Data supporting these views can be found at my PBL assessment blendspace: Visit my PBL Assessment Blendspace here
Assessment begins with the end in mind…
My Goals for a PBL unit:
- GOAL 1: Have students apply/learn content knowledge through situations that challenge students to think and create. By placing students in situations where they use content knowledge I can see what they truly understand and don’t understand to help them push the transferability of content knowledge. At the end of the year, when students answer the question “The most important thing Mr. Gensic taught me was…” I’d like students to state something like “biology is important/relatable/connected to our lives” or “there are multiple defensible perspectives on (biological) issues.” I think PBL helps reach these goals and I’ve seen evidence of PBL helping with these goals through end of year surveys.
- GOAL 2: Provide experiential variety for students. I am not PBL “wall to wall” mainly because of wanting to teach ALL of the standards and needing to have students be ready for common assessments. I am not sure if I ever want to be wall to wall PBL. Students learn from and enjoy PBL, but they also enjoy smaller lessons that might not be well connected to a Driving Question.
My assessment context:
9th grade biology, Penn High School (suburban, urban, rural high school of 3300 students), pretty focused on common assessments and End of Course Assessment (ECA) results, however we have visions that other forms of assessments (rubrics and real world application should be what students are working on). That being said, we have stressful meetings about ECA results and our upper level science class teachers want our freshmen students prepared for those classes as well, which may or may not be the skills that PBL embraces.
My Student Learning Objective (SLO), and therefore my teacher evaluation and job, is based on assessments that I must have in common with the other biology teachers. None of the other biology teachers do the same projects as my students (and I am not sure if I want them to). Therefore, PBL assessments make up well less than 30% of a student’s grade in my class. However, in my classroom, we don’t really ever go over the common assessments after students take them because I don’t want kids to focus on grades and being point grubbers for poorly worded test questions. I focus my time on giving feedback in the context of projects, labs, and presentations.
Assessment Large Ideas:
-For me with 9th graders, assessment is about 85% of the time, by the time I get to actually grading with a rubric I pretty much already know what the grade on the rubric will be. The other 15% of time is more direct instruction where I am launching students into their work or helping students make connections between the activities they’ve been working on.
-During PBL work, my class time is spent circulating between 7-8 groups of students, with longer stops at groups that are struggling more and where I need to be more directive. However, I stop by each group at least twice each 85 minute block to check in. I also use my upperclassmen classroom tutor to facilitate these conversations. I’ll have the tutor watch me have a conversation or two with PBL groups, then let that tutor work one side of the room while I work the other side of the room. If I didn’t have a tutor, I might use a very high achieving student within the class work the role as class facilitator.
-I believe I do not need to fill out a piece a paper or put a grade in a grade book to assess a student. I believe powerful assessment comes from listening to a student or groups of students and engaging in conversation and relistening to them until they get on point. Many times I use phrases like, “I think I understand your point, but I am a little confused here.” Or, “Your first step/slide/detail has these positive attributes and these negative attributes. What are you going to do differently for your next step/detail/slide.” I do a lot of listening and observing during group work.
-I view rubrics as setting a bottom for students to see what is expected. I then use in-class feedback to bring up the expectation on a case by case basis to that students are not fixated on the following of a rubric. While rubrics are a necessary component of projects, I believe fixation on following a rubric may undermine creative thinking.
Making sure students learn the standards?
I have daily warm-ups of 5-10 questions that connect the content of the PBL to ECA/common assessment style questions so that students get that practice for the ECA and they get to feel like they are learning vocabulary and content in the midst of the project. It is weird, but while doing warm-ups I sometimes have students comment toward the end of the year with comments like “Mr. Gensic, you teach us stuff everyday.” I think students like to become good at vocabulary because it is something more tangible to the historically lower achieving student. I feel without the warm-ups, some students might wonder if they are learning anything and question if I was teaching them anything.
I will also interrupt group work time early before the end of class to review major concepts and maybe do another rote vocabulary activity. Biology is word heavy, and after doing a lot of application level work in the PBL I want to give students the opportunity to touch vocabulary again before leaving my room (albeit at a recall/comprehension level).
Individual vs. Group:
There are components of my rubric that holds students individually accountable and accountable as an entire group. In the entire group portion is a smaller portion than the individual portion. Absences are also a pain. On the first day of group work, I require students to create and share with all members the files with which they will work. This avoids, “Sally is not here today, so we lost our work.” I usually respond, “Text her and have her share it with you.”
My written feedback is almost exclusive to the last couple of products of a project.
21st Century Skill non-content assessment: Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity....I very rarely deal with these on paper. At times, I have used the Buck Institute Collaboration Rubric to show entire classes that I know will struggle with collaboration simply to be proactive about heading off potential issues. Additionally, Buck Institute has lots of well designed rubrics if you are looking for them.
Ways I could probably improve and am looking for ideas about…
-Having students reflect and self-assess. I struggle with giving/finding classroom time for this.
-Assessing 21st century skills. I have a hard time justifying a lower course grade to a misanthrope who knows all of the biology. I would like to make these more of a focus in my classroom. I might make a poster for this.
