Buck Institute for Education

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• Teachers need to assess students' abilities and interests before beginning a project.
• We start the year in our academy with a mini-project that pairs incoming juniors and returning seniors. We do ten days of team building and getting to know each other. During this time, seniors teach juniors how we work.
• Students have to understand what the need is for the project, and I have to understand what their thinking is before I can get them involved in the project work.
• There will always be students and classes that are quicker or slower than others. Students who move more quickly have more opportunities with projects. You end up having to tailor the curriculum to your classes or groups because some projects may include additional activities while other omit certain activities.
• If you are teaching students who are less academically able, you have to take this into account when planning the project. The project won't be the same as you might have with an Advanced Placement class. You have to lighten up and find a way for students to use the skills they bring with them. Perhaps they aren't skilled in math but are great writers, or good artists. You can still develop a project so students can express themselves, which will encourage their skill development. You can use the same topics with students of differing ability. But change the final product so that it provides a better match for their skills.

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• Less is more--start small. The project is only part of the picture. You also have to reengineer the learning environment to change the way you work with kids. It's difficult to attack everything at once.
• The advantage of small projects is that you have time to analyze what you are doing, reflect on it, and make adjustments.  This should be done with any project, but it's easier with a small project.
• I would advise people to choose one project and do it really well. Don't start out with a lot of projects or a very broad project. Projects get overwhelming, and more complicated. You're always trying to rein the project in and get back in control.
• When a teacher is working on his or her first project, it's not necessarily the best thing to involve multiple teachers and make it a collaborative project. The struggle to get the logistics down can undermine the whole project. Once you have experience, collaborate with teachers in other content areas.
• Start by tweaking assignments that you ordinarily give; add some new elements to them. Many teachers can take an assignment that they've given for years and add something to make it more PBL-focused: for example, adding an interview with an adult outside of school when students are doing a research assignment.

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• With students who understand PBL, or who are mature and ready to participate, you can introduce a project in day one. With others, you have to teach them what PBL is all about. If kids don't know about PBL, I don't introduce a project before October.  Before that I have them do mini-units, work on group skills, cooperative learning, and I introduce them to self-monitoring.
• Repeated experiences build on one another. Our students begin projects in the 6th grade. By 8th grade, kids come in knowing how to do projects. I can start at the beginning of the year, and they know the ropes. They know how to work in teams.
• Think of the first project as an icebreaker; don't expect the world. As they work on more and more projects, kids get more efficient. Things that take two weeks in September will take only one week in April. Student skills improve: getting information, organizing, making decisions.

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The more you can do outside the context of the school, the more student engagement you have. If you are simply trying to develop skills or learn information that is not connected to current events, then don't do a project. Look through your curriculum for opportunities to take learning outside of your classroom.

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When we start projects, I create workspaces in my room and make sure I have basic supplies that all students will use. (As projects progress, students sometimes bring in additional materials from home.) You need files and boxes to keep materials together from each class period. At the end of class, I tell students, "All projects need to be stacked on the center table," and then I move all projects into specific storage areas for each period. Don't give students the opportunity to touch projects from another period.

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• Before starting a project, we get students thinking about it so they'll be ready to plunge in when it's time. Last year, we did a project in April on the physics of music, but we started talking about it in January, when the semester began. I suggested a number of questions they might want to pursue, and we discussed how they might form their work groups. The earlier students start thinking about it, the more prepared they are.
• When we started a new school wide project, we have a kickoff event that gets the students excited about the project and marks it as something different from typical schoolwork. This event has taken different forms. Most recently, we had an assembly and a group of faculty members put on a silly skit. Another time, we had a slide show that demonstrated the diversity of living things. After getting the students interested, we describe the project. We tell them what it's all about and what our expectations are for student work.

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• Schools don't necessarily acculturate students to be learners, at least not self-managing learners. We have to undo what's been done to them. In our academy, we have students for two years. We maintain a dialogue with them throughout that period. It can have a lot of starting points: curriculum standards, what kind of a person you want to be, what's required for college, how to study, or working in a high-performance environment.
• Part of your new role is not just to teach content, but also to teach kids how to learn content.  The high-achieving kids already know this. They know when they go to the library they have to get more than one book. They know not to choose broad topics like John F. Kennedy, because there is too much information available. Your role now is to work with kids who have never tackled a difficult question and to teach them the research and study skills necessary to tackle it.
• I had to learn to be patient as students develop adult time management and organization skills. We don't generally teach students how to manage time. In fact, traditional teachers and classrooms set up structures so that students don't need to know how to manage their time--it's managed by the teacher and the bell schedule.
• I had to unlearn the idea that teaching was about my content; I had to learn it was about their thinking. Most of the content students get is dismissed as soon as they graduate (or pass the test). I needed to learn how to help students think through the project work and to decide what it is going to look like, and not make all the decisions myself.
• Reengineering the learning environment means moving from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side. It means creating a more collaborative environment with students where projects are a mutual responsibility. You have to rethink your whole relationship with students and become more of a facilitator and coach. Bring the problems to the students to decide rather than solving the problems yourself and bringing the solutions to the students. Make the design of the project itself part of the curriculum. It looks like you are giving up control, but you aren't. You still have ultimate control of things, but you have decided what decisions students are able to make, and you are holding them accountable for making them.
• The transition from being teacher-directed to student-directed takes enormous changes and can be frustrating because there are a lot of new things to learn. I'm trying to become as dependent upon my kids as my kids are on me. At the beginning of the year, kids are very dependent on me. At the end of the year, I want to be depended on them.
• I had to learn not to give the answers and to ask students more questions--I would want to answer the questions for them. I also had to learn not to tell students what to do. You also have to ignore what other teachers think of your chaotic class--you've got kids moving around, going to the library, going to the computer lab.

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• In our projects, we have a single Driving Question. This year it was: "Are people influenced by their society or is society influenced by people?" Students break this down into many smaller questions. They conference with us, and we have to approve their question before they begin. We ask ourselves whether the rephrased question will lead to the depth of understanding we are looking for. We keep sending them back to the drawing board until we think they have a subquestion that will work.
• Teachers must be comfortable with not answering the question. The main purpose for using essential questions is to stimulate students to ponder ideas and issues that are intrinsically complex, and to understand that the search for knowledge is ongoing and does not end when a unit or course is over.
• Every student needs to be able to relate to the Driving Question on some level. The question should elicit multiple perspectives that intrigue and engage a diverse group of students.
• I like to refer back to the Driving Question each day of the project. That way the question becomes a diagnostic for the project: are we making progress toward answering the question?

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• I have the appropriate standards on my desk at all times. Our textbooks predate standards by ten years; they are only a baseline of information; they contain the minimum students are supposed to learn. We intend our projects to teach students more than they would learn from simply reading the text.
• Standards are a part of my world. All teachers have to come to terms with the idea that they have to focus their teaching on frameworks and standards. I set up performance standards at the beginning of the project and then plan assessments. Determine where you want students to be. Then figure out what the indicators are that you can look for and measure.
• A project digs really big holes [into the curriculum]; students go deep, not broad.  Make sure students will be going deep into essential standards or important things they need to know.
• First I come up with an idea for a project. Then I think about what could go into it. The I look at the standards to see what should be covered. (I'm preparing kids for state tests and SAT's so I have to take state standards seriously.) I also look at SCANS and Art Costa's Habits of Mind. So I take my idea and ask myself, what do I want students to be able to do at the end of the project besides design a bridge?
• You need to check your standards to see what you have to cover during the semester. Then you can ask yourself, "What's the best way to cover this? Would a project work?"
• Standards are written as if everything were equal; that's not true. Before we begin a project, we go through the curriculum content for the year and prioritize what kids need to understand. Then we build projects around the content objectives where you want kids to have a deep and abiding understanding, or where a project can meet multiple content objectives.

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• Kids won't know what high standards are unless they see them. I try to figure out how to derive models of excellence. You can use the work of previous students. Or, you can use professional work: blueprints done by real architects or poetry written by a local poet. You have to have models, or kids don't know what they are working toward.
• I show them examples of what was done the year before. It boosts the quality of projects--kids want to do better than the kids did last year. I was worried that students would just copy what last year's students did, but seeing previous student work actually sparks more ideas.

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• Involve students in the planning process to the extent that you can. Teachers can do the planning in broad brush strokes and have students work out the details. Have a written outline of where you are going and a timeline of when you will get there.
• We begin by being clear what curriculum content the project is going to cover. Then we invite students to brainstorm with us. How might we approach this? What skills do we need to learn? This encourages students to buy into the project. Then we look at the different roles needed to complete the project, divide students into teams, and assign roles. We make contractual agreements and get explicit student commitments. Then we ask how we will know if the project is a success. This leads to rubrics that we create with the students. Student involvement changes over the course of the year. On the first project, the teacher does more, as the year goes on, students do more.
• For our government strand, we first brainstormed seven or eight potential project topics (e.g., homelessness, school facilities) with the students. We had a class discussion to set criteria for what we wanted to get out of the project. Then we formed expert groups to look at the topics, and each expert group considered whether a project on this topic could meet the criteria we had agreed to. Each expert group reported, and we narrowed the potential topics down to two. Then we voted as a whole class and selected the topic.

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• The best way to grade project work is to have a rubric. The rubric should be known in advance by the kids. Students should be involved in developing and refining the rubric. Students should be able to restate a rubric in their own words. Then, when working on a project, they know what they are reading for and trying to accomplish. They have a standard they can apply to their own work and to the final evaluation.
• Projects often fail because we (teachers, principals, parents) are satisfied with too little. We don't really push for academic rigor and an authentic learning experience. We need to push ourselves and our kids harder

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• We favor individual over group grades. Kids want to know how they are doing; they want their own performance rewarded.
• I have 75 percent individual and 25 percent group components to the grade. All students in the same group get the same grade on the final product. All along the way there are individual grades, including tests and quizzes, on important concepts.
• I do not believe in group grades at all. Kids don't like them because somebody can get an "A" without doing anything while somebody else might get a "C" after doing all the work.
• I weight group and individual parts of the grade equally. Students need to know that team results matter. If kids know they are going to be evaluated on a project as a whole, they will encourage each other to work.

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• We use a variety of assessment methods. We set up rubrics with students at the beginning. We use traditional assessments for written and oral work. We give group grades depending on how their team has done. We give individual grades depending upon students' individual contributions to their groups. We have students grade themselves and assess what they have contributed. We also observe them and rate their workplace skills.
• I use a variety of grading strategies. Everyone gets an individual grade, as well as a group grade. Every student grades every other student in the group. Written and other "academic" work is graded individually along the way using rubrics--it's not considered part of the project grade. The project grade focuses on SCANS skills, self- and group management, organization, and promptness, as well as the final presentation. The grade encourages students to look at the process of how they have worked together and what has been accomplished.
• It's a good idea to give so many grades on a project that the significance of one grade disappears. Use 15 dimensions to grade a project. Brainstorm these dimensions with students to make sure you've covered everything. Break the project down into many different areas. That way, students don't think of it as an "A" or "D" project.
• You don't give up testing, essays, or quizzes when you do projects. The important question is, what kind of information will they give you? I use quizzes, for example, to find out if kids understand things so I can push on. Kids will always need to write essays. Use multiple measures to look for both content and process outcomes. When you give students a description of the project, explain what will be an individual assignment (and graded individually), and what will be a group assignment (with each person in the group receiving the same grade). Also, have students grade themselves and other members of the team.  Have an audience at an exhibition grade students' work.
• Why should the teacher be the only judge about whether this is a good project? Students tend to be harsher that I am on projects? I blend their judgments and mine for the final evaluation.
• Don't just translate your rubric grade into A, B, C, etc. Use a wide range of criteria, including affective criteria, to balance things out.

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When I do a project, I allow enough time at the end in case you have to move back a due date. Don't have an exhibition as a final exam because if you have delays, there's not time for the exhibition.

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• If you just do projects, kids and parents will complain that the teacher doesn't know anything and is just having students do activities. You need tests, lectures, videos.
• We might spend 40 percent of the time in a traditional classroom environment and 60 percent in project work. Once you set a learning goal, you have to determine what instructional strategy will best meet that goal. Think about what works well in traditional education and what you don't want to lose. Sometimes lectures are appropriate and the most immediate way of communicating information to students.
• It works better for us if we give students direct instruction first to communicate the basic information they need to know to frame and begin the project, and then turn them loose to do the project. This speeds up the project.
• If I can give students needed information quickly (and save time for more important project activities), I'll do it. If a project requires skills and students don't have those skills, I'll remediate to the best of my ability. One time I stopped the project and did a structured reading lesson on how to look for content on the Internet.
• PBL is not a valve you turn on and turn off. It's a continuum. You have to develop baselines of knowledge, build inquiry skills. A project may be running all the time, but at some time during the project, students may be reading a textbook. There are times when PBL is the best way to teach a concept--to show how a system works, for example, or to develop teamwork. There are other times when it doesn't make sense to use PBL--for example, when you are teaching specific algorithms.
• I used to teach all of the content and then introduce the project as an application activity. This didn't work because students didn't retain the content and have it available when they needed it for the project. Now I begin with the project and give students a product they need to create. This creates a need to know.

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• Initially, it took me several hours of carefully thinking things through to plan a project. I had to decide what I wanted students to produce, what decisions they would make.  A schoolwide project is even more complex. You need several after-school meetings and need to plan during common preps. Use butcher paper to outline your ideas, record the logistics, and plan the assemblies and field trips. The more people involved, the more you have to write everything down.
• I'm a document person. I write everything down and keep big notebooks. I write down the essential question, then guiding questions, then content standards. I want to write down exactly what I want kids to be able to know and do at the end of the project. This makes it easier to keep on track and make sure students get meaningful things out of the project.
• I use a template to frame my thinking, and I write down my plans. We look at the curriculum, look at the calendar, lay out what we want students to be able to do and know, consider how the project is going to benefit the community outside my classroom, then plan backwards: how are we going to get from there to here?
• Don't underestimate the value of your students' thinking: don't preplan everything. Be open to student ideas and incorporate them. Let students tumble and learn from their mistakes instead of scaffolding everything in such a way that they are going to be successful. Design learning experiences where they can take more responsibility for the work of learning the content and applying the content outside of school. This produces students who are more resourceful and engaged in their communities.

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• Projects should not replace end-of-quarter tests or papers; if that happens , then a lot of things are due at the same time and it's counterproductive.
• Almost everybody does projects at the same time. Students complain that they have five projects due in the same week. Teachers should talk to one another and space projects out over the course of the year. This would result in higher quality projects.

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• I use parents as liaisons and get them involved in making community connections and finding out where in the community the project could take place. They have more flexibility outside the classroom. I also encourage older students to make contacts, talk to businesses, and use the phone and e-mail.
• Businesses and other community organizations often do not understand what schools and students are really like. They need to learn about the reality of classrooms before they can provide meaningful help.
• Any outside organization that wants to work with a school needs to come in and spend some time in the school and see the kids. Outside organizations need to understand the range of capabilities we deal with, the nature of discipline, and why schools are structured the way they are. It's nice to theorize but when they look at a group of 7th graders, they understand whether they are willing to help and what kinds of things they could do. It's frustrating to sit in meetings with people who want to help in the schools but don't understand kids.
• Not everyone makes an effective resource. Different individuals have different things to offer.
• If at all possible, meet with the people in person that you want to help you with your project. Figure out who is an expert, who can come into your classroom and engage students, and who is an expert better suited simply to answering questions--say via e-mail. When experts do come in, prepare students for them
• Train students to interact with community members. Students need to know how to get funding and support for future projects.

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• Parents are involved in summer and school-year course and project planning. We have a fall parent meeting (in addition to the regular back-to-school night) to discuss standards for student work and projects. We want the family to understand and buy into the standards we have set for student work. We send material home and stay in close touch with parents. There is a mentor dinner at the end of the third-quarter internship that all parents attend.
• I put the projects up on our school Website. I invite parents to the kickoff meeting where I describe learning goals and expectations. At that time, I tell them what I need from them and when the culminating event will be. It's important to be up-front and honest that this work will look very different from that of a traditional classroom. This kind of work will require students to make phone calls, write letters, talk with people in the community, meet after school, etc.
• I call each parent before the open house and tell them that I expect them to attend.
• We inform parents using a newsletter, and we put it on the homework hotline and on the Website. We send a letter home with the project calendar, a list of checkpoints that tells when different parts of the project are due, a list of standards by which the project will be graded, and a phone number to call if they have questions. We ask parents to sign the letter and return it so we know they are aware of what will be happening. We send a second letter home with an invitation to parent presentation night near the end of the project.
• At the beginning of the year, I send out a description of the project we're going to do and a parent volunteer slip. Although the students are doing physics projects, you don't have to know about physics to volunteer--parents could tutor kids in PowerPoint, for example. I always have parents view and critique the practice exhibition that takes place about a week before the final exhibition. Parents also show up for open house, and I talk about the projects and display those from previous years.
• We have conversations with parents around first-quarter grades. At that time, we go over what the program is all about. Parents have to understand what students are learning. There is a lot of misunderstanding: "They've completed their learning and now you're doing a project?" You have to show parents evidence that students are learning as they work on the projects.
• When talking to parents about projects, be honest about the tradeoffs you made about the breadth and depth of content covered. All teaching (and projects) require tradeoffs. Kids don't cover as much content if they learn the content in depth. Parents want some kind of a mix between breadth and depth. They don't want their kids' learning to be restricted to a bunch of facts. They want their kids to think and reason.
• Come clean with parents: tell them how you structured the unit to provide both breadth and depth and what you were willing to leave out.

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• Block scheduling is extremely important, as is having flexible classroom space and computers. We also have a system of permanent passes so kids can go down to the library and move around the campus.

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Let the kids get frustrated trying to answer a question that is beyond them, and then bring the expert in. The expert will be treated like a hero.

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• The schedule you lay out is never the schedule you follow. It takes experience to know how much flexibility to give students and when to move the project ahead. If projects take forever, kids lose interest and focus. You have to know when to tighten up and maintain deadlines and when to loosen up and say, let's take another week.
• When planning a project, set a certain number of days and building in 20 percent overrun.
• You've got to keep a flexible project schedule. The weather may not cooperate. Students may complete things faster than you expected. Sometimes kids think they are done and you don't. We've had to give extensions to get expert interviews or because of technology breakdowns. Ideally the project is the outgrowth of other kinds of learning, so you can always reinforce subject matter learning when you can't work on the project.

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• Common planning time, opportunities for structured reflection on project design, teacher research groups investigating student work and projects, and summer planning time are all important project supports.
• I found that a collaborative project worked the best when another teacher and I had the same group of kids in back-to-back periods (a de facto block). We also had common planning periods.
• We hold meetings after school and try to get as many teachers as possible to attend. Everyone has the opportunity to help design and implement the project. Our projects have four main disciplines: Mathematics, Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science. Together, we plan the schedule, the end products, the standards, the checkpoints, and the assessment strategy.
• I had to learn how to share early with other faculty at the school what we were doing. We showed them student work as a way to get into the conversation about teaching and learning. We had to allow dissenters to ask fair questions and had to give them honest answers. We were all used to doing things the way we wanted to as teachers, so we had to learning to work with each other.
• In our academy, we all work in the same physical area and are constantly talking about projects and educational reform. We have formal planning sessions on Wednesday (30 minutes) and Friday (30 minutes). We make adjustments daily.