Personal Research Projects (PRP)

Several years ago, while attending the annual NELMS conference in Providence, RI, a few of us spent some time at a cutting edge school known as the MET. For me, one of the most interesting features of this school was the emphasis on an ongoing personal research project. Students conducted research on a question of their choice, periodically presenting their latest findings to an audience of teachers, classmates,  and on this one day, me. While intriguing, the resumption of middle school business led me to set this novel approach on the shelf.

It's finally time to dust the idea off.

This spring, I have been planning next year's customized learning program, applying things I've learned the hard way this year and heard or seen from others as well. Along the way, I've found that one of the challenges of working in a classroom heavily grounded in standards is that those standards tend to isolate content. One of my colleagues, who coincidentally visited the MET with me way back when, referred to these separate content groups as "silos".  The point that this silo-ization was never the intent behind standards based initiatives was well taken. If only something could be found to bridge these content barriers. One answer, that I plan to employ starting next fall, is to have students engage in Personal Research Projects (PRPs).

PRPs should be a good way for students to apply a fair measure of their learning from the ELA Common Core, be even more fully engaged in our individualized classroom, and be another catalyst for a positive learning culture. The keys to PRPs that I have identified so far are as follows.

• PRPs need to be based on students own higher order questions that require them to do something interesting (for them) from building the perfect theoretical Major League Baseball team using players throughout history to predicting the next must haves of the fashion world.

• PRPs need to be presented regularly. This was my favorite aspect of what I saw at the MET.  First, a young man shared his learnings and evolving insights about caffeine as a potential performance enhancing drug. Then the magic happened. Members of the audience shared their views, raised connecting questions of their own, and shared their own insights. Then the principal concisely packaged the questions that had been raised and laid out the rough plan for what the student needed to do prior to his next presentation. It was clear that the principal guided his recommendations using statements from viewers and required academic content. For example, I remember the student being asked to investigate the chemistry of coffee to a greater degree.

• PRPs need to be ongoing, long-term efforts. I love this aspect as students rarely have the opportunity to really dig deep in school. Not only should a PRP provide this opportunity in a way that helps the student meet required standards, but it's a perfect fit for our middle school's two year looping cycle. Imagine the wealth of insight a student should be able to share after engaging in two years of research!

I'm hopeful as I look toward a future of PRPs as a part of our customized learning approach. It makes me wonder if someday I will look back in wonder at how PRPs gradually became the program itself. In a way, that is my own Personal Research Project that I have the rest of my career to pursue.

Planning The Path: The Role Of Sequence

One of the difficult decisions I still need to make for next year is whether or not I should prescribe a curriculum path for my students. In this year's MCL attempt, I have used a preplanned curriculum sequence for students. Students have had the option of working toward meeting the language arts or social studies standards, but within those content areas, there has been little choice when it comes to what to do next.

The question is, is this okay?  And, even if it's okay to prescribe a curriculum sequence, is it the best way to engage young adolescents?

At worst, a prescribed curriculum sequence hasn't done much if any harm. It certainly has been convenient to follow the classroom spreadsheets as they have filled one box/chart at a time from left to right. It has also been convenient to analyze the progress of individual students. I could just note the target dates for each standard to be met and see where each student was sitting on the curriculum path at that particular moment. Some students benefited from the ease with which they could note exactly what the next step should be. In short, students weren't really any worse off than they would have been in the years before MCL.

There was one point in the year, however, where the prescribed sequence presented a difficulty. For much of this school year, a prescribed curriculum sequence seemed of little consequence.  Students worked at a reasonable pace, some faster some slower, but all relatively engaged with the content. The first hints of a problem arose when the majority of my students found themselves simultaneously locked into two major undertakings. The first task was the reading of a teacher selected novel, often a challenge of focus for sporadic young adolescent interests. The second was a rather lengthy and brain wrenching Civil War unit. This was an error on my part as I failed to realize the likelihood of these two tasks falling together. It was an even greater error on my part to fail to realize that this perfect storm was likely to take place in the unfortunately month of March, the month where all exciting curriculum goes to die. The result was predicable - slowed progress, an increase in behavior issues, and all of this had to have a negative impact on the learning of my students. Perhaps this all could have been avoided had I allowed students to self select their curriculum sequence. That might have allowed some students to step away from a piece of content, returning to tackle it at a more beneficial time. Students did resume a better pace after they had fought their way through those two tasks which would seem to indicate that the two tasks and the month of March were largely to blame.

This is another one of those issues that can be looked at through different lenses. A narrowly focused lens would reveal the benefits of presequenced curriculum within each unit of study. This is a bit of a no brainer as the whole idea of a unit of study is for related content to be developed and unified into greater understanding over time. However, a different picture is revealed when using the wide focus lens of unit sequencing over two years. In  many cases, the units do not necessarily need to be tackled in a common sequence.

At this point, I am leaning toward opening more of the sequencing decisions to students. I will likely present a curriculum path with optional detours available for students. There is definitely more thinking to be done about this before next fall arrives!

(Not So) Quiet, Please

One of the challenging aspects of middle school teaching is that each day is filled with so many contradicting expectations. One that I've wrestled with this year is the ambiguous expectation for classroom quiet.

In education circles, it is often viewed as a positive if a classroom is quiet.  Indeed, there are times when a quiet classroom is evidence of engaged learning. However, this is not always the case. There are times when the presence of classroom clamor is actually a sign of learning rather than off task behavior.

This legalization of noise is especially applicable to the MCL classroom. At any given moment there are individual students who may each be working on a completely different task if not standard. Since not all tasks are created alike (some require conversation and physical activity while others require silent reading and written response), it is reasonable to expect varying levels of noise in the MCL classroom.

It took me awhile to sort this out this year. At times, I have pushed a little too hard for silence as students have worked through the standards. After awhile, however, I came to realize that the vast majority of the few conflicts I was having with students involved the issue of silence. My excessive expectations for silence were actually a big part of an evolving classroom climate problem. Eventually, I realized this and pondered the real issue more carefully.

The first question I asked myself was why I felt it was so important for students to be quiet. There were two answers to this question. First, I was still hanging on to the old adage that claimed, "Children should be seen and not heard." I simply had to make the choice to let this outdated view go. Aiding me in this effort, was the wealth of pedagogical research indicating the value of dialogue and movement in the middle school classroom. This made sense to me.

However, I found that there was a second and more noble reason that I had become the Quiet Czar of Room 108. While it was true that some students needed to converse and move about to best meet certain standards, there were also students who required quiet to complete selected standards, particularly those requiring reading. If the volume spigot were to be opened, would this type of student learning be a casualty? Obviously, I needed to do more than just taking my iron hand off the volume knob.

It was then that I considered the school, rather than just the classroom, as a place of learning. I began offering students the option of working in the library if they required silence. Some took me up on this; others hadn't minded the noise at all and were able to engage in focused tasks despite the ruckus. The hallway was another oasis of quiet, though not quite as distraction free as the library. A third option was the local community of classrooms that made up the wing. I knew the teaching schedule of my neighbor quite well, and he was more than willing to accept some silent workers from time to time.

While the jury is still out, I have noticed a shift back toward a more positive classroom environment. The key seems to have been that I needed to work WITH my students rather than AGAINST them. And so my students have taught their teacher another lesson!

The Impact Of High Stakes Testing on MCL

Testing time is here again. The idea of gathering more data is a noble one, but unfortunately, high stakes testing can have some negative impacts on the MCL classroom. Here are two that I've found particularly troublesome.

Curriculum Sequencing: In a utopian scenario, students would have the freedom to move through groups of standards in the order of their choice.  In other words, a student would be allowed to tackle the Measurement Topic of Informational Reading in September, November, May, at any time of year. Unfortunately, high stakes testing puts pressure on teachers in an MCL classroom to adhere to a tighter sequence of instruction. For example, if there are certain skills/content that are stressed in a mid-fall assessment, a teacher might feel pressure to ensure that students engage in that content just prior to the testing. This makes sense because, even if two students have learned the content equally well, if only one of those students engages in the content immediately prior to testing, that student is more likely to have easy mental access to the knowledge/skills that are being tested. Another way to think about this is that a student might know what he/she had for dinner last night, but that same student might not remember what he/she had for dinner last month even though the student did know the content (the menu) in those few weeks after eating. Like an old phone number, content is simply harder to retrieve as time passes. Therefore, it makes perfect sense for teachers to focus on tested content just prior to testing. However, the result is that a layer of student choice is stripped away which in turn can negatively alter engagement.

Curriculum Stratification: Back in the utopian world, all content is equally valued in general, with some content being valued more or less by individuals. In the reality of high stakes testing, some content is given higher value than others. Teachers know full well that math and English are at the top of the heap when it comes to national priorities, followed closely by science.  The rest, including social studies (the study of which was ironically one of the primary reasons that public education began in the United States), are valued less. How is this message sent to schools? Through testing requirements and the lack thereof. I faced this pressure this year in my MCL classroom. I found that several students were spending "too much" of their time focusing on social studies content instead of spending more of their time and effort in their study of English. I resisted the temptation to force a redirection on the students but can't help but worry that their reading scores on spring assessments may be negatively impacted. For now, the best I can do is try to merge the literacy and social studies content to the extent possible without turning off to social studies those who struggle with literacy. In other words, I'm feeling pressure to work the system instead of having the system work for me.

Catalysts For 21st Century Learning

Too often, educational technology is more about the technology than about education.  This is unfortunate because technology can be a powerful catalyst in the pursuit of educational progress.  Here are two ways that technology can assist the classroom purpose.

• Learning Profiles (ePortfolios): With the wide range of media available to students today, there is little excuse for not having students electronically create, sort, store, and present examples of and reflections of their learning. Google Sites is a fantastic tool for this! As part of Google Apps, Google Sites allows users to generate their own web pages. These pages can be kept private or shared in a variety of ways, depending on the goals and security needs of the user. Perhaps best of all, Learning Profiles can take on some of the features of Facebook profiles pages. Students can upload photos (or themselves and/or projects) and other files. They can also author their own blogs within the moderately protected environment of a Google Apps School District Account (helpful for districts that are required to archive and limit access to student content). To ramp up the interactive aspects of this, students can share their Learning Profiles with their teacher(s) and in some cases with each other (again mimicking the familiar format of Facebook that is so much a part of adolescent life these days). It is even possible for students to view and comment on each other's Learning Profiles. Finally, students can use their Learning Profiles as a resource to drive parent conferences at any point in the year. With students learning all over the map in a Mass Customized Learning classroom, this individualized tool makes the record keeping, reflection, sharing, and feedback of the 21st century classroom more practical. (Note: I am in the early stages of implementing this with my students. I'm hoping to have Learning Profiles fully implemented in the fall!)

• Classroom Management Software: Useful tools like Moodle and Studywiz are changing the way some teachers and students do business in the 21st century. These software packages allow teachers and students to deliver and receive content in a variety of forms. As a simple example, a teacher can post a document for students to read and an assignment for student response. Students respond electronically and then receive prompt feedback from a teacher responding to their response, and the process of learning continues. Videos, documents, links to resources, audio files, embedded games, models, and more can all be delivered using Moodle or Studywiz. Perhaps, "delivered" is even too limiting of a term.  This content is not delivered like a worksheet from a teacher; rather, it is on demand whenever the student needs it. Also, as this use grows, so do the available options. The makers of Infinite Campus, a widely used grade reporting software package, have introduced advancements that now allow students to submit content. (Note: This software has been one of the keys to making Standards Based and Mass Customized Learning a practical reality in my classroom.)