(upbeat music)
- A big part of PBL culture
is that students work
as independently as possible.
They manage themselves,
their own work, their teams,
with as little intervention
from the teacher as possible.
- The ground gets saturated,
the land kinda moves into the grass.
- It ends up going into this box?
- Yeah, yes.
- Are you just gonna
print that out or draw it?
- We're gonna draw it.
- Cool.
- In the beginning of the school year
we've started building culture
by learning about the students,
so we have a project where
we learned about the students
but not only because they're
learning about themselves,
they learn about each
other but what do they know
about themselves so that they
can work better with others?
- One of the things that is in the world
is we work together on what
this world would be like.
So they create class norms, you
actually can see in my room,
they decide some of the
grading structure of the class,
they decide how the class is laid out,
they decide certain leaning strategies.
We experiment at different
times with different things
that they wanna try or
that I've heard and we try.
All of that to help them see that
this is only as good as what we make it.
- It has to do with the way
that teacher and students
interact around asking questions.
Who gets to ask the questions?
Are students invited to ask questions,
or do most of the questions
come from the teacher?
- We are now ready to create
our need to know list.
What we'll do is each group
will shout one question
and I'm going to capture
it on the sticky notes.
- Tell me what you have to say.
- [Student] I wonder if
it's only public schools
that have lead in their water?
- What are you thinking?
- I think so.
I think because public schools
are built off the tax payer's money
and private schools are
paid with the parent's money
so obviously they probably
have cleaner water than us.
- [Teacher] That's a
great choice question.
- One way teachers can model the culture
is by providing students
with sentence stems,
like during a critique protocol
and that way students are sort of shown
how they're supposed to talk
and think during a project.
- [Teacher] I want you to use this stem.
Others would say, pick a
different corrosive inhibitor,
is more effective because.
- When you're gonna give feedback,
it's always gonna be?
- [Students] Kind.
- [Teacher And Students]
Specific and helpful.
- So some of the ways
you can give feedback is
I notice, I like, I wonder.
- I really try to create
a classroom culture where
students feel safe to take risks.
And I think that's the
most important thing to me.
We do a lot of really
difficult thinking and writing
in my class and I also have
them, in every single unit
throughout the year, do something verbal.
So whether it's a Socratic
seminar or a debate,
or a mock trial, they have to
get up in front of each other
and talk a lot and that can
be really scary for teenagers.
And so I do a lot in the
beginning of the year
to create norms around
being okay with failure,
and taking risks and trying new things.
I tell them every single
day at the end of class
that I think they are
brilliant and perseverant,
and they work hard.
And I try lots and lots
of positive reinforcement.
You guys did an amazing job
today with these discussions.
I'm super impressed with your ability
to take information from the
text, ask each other questions
and help each other come
to a better understanding.
- So culture building is
something that happens over time.
It doesn't just happen once
at the start of a project,
and then you figure, well
the culture's established,
we can go on.
Culture building is an ongoing process
that involves the teacher
as well as the students.
(light music)
