Putting it All Together: STEAM + PBL

Two big ideas in education today: STEAM and PBL. STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math and PBL stands for Project-Based Learning. So, how can these two ideas work together? Andrew Miller states in his article, PBL and STEAM Education: A Natural Fit, “With a push for deeper learning, teaching and assessment of 21st-century skills, both PBL and STEAM help schools target rigorous learning and problem solving.” He gives some suggestions on how they can work together:

• [Move] Design Challenges to Authentic Problems - Take a classroom design challenge that meets the STEAM goals and find a way to relate it to something the students know.
• 21st Century Skills - The 4Cs - creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication. These skills most common to PBL are a natural fit for STEAM as well.
• Integrated Disciplines - Marrying STEAM and PBL allow educators to fill gaps and capitalize on each philosophy's strength.

Charles R. Drew Charter School in Atlanta is making this a reality. The charter school is a STEAM-focused school and teachers are using PBL to make the learning authentic to the students.

Here’s how these teachers and students are working to make this initiative successful:

• Getting Started With Planning - Come up with one driving topic for each grade level that will be the focus of each quarter.
• Identifying Standards and What Students Need to Know - Look at state and national standards and identify how they can be addressed through your topic.
• Creating the Driving Question - Inform the question based on the standards, real-world application, and with the end in mind.
• Providing an Authentic Audience - Help students connect with their audience and relate to the problem.
• Making the Project Authentic - Connect the driving question to a local event or problem that impacts their students and their community and let them work towards a solution.
• Sustaining Inquiry - Connect your content standards to the project.
• Encouraging Student Choice and Voice - Let students come up a solution to the problem and determine the best way to present it.

Students at Charles R. Drew Charter School are interested in what's happening in the world and engaged in their own learning. The integrated approach of STEAM and PBL allow them to take ownership of their education and see how they'll apply it later in life.

Pepper Professional Development Courses and the Resource Library can help you create a more engaged and active classroom that includes STEAM learning concepts and can help with a Project Based Learning approach to instructional delivery. We’re adding new courses and resources regularly, so be sure to check them out.

Surviving the Week before Winter Break

We’re in the final days before Winter Break. Students and teachers both have worked hard all semester and are eager for time off and a break from routine. However, we still have a week of school before that break begins. Students are excited, and teachers, while also excited, may also be exhausted from extra activities, programs, and over-excited students. For many teachers, this may be the most difficult time of the year. How do we keep our students - and ourselves - motivated? One way to keep everyone engaged is the use of thematic lessons. Ben Johnson, author of Engage and Motivate Your Students Before the Holiday Break, believes that designing learning around a theme provides additional incentive for students to stay interested and engaged in learning. According to Johnson, “Projects designed to embrace holiday and seasonal themes -- and timed to coincide with the holiday schedule -- can relieve pressure on the teacher, enthuse students, and keep them learning and engaged up to the last moment.”

Good lesson plans and structure can help teachers make it through this trying week. There are other ways to make this week easier on students and teachers. Angela Watson, of The Cornerstone, gives 7 Teacher Tips for Surviving the Week Before Holiday Break, citing that the final stretch of the semester can be the one of the most difficult times to maintain order. Here are her tips:

1. Don’t build anticipation.
2. Resist the urge to ease up on your behavioral expectations.
3. Review your procedures and expectations.
4. Integrate high-interest projects and group work into your regular routines.
5. Don’t feel pressure to do all of the elaborate holiday stuff that other teachers do.
6. Keep the last day before break low-key.
7. Get prepared for January before you leave.

Your Pepper Learning Community can be a great resource for surviving the week before Winter Break. Utilizing the experience and skills of teachers from around the country can provide unique opportunities for networking and sharing lesson ideas and classroom management tips. Also be sure to check out your Pepper Resource Library for great tools and resources.

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Maker Education: Learning by Doing

Piaget once said, “Knowledge is a consequence of experience.” The constructivist movement, and more recently, project-based learning initiatives, have long proposed the need of an active, engaging learning environment for students. The difference in “Maker” classrooms is that students aren’t just using apps - they’re creating them. 

Maker education is more than just legos and building things. Sylvia Martinez, co-author of Invent to Learn, believes that mathematician, Seymour Papert, could be considered one of the “founders” of the Maker movement. According to Martinez, “Papert's constructionism takes Piagetian constructivist theory a step further toward action. Although the learning happens inside the learner's head, it happens most reliably when the learner is engaged in a personally meaningful activity that makes the learning real and shareable. This shareable construction may take the form of a robot, musical composition, paper-mache volcano, poem, conversation, or new hypothesis.” Creating from knowledge, the heart of the Maker movement, truly makes learning meaningful.

Maker education is not something that’s happening just in schools and classrooms. More and more hands-on learning centers and technology discovery centers are popping up in museums, art studios, and libraries. These hands-on centers, known as “makerspaces”, are taking these community resource locations into the 21st century.

Edutopia’s article, How the Maker Movement Is Moving Into Classrooms, provides an excellent resource of terminology and trends to help educators understand the Maker movement. I would encourage educators to check out this thorough resource for more information.

Your Pepper professional development Courses and Resource Library can help you transition to a more engaged and active classroom. We’re adding new courses and resources regularly, so be sure to check them out.

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Project Based Learning: Creativity and Engagement

Engaging students in project based learning activities can provide deep learning experiences. Project based learning, according to the Buck Institute for Education (BIE), is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an engaging and complex question, problem, or challenge. The BIE website lists the following essential elements that should be included in Project Based Learning designs:

• Key Knowledge, Understanding, and Success Skills - The project is focused on student learning goals, including standards-based content and skills such as critical thinking/problem solving, collaboration, and self-management.
• Challenging Problem or Question - The project is framed by a meaningful problem to solve or a question to answer, at the appropriate level of challenge.
• Sustained Inquiry - Students engage in a rigorous, extended process of asking questions, finding resources, and applying information.
• Authenticity - The project features real-world context, tasks and tools, quality standards, or impact – or speaks to students’ personal concerns, interests, and issues in their lives.
• Student Voice & Choice - Students make some decisions about the project, including how they work and what they create.
• Reflection - Students and teachers reflect on learning, the effectiveness of their inquiry and project activities, the quality of student work, obstacles and how to overcome them.
• Critique & Revision - Students give, receive, and use feedback to improve their process and products.
• Public Product - Students make their project work public by explaining, displaying and/or presenting it to people beyond the classroom.

During the 2013-2014 school year, Elizabeth Forward Middle School created a DREAM Factory by combining art, technology education, and computer science. In this project, students became entrepreneurs where they worked in teams to design, create, and market a new candy bar. Their final project was the creation of a 30 second commercial marketing their candy bar and their company that created it. This project, highlighted in the Edutopia blog, Finding the Sweet Spot: Creativity, Candy, and Commerce, is a bright example of well-designed and implemented Project Based Learning.
Project Based Learning has the potential to develop deeper learning and understanding for students, thus better preparing them for College and Career Readiness goals. (http://bie.org/about/why_pbl). Implementing this approach in the classroom requires a change in methods and preparation for teachers, but the result of student engagement and learning is often worth it.
Many of the courses available through Pepper will provide a foundation of understanding that will allow teachers to move toward a Project Based Learning classroom approach. Check out our wide range of Pepper Courses and our Pepper Resource Library to further your own professional growth.
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Project-Based Learning and the Common Core!

Many educators already have made a shift in the direction of Project-Based Learning (PBL) in recent years as research has shown just how effective it can be in broadening and deepening students' knowledge-base and in helping students develop connections between concepts and applications, and in improving their communication skills.

You may be wondering, though, just how project-based learning might intersect with the Common Core State Standards, and what resources might be out there to help educators ensure that their project-based learning strategies are aligned with CCSS.

This blog post from Edutopia.org, is a great place to start! In this post, "The Role of PBL in Making the Shift to Common Core," Sara Hallermann and John Larmer present six big ideas that help educators understand exactly how PBL and Common Core go hand-in-hand. The takeaway, as they explain, is that "Common Core has embedded within it some Big Ideas that shift the role of teachers to curriculum designers and managers of an inquiry process." PBL puts that inquiry process front-and-center, and encourages students to take ownership of what they're learning about.

For a more in-depth look at the connections between Common Core and PBL, you can check out this FREE PBL WEBINAR from ASCD.org. Led by Andrew Miller, the webinar explores the essential elements of PBL, and the best ways of ensuring that PBL units are aligned to Common Core. Be sure to check out the supporting resources, handouts, and slides!