How to engage in PBL and address standards?

When the Standards Don’t Align to PBL

There are certain standards that simply don’t fit well within a PBL framework. It’s not that these standards are less authentic or real-world. It’s just that they lend themselves better to other frameworks. In general, these are the standards that:

• improve with repetition and daily practice
• focus on discreet, measurable skills
• require significant direct instruction and guided practice
• tend to be individual endeavors

In language arts, these standards might include reading fluency, blending, and phonics work. In math, this might involve math facts and basic computational understanding. In social studies, this could involve discreet skills in studying maps. In art, PE, and music, these are often skill-based performance standards that simply require daily practice.

As a teacher in a PBL unit, you can integrate some of the skills practice into a larger project. For example, you might do a goal-setting and video project in PE that integrates performance standards or you might integrate map skills work into a larger PBL unit on World War II (a more topic-driven PBL unit). Other times, you might take 5 minutes out of a class period and simply practice a more repetitive standard. For example, in a language arts class, students might do blogging projects but take 5-10 minutes to do a daily fluency activity. The key idea here is to recognize which standards don’t fit well within a PBL unit and instead require drill, practice, or repetition. However, often our standard do fit well within a PBL framework.

How to Align Standards to Projects

People often debate about whether we should be process-driven or product-driven in project-based learning. But I think there’s a third option. We can be learning-driven. In other words, we should start with the question, “What do we want students to learn?” and let that drive the process and the product.

At times, this looks very product-focused. Ask a student in the midst of a NaNoWriMo project (where they create a novel in a month) and they are focusing on that end result of a finished novel. True, the process is important but they might just deviate from it a bit. By contrast, a student in a design thinking project might begin with empathy toward a group and only later, after working through the process, hit a place of ideation and prototyping. But regardless, you as a teacher, will be focused on what they are learning through this journey.

PBL is not a license to ditch the standards or take a break from real learning. It’s not the same thing as a pizza party or Field Day. As educators, we need to make sure our projects lead students to a place where they can master the standards. But how do we actually accomplish this?

How do you do PBL when you have a ton of standards to teach?

Whenever I mention Geek Out Projects or Genius Hour, people ask, “How do you get away with teaching whatever topics you want? Don’t you have a ton of standards you need to teach?” People assume we have added an additional project to an already packed plate. But that’s not how it works. We aren’t adding anything. We’re re-arranging the plate in a way that honors student voice and choice.
The key is to tap into content-neutral standards. For example, in our Geek Out Blogs, my middle school students had to make sure that their blogs included persuasive and explanatory texts. Here are the two main standards we used.

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.1: Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.

Students also engaged in research:

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.7: Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

They moved through the entire writing process:

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1-3 above.)
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.5: With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of Language standards 1-3 up to and including grade 8 here.)

They also published their work to the world, both in writing shorter and longer posts:

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.6: Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

This project included nearly every single Common Core Writing Standard in the first few weeks of school. Notice, also, how none of those standards mention specific topics. These were all topic-neutral standards, which meant students could choose skateboarding or fashion or history or video games and they’re still learning the same standards. As long as they were practicing discreet skills in reading and writing, they could choose their own topics. This was an interest-driven approach to PBL.

Our Tiny House Projects, by contrast, required students to master specific conceptual standards with the freedom to use multiple modalities. We combined volume, surface area, and proportional reasoning with standards around budgeting and finance. This was a problem-driven approach with a tight focus on specific concepts.

A little nuance here. Even in a project-based learning unit, you might still need to teach some specific skills through direct instruction. I still had to demonstrate how to find the volume and surface area. We also practiced using proportional reasoning to solve spatial problems all around our school. However, I integrated direct instruction and skill practice into the project rather than taking a “teach first, project second” approach.

Connecting the Standards to the PBL Framework

Notice in the previous two examples how the types of standards required two vastly different approaches to project-based learning. That’s not a bad thing. There isn’t one single, perfect PBL approach. Sometimes, the best option is an open-ended topical project. Other times, it’s more inquiry-based. Still other times, you might choose an empathy-driven design thinking framework.

Check out the following table to see the connection between the types of standards you teach and the corresponding PBL approach.

Note that sometimes you will use a hybrid approach. For example, I have combined elements of inquiry-based learning when I had students do interest-driven PBL. Many of our design thinking projects also had elements of problem-based PBL. And every single PBL approach had elements of product-driven PBL. So, there is always going to be some overlap between the models. However, the key idea here is the word driven. What is the key driver in the project your students are working on?

If you’d like to learn more about how you can plan each type of PBL unit, you might like the PBL Master Course.

Free Templates for Planning PBL

The following are some helpful PBL unit planning templates.

 Download the Guide for Planning Self-Directed Projects

 Download the Challenge-Driven PBL Unit Plan Template

 Download the Empathy-Driven PBL Unit Plan Template

 Download the Inquiry-Driven PBL Unit Plan Template

 Download the Interest-Driven PBL Unit Plan Template

 Download the Problem-Driven PBL Unit Plan Template

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