The 6 A's of PBL Project Design: Academic Rigor

 

Aardvark, Automobile, Autonomy, Audience, Awesome, and AA (a great scrabble word associated with the lava flow of Hawaiian volcanoes) ...these are all great words and some get close, but they are not what we mean we talk about the 6 A’s of PBL Project Design.

We’re launching a series around the 6 A’s of PBL Project Design. This video will address Academic Rigor.

Your classroom time is at a premium. There is no time for a fun fluff project that kids love but doesn’t also move them toward your Ideal Graduate profile. At Magnify Learning PBL Workshops, we start with the standards to then build out an engaging real world PBL unit that gives learners a chance to learn and practice employability skills like critical thinking and collaboration.

And really, we didn’t get into education just so kids can be engaged. We want them engaged so we can teach them hard things they need to know to be successful in the next adventure. To this end, Academic Rigor is a fitting A to start with. Academic Rigor has to be a foundation of your PBL practice in order for you to achieve the best possible results for your learners and to spread PBL to the whole world.

Two key practical points on Academic Rigor: Standards aren’t bad. Standards, especially power standards, give us wonderful jumping off points to engage the community. Power standards are often selected because they are well used in the community and our learners' mastery of them will only help them during their next adventure. Courses with standardized tests are some of the best places to insert Project Based Learning. If you really want your learners to excel on a standardized test, you should employ an instructional model that achieves deeper learning and mastery of concepts. Our most clicked on blog is about a PBL in an English classroom (see link below) where the facilitators are using novels to move their PBL unit along. We also have a math blog describing the detailed standards involved in a Math PBL unit (see link below).

Academic Rigor should be at the forefront of our PBL planning. If it’s your first go at PBL, be intentional about the rigor level. If you are a veteran PBLer, be intentional about the rigor level. Honestly assess your PBL units and work to improve. None of us will be perfect, but we can all get better.

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