Planning Our First PBL

Over the past 5 months, both the math and science teachers have feverishly been working on earning our national STEM certification.  In Domain 3:  Engaging Students in Science and Engineering Practices, we as math educators stepped out of our comfort zone and entered the world of science.  We observed science classrooms, collaborating with both the students and teachers in these classrooms, as well as our administrative team.  One of the newest "ideas" in this domain was Action 13:  Implementing Project-Based Learning.

Within Action 13, there were 3 indicators:  authenticity of problem, student autonomy, communication skills.  Having had previous professional learning on PBLs, I had an upper hand in our conversations.  The only exposure to project-based learning most of my teammates have, as of May 1st, is a brief 30 minute discussion in February combined with a few videos and web searches about PBL....we have lots to learn, which is coming this summer during a week long focus on project-based learning!

My teammates agreed that doing this PBL would allow us to have some common experiences to reflect on during our June professional learning!  As we meet each day and discuss the next day's events, I remind myself what it was like to be in their shoes years ago and how taking these small steps is huge in becoming a 21st century educator.

Despite having a limited number of digital devices, we all agreed using Google classroom would be vital to our students' success!  Folders were created, resources were added and our daily PLC collaboration began.  One of the best parts of Google drive is being able to collaborate on the same document, no matter our location or time of day.

Our Planning Document

As we began to plan our PBL, we realized we needed to gather data throughout the learning process.  We created a google form survey that assesses our learners prior knowledge of STEM, college and financing their college education.  The timing could not have been more perfect with our Digital Specialist lead PLC over how to create a Google Form!  

Most of our student assignments can be found in the tasks folder.  Here our Google docs for research are stored, as well as a salary breakdown task, using Google sheets.  Our learners are pretty amazed at how the digital documents work and continue to become more familiar with them, as we begin our STEM career research!

Stay tuned to find out how our Falcons collaborate and and begin to justify their solutions to our driving question:

"In 2017, learners are being encouraged to become responsible global citizens by being innovative and creative in their ideas of the future.  However, it is expensive to obtain STEM training needed to be successful.  With the increasing amount of personal debt the average American has, how might we increase the amount collected in savings so that a person will graduate from college debt-free?"