Final POP Report!
Overview
Over the past four months, I went on a journey through the Stanford Model of Design and created a Project-Based Learning experience for my 4th grade Spanish students. As an Elementary Spanish teacher, I have the opportunity of teaching all grades K-4, and therefore have the luxury of designing my own curriculum that is cyclical in nature and focuses on topics of my choice or the student’s choice. I have done multiple hours of research and have attended workshops and professional development on Project-Based Learning, and sincerely believe it is a successful and motivating way to teach students. Therefore, my overall PBL goal is to take each one of my grade levels and turn their entire curriculum into either mini Project-Based Learning opportunities or one giant Project-Based Learning initiative that would cover the course of an entire year. All of my units for that grade level would focus on a specific problem within the community that students would help solve. The "problems" would need to be based on the specific Spanish vocabulary students will be learning, but ultimately all projects would involve student research and a presentation to a group of peers, another class, or the community. I think this would be one of the best ways to spark creativity and encourage student engagement and motivation. This is a topic I feel passionate about and believe my students would truly enjoy while at the same time learning how to improve their own community. For this specific Problem of Practice, I decided to start on a smaller scale and focus on creating one PBL opportunity for my students in 4th grade Spanish. I collaborated with two other Elementary Spanish teachers to create a Project-Based Learning experience for our 4th grade students on water issues in our community compared to the water issues in a specific Spanish speaking country. Let the design process begin!
Empathy
In order to find out more about my users (students) experiences, understanding, and feelings regarding water issues, I performed individual interviews, a survey, and introduced an interactive water game to collect observations. The goal of the survey was to have students emit an emotional response about water issues. The survey questions improved my understanding on how my students truly felt about how they use water in their everyday life, if it is clean water, how they get the water, and the importance of having water. Next, I interviewed random 4th grade individuals about their daily use of water; meaning what they use it for, how much they think the use, where it comes from, and what would happen if it were dirty. My colleagues also performed a survey and performed individual interviews on their own students, which allowed us to become an “empathy design team” and analyze are data across three schools. Finally, I performed a hands-on water experiment where students were given a limited amount of clean water and had to decide how to use this water. While students were performing the experiment I participated in it as well and collected observations on student’s reactions, their choices, and their reactions to using dirty water for bathing, drinking, and cooking.
Overall, the use of these research methods provided considerable insight about my student’s reactions and emotions towards water issues in their own home and in our community. From a design perspective, I have found that empathy is the ability to imagine yourself as the user of the design and create something that empathizes with the feelings of the user. The survey was a great tool to perform research because I was able to understand my student’s previous knowledge on this topic. From the survey, students developed deep answers about solutions to changing water issues including drilling more wells to access clean water, using filters, stop polluting peoples water supply, route more rivers towards civilization, and to stop using and putting chemicals on food/plants that go into the ground into drinking water. Additionally, during the hands-on water experiment, my students started bargaining with each other for clean water tokens and they started sharing them among the class to avoid anyone using the dirty water tokens.
Water Survey
Do you think water is important for everyday life?
How many gallons of water do you think you use a day?
Do you think it is important to have clean water?
What do you think happens when people don’t have clean water?
What type of solutions can we create to help prevent dirty water?
Definition
The reason I wanted to focus on Project-Based Learning opportunities is because I think they are one of the best ways for students to learn. However, at this time, there is a lack of project-based learning opportunities for students in my classroom. I have found them to be time-consuming to create due to the incorporation of interdisciplinary units, and they require time to collaborate with other teachers, which is hard to find. Although I have already created smaller learning units that are relatable to students, none of these units pertain to a student’s life in the community or to helping others. Overtime, this causes my students to become unmotivated and to be on a cyclical pattern on how they learn material instead of branching out and expanding their creativity, hence the need for some PBL.
My 4th grade students were the users of the design, and they will be presenting this information to other students in our Elementary School (audience). In regards to the learning environment and variables for this project, students were given various resources to help them obtain a clear understanding of clean water vs. dirty water and how these issues impact our community and the Spanish Country they chose. They had access to technology to create their presentation and the use of user-friendly websites to find information. Later, during the prototype mode, lessons were scaffolded to guide student thinking starting by introducing the water cycle, where clean and dirty water come from, and how we use water, etc.
Overall, with this PBL activity, students gained a clear image of why water is an essential ingredient for life, why it is important for our community, and why water issues are different in other communities. Most importantly, students were highly motivated to research and learn because of the connection to their own life. Students learned about where water comes from, how we use it everyday, and the impact of living somewhere without clean water. This PBL opportunity was a chance for student’s to cultivate meaningful discussions and develop a personal reflection on water issues in their own community.
Ideation
The incubation, brainstorm, and collaboration activities during the ideation mode allowed me to answer and eliminate some of the lingering questions about my project. I had the opportunity to map out how I was going to structure a 6 week, PBL activity. During this mode, I chose to create an “ideation” journal/notes before the brainstorm session with my colleagues. Each day I would jot down some ideas in the morning, and then at lunch I would look at the ideas and gauge the plausibility of it actually happening. Additionally, I was able to bring these notes to a brainstorm session with my fellow Spanish teachers, and use them as a guideline for our discussion. It was beneficial to start recombining and morphing new ideas based on my notes and their input. This ideation phase of design helped me develop a solid foundation and new strategies for differentiation and student choice for moving into the prototype phase of design.
Some of the essential knowledge I gained included the following:
- “Dirty water vs. clean water” activities to spark student understanding.
- Partner Research (on a Spanish-speaking country and their water solution)
- Presentations: 3 options (PPT, poster, brochure)
- Presenting – choose the class they would like to present too
- Water Charity – perform a fundraiser to raise $ for a water solution in a country
- Look for more opportunities for student choice while project is underway
Prototype
For the prototyping part of my problem of practice, I decided that an outline of my entire Project-Based Learning opportunity would be most effective in organizing my ideas. I chose to create a Google doc for this rough draft outline as a way to share information easily with my fellow Spanish teachers, and to make it easier to edit and communicate with real-time documents and information. From this document I was able to see a clear picture of how to scaffold the lessons for my students, from introducing the project with a hook, digging into the water cycle and how we use water, to eventually choosing a country and researching a water crisis in that country. After completing the document, I felt I needed something more user-friendly for students to be able to access websites and a “home base” for information about the PBL activity. With the help of my teaching partners, we created a website for students to easily access to guide them through this project. It gives an introduction about the project and clearly defines the task and process students will undertake. Once the project was underway, we made weekly additions, like adding websites students could access for their research, and providing some examples of how they can present their project. The creation of this website helped me strategize what information students needed versus what I needed. Overall, this Google Doc outline and student-friendly website became evolving resources that helped my implementation of this problem of practice.
Websites for students:
https://sites.google.com/a/apps.harpercreek.net/cleanwaterproject/introduction
Project-Based Learning Outline:
file:///C:/Users/Katie/AppData/Local/Temp/Temp1_PBLSpanishSpeakingCountriesOutline.zip/PBLSpanishSpeakingCountriesOutline.html
Test
The outcome of the project was for students to design or brainstorm a solution for their Spanish country’s water crisis. Then, they had to present their findings to another classroom in our school. Students also needed to relate their project to our own community’s water resources. Lastly, as a 4th grade unit, we will vote on one person’s solution and participate in a fundraiser to raise money for a water charity that can turn this solution into a reality. Overall, I believe this was a beneficial way to motivate my students learning while also relating concepts to real-world projects and problems.
I believe the testing mode can be compared to the informal and formative assessments teachers give students to check their understanding. And this is the approach I took when conducting my first user test. First, my students completed an assessment on the water cycle in Spanish. This assessment provided information on my students’ achievement and a way to reflect on the concepts students do or do not understand. I also believe assessments give you valuable insight about a user. They allow you to redefine and present questions and problems in a different way. And they should be modified and reworked frequently to fit the needs of students. During this test I was able to carefully observe my students while they were designing, and took notes on who was going to need more help, who needed further clarification, and where I needed to do some re-teaching.
For the second part of my testing phase, students had time to become familiar with the websites I had found to help their future research. This test allowed me to gain valuable insight on what students were interested in browsing, ranging from videos to water activities and to researching how to sponsor a child. This was a great opportunity to speak with individuals and to gain an understanding of my users focuses. I was able to see the countries students were choosing, what water solutions they were interested in, and the solutions they wanted to research further. Students were sharing great documentaries and informational videos they had found, and students were also researching how to sponsor a child who needed help due to the global water crisis.
Both of these user tests provided worthwhile information that will help me cater the focus of this project for specific user needs. From these tests, I was able to further my understanding on individual learners needs and how to assist them throughout this PBL process.
Conclusion
Learning about this process of design came at a great moment in my teaching career. I could feel myself starting to get complacent, and too comfortable in the way I was teaching. Being introduced to the Stanford Model of Design was a welcomed blessing. I believe this process of design goes hand in hand with how teachers should develop their curriculum. Each mode relates to a specific part of lesson planning and curriculum development; starting with understanding our users (empathy), stating objectives (define), creating and performing activities (ideate), developing a plan of action (prototype), and showing our knowledge in the end (test). By stretching my problem of practice over the course of a semester I was able to dissect each of the modes and was given time to learn the specifics, read articles on how they work, and reflect on my knowledge gained during the process. Additionally, I believe this process of design is a motivating way to promote creative thinking, collaboration, and student ownership and responsibility of their learning.
Lastly, over the course of the semester, this process of design allowed me to feel like a designer. There were irregularities and problems that came up in each mode related to my problem of practice, however I felt like I was developing the problem-solving skills to tackle these issues. While I think the design thinking process has a cyclical nature, I also think you could take many different paths through the phases and modify this process to work for you. I found the design process to be cohesive with how my own brain processes information, and I was comfortable going through the different design methods and techniques to reach my ultimate goal. Without this process, I think I would have struggled creating this PBL opportunity and would have been very overwhelmed and frustrated while creating the entire project. As a designer, it was exciting to see the development and changes within my project from the beginning to the end.
Below is the link to a PDF document of this report which includes an appendices.
file:///Volumes/KATIE/MSU/CEP%20817/Final%20Project%20Report.htm
