PBL Professional Development

New "Eagles Soar" Medallion

It's that time of the year again!  What could she possibly be talking about you ask?  It's back to school time for teachers at Daniel K. Inouye Elementary School; and last week was filled with excitement!  Everyone was busy getting ready for the first day of school on August 1st.  I know what your thinking, "Man, that's early!" It's definitely different from the mainland schedule, but we get some days off during the year that are not celebrated on the mainland so everything ends up evening out.  Plus, I find that kids tend to retain the information they have learned over the school year a little better when there is not a huge gap in between the last day of school and the beginning of a new school year.

My first teacher work day back consisted of trying to re-orient myself back into our library.  Over the past year there has been a lot of construction going on at Daniel K. Inouye and one of the projects is our new library.  We are very close to moving into the new space, but until then Mrs. Colte and I have had to consolidate our library into a much smaller space.  As of right now it looks like a bomb as gone off in our room because we have to pack in library books, Makerspace materials, and computer lab equipment.  However, we have hope and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Are new space is almost done and should be ready within the next month!

Soon to be our new library!

Our current situation

The morning While teachers were prepping their rooms for Teacher/Parent/Student Meet and Greet.  Mrs. Iwase (Principal at DKIES) Mrs. Colte (Librarian), the instructional coaches, technology teachers, and I were busy putting together a presentation for professional development on Project Based Learning #PBL #GoldstandardPBL. The school has been shifting gears to project based learning for the last year.  This presentation started getting into the real meat and potatoes of what PBL is and we had teachers identify where they thought they were on the PBL scale.  We're hoping that teachers got a better handle on what PBL is and is not, where they fall on the scale, and maybe brainstormed some ideas of PBL projects they can facilitate during the school year with their students.

During the Project Based Learning presentation, teachers were asked to do a couple of hands-on activities to get the juices flowing on what is PBL and maybe come up with some ideas of ways they could implement PBL in the classroom.  Our first activity consisted of having teachers create a tuberic.  The tuberic is a visual tool that educators can use to formulate PBL projects, but more importantly it gives teachers a good demonstration of what PBL is. Mrs. Colte brought this idea to the attention of the PBL coaches having previously been exposed to the activity.  She decided it would be a good one to have our teachers do, and I could not have agreed with her more!  It was great to see the teachers interacting with different grade levels and to see the ideas of individual teachers on what exactly their tuberic should look like.  We even had a few teachers team up to create theirs.   It was really fun to see all the different ways people designed their tuberic and some even ditched the idea of a tube all together to create other forms.  One of the teachers came up with a great slogan by saying that their tuberic was, "When you need learning on the go."

DKIES Teachers Creating their Tuberics

Tuberic Instructions and Device

Once the tuberic activity was over we had teachers watch a quick video about PBL then teachers were asked to create a Frayer Model Diagram on what their definition of PBL would be.  We are really trying to reinforce the idea that PBL is more about the process then the overall project.  We're also trying to show teachers the attributes of PBL.  For example, it is more student-driven, inquiry based, collaborative, may solve real-world problems (however, there are different kinds of PBL), that it requires empathetic learning (really total immersion into a subject) and has an authentic audience.

An example of ditching the tube during tuberic activity.

Overall, I think the PBL professional development presentation was a success!  Mrs. Colte set-up a quick Google form that teachers filled out.  In the form they were able to ask a question that they had about the PBL.  Our next presentation will focus on sifting through those questions and trying to group people according to the type of question they asked.  I suggested we assign those that felt more comfortable with PBL and understood it to each group so they could answer any questions of the group or guide the group to answers.  We're still hashing out the details, but I think have the teachers teach teachers could also reinforce some of the ideas that PBL highlights.