Designing Integrated Curriculum 7/27-8/2/15

Project Based Learning (PBL) is the perfect opportunity to integrate curriculum from multiple content areas. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) challenge teachers to creat authentic learning experiences and our standards from multiple content areas dovetail together more seamlessly than before.

Currently my school has been building to this. We've begun with having weekly collaboration time for teachers from every department as a professional learning community. Basically instead of having a common plan with other math teachers, now we have a plan with science, social studies, and English. This common plan time allows instructors the time to build cross curricular units with each other.  

This process would begin by brainstorming together.  This could start with a novel for English courses that contains enough historical content to pull in History.  History would then pull in the Architecture and arts from the time period. Architecture could correlate with math by calculation slope of stairs, or the arc in an arch, area of buildings, etc.  

Assessments in Project Based Learning

This week (July 20-26, 2015)  is all about the Assessments in Project Based Learning.

Currently in this project I've developed formative and summative assessments to measure students outcomes. Throughout my teaching career I've always had the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which basically includes 21st Century skills and Information Media and Technology Skills for students to become college and career ready.  In my department, Career and Technology Education, we have always been pushing to prepare our students for college and the career field. When aligning a standard to the project one needs to remember that the standard needs to be clearly defined and measured.


Authentic assessment of these skills requires separate measures for them that meet the essential criteria for effective assessments. The assessments I have created for my PBL project meet those criteria as follows:

• Assessment is for students: All assessments on the assessment page of my Project Based Learning project website are written in language that is understandable and student-friendly. Descriptors in the rubrics are detailed and evidence-based to promote student understanding of feedback. Several formative assessments are built into the project for students to refine their work based on feedback from these formative assessments.
• Assessment is faithful to the work that students actually do: Assessments are built directly into the work of the project to give opportunities for peer and teacher feedback as part of an ongoing revision and refined project. Each skill assessed by the rubrics is aligned to specific components completed by students.
• Assessment is public: Assessments are available to students on the project website to use as a standard to guide their work.
• Assessment promotes ongoing self-reflection and inquiry: The standards assessed in the project reflect College and Career Readiness. All of the rubrics articulate what excellent work looks like. The Engineering Notebook allows for students to reflect on the days task and how they can improve from the day before. Along with making these privates allows for complete honesty from the students.

Writing a Driving Question

Throughout this week (July 13-19, 2015) we have been introduced into the science of writing a Driving Question. Through my research I've discovered that a driving question should be simple, but compared to learning objectives more broad and more engaging for the students. The driving question should be used to focus the students work and the planning for the instructor. For students to successfully answer/respond to a driving question they may be required to master several sub-skills. The Instructor when planning will use the driving question and the sub-skills/questions to plan out the entire unit.

This week we are tasked with just that situation. We have to write a driving question and develop a set of sub-questions or skills along with a graphic organizer. Before I started this task I went to the Buck Institute's Youtube Channel. While watching their videos I was able to see how creating a driving question, then developing sub questions from that driving question can turn the Driving Question into a unit.

Below you will find my graphic organizer. I created this using Adobe Fireworks.

EdTech 542 - Project Search

Throughout this week (July 6-July12 2015) we began searching out Project Based Learning example projects in order to begin developing our own. Throughout my research I discovered several common threads of PBL including an authentic problem, student choice, self-directed information gathering, and evidence-based mastery in the form of original authentic student products.

I discovered several PBL projects from the Buck Institute that could be edited to fit into several content areas.  All the projects I looked into had common features of brochures or videos with great enhancements.  One such enhancement that is left out most of the time is to clearly define and assess Technology skills.  While working in a rural school district in a technological advance society, I find it crucial that my students develop technological skills. By assessing these skills using the content standards and rubrics complete with learning outcomes assures me that each student grows their skills.  Secondly, in most of the projects I research I noted that 21st Century Learning Skills are as essential to the project as the standards are.  They are clearly embedded in the project requiring all students to critically think, communicate together, be creative, and collaborate as a team to accomplish the task. Lastly the project starts with the overall project. Then it is broken down into smaller tasks as the students begin their Inquiry based learning. Students receive feedback throughout the project and not just one summative assessment at the end.