Towards Project Based Learning - The Long and Winding Road

Bringing down walls

I went on an Academy Principals trip last week, visiting Academys around the M25.    In one of the Academys the Principal, gave us a tour and told us how bad the building was and how many extra walls she had to ask the builders to put up as the building neared completion.   Maybe I'm naive, but if we put up walls to stop student movement or reduce noise, we are giving a subliminal message to the students:  We don't trust you to walk around this building in an appropriate way and we certainly don't trust you not to disturb others.  

If we are to instill good habits of learning in our students we should give them the chance to aspire to behaving appropriately and be there to pick them up when they are struggling to do this.   Just another job for the teacher I believe.

Issues Part 5 - Seminars

Seminars should cover the difficult concepts in subject areas and also allow the student an opportunity to explore topics at a deeper level with a teacher.    Some of these should be mandatory attendance, but some should have an element of choice.  

 

At present seminars tend to focus too much on just Maths and English and tend to be very instructional.   This is fine if the seminars are synchronised roughly with the work students are doing, but it is missing out on opportunities to explore the wider richness of the driving question the students are focussing on.   It is fine to have instructional seminars if the quality of facilitation in focus sessions and tutorials is such that students have opportunities to discuss or analyse things in a wider context.

 

A possible solution to the above issues might be to divide our seminars into three types:

• Compulsory seminars.   All students would do these seminars at the same time.   (When we timetable for next year if students are doing different projects we would have to synchronise the times of this type of seminar).   These Seminars could be taught in the normal Sets and differentiated in the normal way.  If the seminar is shorter than 50 mins then students continue with focus time activities
• Optional seminars.   Some students will be directed to go to these.   Others may be given the option, but only if the Learning Facilitator agrees.   Normally at least someone from the team needs to go.   These seminars are an opportunity to delve deeper into the subject and discuss the subject matter/issues more fully.   During these seminars, it will be helpful to have bigger classrooms in operation to allow larger groups working in focus sessions.
• Enrichment seminars.  These seminars are voluntary, giving the students the opportunity to develop their projects further.   Again we will have to timetable focus sessions on at these times in big classrooms.   These seminars would be more sporadic in terms of frequency.  

Issues Part 4 - Tutorial Sessions

Tutorial sessions

Tutorial time is time put aside to allow Learning Facilitators (tutors) time to meet with individual students or teams in their Learning families.    This is taking place, but it is infrequent.   The original plan was to have two Facilitators timetabled at the same time.   Between them they would have approx 28 students.   These students would be distributed between the other focus sessions 9there are 8 groups on at any one time.   The two facilitators would then see their students individually; perhaps four or five during a 50min session.    Facilitators have two sessions per week in which to carry this out.

In reality we have a number of issues and questions raised:

• Only one facilitator at a time is seeing students while the other takes the whole group.   In other words groups are not being distributed.   The most likely reason for this is the setting arrangements. 
• The quality of these sessions will vary due to some facilitators not being timetabled enough on the PBL programme, therefore becoming out of touch with day to day progression
• As sets change, as a Learning Facilitator it is difficult to meet with/keep up with student progress in your Learning Family
• To what extent are students having the opportunity to discuss their learning?

If we are to resolve these issues we must consider the following:

• Creating more time for Facilitators to meet with students.
• Only two tutorial sessions (both from the same joint Learning family) should take place at the same time.   The rest of the group will be distributed between the other focus activity groups, therefore we will need to timetable focus groups in big classrooms.  
• Facilitators need to be timetabled for at least half their load on the PBL programme
• Consider the possibility of creating Academic Learning Facilitators who have responsibility for tutoring a group which is set.   This group may change as sets change.   (Pastoral Learning Facilitators would be separate from this and have independent Learning Families).
• During tutor time the following should be considered with the student:
  • Understanding of project; overall expectations and driving question.
  • To what extent is project plan on schedule (is their a plan in the first place?)
  • What has prevented student from achieving milestones in project and associated products?
  • What is the quality of work produced?
  • To what extent is the student organised?  Do they know what they are going to do next?  
  • To what extent is the student recording the development of good habits of learning (how aware are they of this?)?

The nature and length of tutorials will vary according to the graduation stage of the student. 

 

At the risk of the joke becoming boring - my wife is out collecting my daughter from Guides.