students, the more voice and choice, the better. However, teachers should design projects that fit their own style and students.

You may choose to limit the choices, allowing learners to select what topic to study within a general driving question or choose how to design, create, and present the final product. You might provide a limited menu of options for creative projects to prevent students from becoming overwhelmed by choices. On the other end of the scale, students may decide what products they will create, what resources they will use, and how they will structure their time.

A few days after our outing, the coordinator emailed the kids suggesting they take action to increase public awareness and ultimately, prohibit the sale of red-eared sliders in pet stores. My daughter was quick to pick up the challenge. She was eager to make a difference.

3. Field Studies & Investigation

Students find project work more meaningful if they conduct real inquiry, which does not mean finding information in books or websites and pasting it onto a poster. In real inquiry, students follow a trail that begins with their own questions, leads to a search for resources and the discovery of answers, and often ultimately leads to generating new questions, testing ideas, and drawing their own conclusions. With real inquiry comes innovation—a new answer to a driving question, a new product, or an individually generated solution to a problem. The teacher does not ask students to simply reproduce teacher or textbook provided information in a pretty format.

On a family walk a few weeks later, we observed numerous Red-eared sliders once again (a different location than the first). My kids both lamented pet owners releasing these turtles into the wild without considering the consequences. My daughter began to further her questioning, “Where is the population of Western Pond Turtles the largest? Where is the population of Red-eared sliders the largest? Is the population of Western Pond Turtles changing at the same rate at Mary Lake as it is at Turtle Pond?”

As she posed these questions to me on our walk, we discussed strategies for answering the questions. She expressed an interest in collecting real data – capturing and tagging the turtles. “I can bring my fishing net and I can paint a number on the back of their shell so I don’t count the same turtle over again.”

I suggested she reach out to local agencies (Fish & Wildlife, Parks & Recreation, Forest Service, etc.) to see what efforts the resource specialists had made (if any) in this regard. Would they allow her to pursue this is more depth?

4. Identify Resources & Research

A project should give students opportunities to build such 21st century skills as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology, which will serve them well in the workplace and life. This exposure to authentic skills provides the project with an educational purpose. A teacher in a project-based learning environment explicitly teaches and assesses these skills and provides frequent opportunities for students to assess themselves.

One step in the research process is to understand the natural history of both the Western Pond Turtle and the invasive, Red-eared sliders. My children have kept nature journals for years and so it was a natural decision to illustrate the turtles in their journals as a way to record their knowledge and research. See my earlier post, Saving the Native Turtles: Part One – Naturalist’s Notes.

5. Test Solutions and Revision

Formalizing a process for feedback and revision during a project makes learning meaningful because it emphasizes that creating high-quality products and performances is an important purpose of the endeavor. Students need to learn that most people’s first attempts don’t result in high quality and that revision is a frequent feature of real-world work.

In addition to providing direct feedback, the teacher should coach students in using rubrics or other sets of criteria to critique one another’s work. Teachers can arrange for experts or adult mentors to provide feedback, which is especially meaningful to students because of the source.

At every step in the learning cycle, the kids have been making changes and revisions. As my daughter brainstormed ideas to investigate the population size, she modified her action plan with suggestions I made. When she meets with the resources specialist, she will undoubtedly make additional changes to her approach. As the kids work on their posters and letters (see step 6 below), they will create a rough draft and seek feedback from one another as well as from their parents.

6. Present Solutions & Engage the Public

Schoolwork is more meaningful when it’s not done only for the teacher or the test. When students present their work to a real audience, they care more about its quality. Once again, it’s “the more, the better” when it comes to authenticity. Students might replicate the kinds of tasks done by professionals—but even better, they might create real products that people outside school use.

One of the projects the kids have planned is to create posters to educate the public about the dangers of releasing exotic pets into the wild. They have invited their friends to join them in this service learning activity and they intend to hang the posters at local pet stores and the science center. They have also begun to write letters to their state congressmen to encourage them to take legislative action.

We have read about the first European colonists in the Americas and constructed paper models of Jamestown. We explored the ecosystems of North America and created posters to illustrate food webs. We have created travel brochures to teach others about Alaska. We have even created multi-media news reports to share our experiences at Chinese New Year. And the lapbooks. When we first started homeschooling, we created many, many lapbooks.

Sound familiar? When you were in school, did you make posters, dioramas, and models of buildings or volcanoes? As a homeschool mom and teacher, you have also likely asked your kids to do many of these similar projects. If you have older kids, you have likely asked them to research a topic and present information with PowerPoint slides? While these projects have worth, they are also examples of the kind of meaning-lite assignments that we tend to us as projects. A classroom filled with student work may suggest that students have engaged in meaningful learning. However, it is the process of students’ learning and the depth of their cognitive engagement— rather than the resulting product—that distinguishes projects from busywork.
#pbl

Project based learning is a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world problems and challenges. With this type of active and engaged learning, students are inspired to obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they’re studying. When designing or planning projects, the work or task is meaningful if it fulfills two criteria. First, students must perceive the work as personally meaningful, as a task that matters and that they want to do well. Second, a meaningful project fulfills an educational purpose.

As my kids got older and their skills have advanced, they are more critical of assignments and are quick to call out busywork. “What is the point?” they ask. “We’ll probably just throw it away in 6 months.” I have thereby stepped back. I now allow their interests to lead and their own motivations to set our course. This doesn’t mean I don’t provide motivation from time to time. I am becoming adept at creating challenges.

Like most young boys, my son is fascinated by planes, trains, and automobiles container ships. He and his sister spent a weekend at Grandma’s recently and came home with a box full of books she had given them. Amongst the titles (most of which were novels) were a few fiction titles that grabbed their attention. The Pocket Guide to Military Aircraft was one my son had selected. It kept him engaged for the entire six hour car ride home. As he began to rattle off all the facts he was learning, I presented a challenge. Can you create models of these aircraft in Lego? How could you improve your designs?

7 Steps to Project Based Learning Success

Project based learning incorporates real-world problems that capture student interest and provoke serious thinking as the students acquire and apply new knowledge in a problem-solving context. The teacher plays the role of facilitator, working with students to frame worthwhile questions, structuring meaningful tasks, coaching both knowledge development and social skills (if working in small groups), and carefully assessing what students have learned from the experience.

1. A Need to Know

Many students find schoolwork meaningless because they don’t perceive a need to know what they’re being taught. They are unmotivated when told they will need it later in life or simply because “it’s going to be on the test.” With a compelling student project, the reason for learning relevant material becomes clear: I need to know this to meet the challenge I’ve accepted. Whether you are a homeschool parent or a classroom teacher, you can powerfully activate your students’ need to know content by launching a unit in a way that engages interest and initiates questioning. This can take the form of a video, a lively discussion, a guest speaker, or even a field trip.

2. Driving Questions

Good driving questions capture the heart of the project in clear, compelling language, giving students a sense of purpose and challenge. The question should be provocative, open-ended, complex, and linked to the core of what you want students to learn. It could be abstract (When is war justified?); concrete (Is our water safe to drink?); or focused on solving a problem (How can we improve this website so that more young people will use it?).

3. Student Voice, Student Choice

In terms of making a project feel meaningful to students, the more voice and choice, the better. However, teachers should design projects with the extent of student choice that fits their own style and students. On one end of the scale, learners can select what topic to study within a general driving question or choose how to design, create, and present products. In the middle, teachers might provide a limited menu of options for creative products to prevent students from becoming overwhelmed by choices. On the other end of the scale, students can decide what products they will create, what resources they will use, and how they will structure their time. Students could even choose a project’s topic and driving question.

4. 21st Century Skills

A project should give students opportunities to build such 21st century skills as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology, which will serve them well in the workplace and life. This exposure to authentic skills meets the second criterion for meaningful work—an important purpose. A teacher in a project-based learning environment explicitly teaches and assesses these skills and provides frequent opportunities for students to assess themselves.

5. Inquiry and Innovation

Students find project work more meaningful if they conduct real inquiry, which does not mean finding information in books or websites and pasting it onto a poster. In real inquiry, students follow a trail that begins with their own questions, leads to a search for resources and the discovery of answers, and often ultimately leads to generating new questions, testing ideas, and drawing their own conclusions. With real inquiry comes innovation – a new answer to a driving question, a new product, or an individually generated solution to a problem.

6. Feedback and Revision

Formalizing a process for feedback and revision during a project makes learning meaningful because it emphasizes that creating high-quality products and performances is an important purpose of the endeavor. Students need to learn that most people’s first attempts don’t result in high quality and that revision is a frequent feature of real-world work.

In addition to direct feedback, scoring guides or other sets of criteria to critique one another’s work are useful tools that educators can coach their students to use successfully. Teachers can arrange for experts or adult mentors to provide feedback, which is especially meaningful to students because of the source.

7. Engage the Public

Schoolwork is more meaningful when it’s not done only for the teacher or the test. When students present their work to a real audience, they care more about its quality. Once again, it’s the more, the better when it comes to authenticity. Students might replicate the kinds of tasks done by professionals – but even better, they might create real products that people outside school use.

~ ~ ~

Project based learning emphasizes learning activities that are long-term, interdisciplinary and student-centered. Unlike traditional, teacher-led classroom activities, students often must organize their own work and manage their own time in a project based class. Project based instruction differs from traditional inquiry by its emphasis on students’ collaborative or individual tasks to represent what is being learned.

My son’s military aircraft models are only the beginning. As he continues to pursue his interests, the 7 steps outlined above can help educators like myself to facilitate the development of students’ skills. Not all pursuits or interests need to be carried through all steps, however. As a homeschooler, we have the prerogative to change course as our children develop other passions. Keeping these steps in mind though will assure they have the skills for success in the future.

Any parent with little boys can attest to their fascination with all things related to transportation. My little man is no different. He has been drawn to planes, trains, ships, and automobiles since he was a toddler. As he has grown older, his focus has evolved to include aerodynamics, electrical circuits, and of course, magnetic levitation (you can imagine his exuberance in Shanghai when he got to ride on the Maglev). A little boy’s imagination knows no bounds.

aeronautical engineer

When something appeals to him, he latches on and with every waking moment is consumed with researching, role-playing, drawing sketches, and telling anyone willing to listen, all the facts he has learned. To be honest, his obsessions are a little overwhelming for he tells you the same facts over and over, jumping from one airplane to the next, rattling off the specific airline make and model along with the engine size and maximum speed … “We rode on a Boeing 747-400, United Airlines flight #889. Each of the four engines has a maximum thrust of 63,300 pounds. It has a cruise speed of 565 mph and an altitude of 41,000 feet. It can carry about 400 passengers.”

Little Boys’ Imaginations

This past week, he has been obsessed with airplanes. His dad has a small collection of RC planes in our garage – his hangar if you will. He used to fly them when the kids were toddlers but he’s developed other interests. He had considered selling them – and did sell a few – but I encouraged him to keep a few knowing that when Buddy got older, it would be a hobby they could enjoy together. That time has come.

He spent hours ogling one of the planes; running with it in his hands down the street in front of our house, feeling the wind ride over the airfoil and how it affected the lift. He then sat down and began to craft a plane of his own using a cardboard pizza box, electrical tape, Lego wheels, paint, a hot glue gun, and his Snap Circuits set. I was mighty impressed with his ingenuity and raved about his design. He was heart broken that it wouldn’t fly on its own. He laments that he spent so much time on it and it didn’t work. I encouraged him to not give up, “Don’t be frustrated. Each time you try, you learn. Your design improves and you do better the next time.” It is a hard lesson. One I could never teach with any curriculum. This one he needs to learn on his own.

He has never been a big reader of books – he is too active to sit still long enough to read more than a chapter at a time. Yet he devourers audio books. With each new story, he acts out his favorite scenes and really gets into play-acting, quoting passages and bringing the characters to life. That reminds me – I really need to find a drama class for him.

Upon watching the new BBC program, Merlin, he has become intrigued by King Arthur and his knights. While traveling in China, he carried along the Classic Starts edition of Howard Pyle’s “King Arthur and His Knights”. He didn’t read much of it – but he was on a quest to find the perfect medieval sword at the tourist shops. The sword he ended up purchasing featured dragons and Chinese characters so upon our return home, he was insistent that he still needed a proper knights sword.

king arthur sword

This past weekend, we drove up to see family and he was delighted to spend the entire day in the basement with Papa crafting a sword that he would be able to use in real sword play (it is made of wood). He is also in the process of making his own chain mail. He came across a wonderful tutorial on YouTube that utilizes soda pop can tabs. We don’t buy soda (or beer for that matter), so it will take us a while to collect enough tabs to complete his costume. With the help of Facebook and FreeCycle, we hope to finish in time for Halloween.

I love his passion, imagination, and excitement. I didn’t actually realize his figures were accurate until I looked them up while writing this post. Now, I sit here impressed and a little mystified as to where this child came from. Somehow, his little piles of cardboard scraps and aluminum foil, electrical wires, and duct tape don’t see so frustrating anymore. I am blessed.

My daughter has been interested in fly fishing since she was a toddler. Fly fishing is a big sport in Central Oregon and we were surrounded by avid fishermen and women who loved their sport and were keen to share their passion with others. The retail store, Orvis, even had an outdoor casting course downtown. Our neighbor welcomed her into his ‘office’ on a few occasions so she could ask questions and admire his amazing collection of flies. He even took us out for a lesson one afternoon for our first lesson in casting, Fly Fishing ~ A Future Hobby.

Since then she has occasionally talked about getting her own fly pole (though they didn’t make a weight light enough for her until now – she has grown, after all), taking fly fishing lessons, and even getting a fly tying kit with which to tie her own flies. We never knew how serious she was until recently – after all, my husband and I aren’t fly fishermen. Then again, we were not archers either until Buddy took up the sport.

Shortly after we moved to Northern California, a nearby children’s museum featured an exhibit on fly fishing that provided us a greater understanding of the art, science, and history of fly fishing. Her interest was peeked even more and she asked for a fly tying kit for her birthday.

Serendipitously, at this same time, I stumbled upon an advertisement in a local publication of an upcoming fly tying class for youth. Perfect! We thereby informed her that we would buy her a kit upon completion of the course. In this way, we could also make an informed decision about what type of vise and other tools to purchase.

She has been looking forward to this class for a couple of months now. To make it even more exciting for her – a new friend we met this summer is joining her for the six-week course. Finding her passions is great – sharing that passion with a friend is priceless.

Over the next few months, she will be featured as a guest blogger to share what she has learned in fly tying class. I encourage you to follow along – I know she’d love to hear from you.

Week Two – Caddis Fly

Week Three – Zebra Midge

Week Four – Lures

Week Five – Pheasant Tail Fly

Week Six – Copper John

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