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PBL: Careers and Questions - How I used a single-point rubric and technology to work over an old res

Nicole A. Bond
May 6, 2019
3 min read

Twelve years ago, I was finishing up my first year teaching. I developed a career research report with my guidance counselor. She came in and helped present and shared materials and resources with the students. I had the students write a seven paragraph report on the career of their choice using career encyclopedias in the library. It was a different time - when I had to sign out the computer lab and print out the articles for students to read. We had the internet, but not necessarily in the palms of our hands.

This year, I was afforded the opportunity to revisit this unit with a new perspective due to the passage of time, advancement of technology, and the change in grades.

Implementing the PA Career Standards is currently a goal at my district and others across the state, and I chose to revisit these standards by having my students do a little creation (creativity is currently one of my own learning goals). I pulled those standards, and merged them with the ISTE standards and my own 7th grade ELA standards with a research focus. With this combined focus, I adapted a single-point rubric thanks to Jennifer Gonzalez which really simplified my work with the students. You can find a copy of my one-point rubric (which I'll undoubtedly revise) here.

Students completed a checklist of activities, from taking an interest survey on PA Career Zone, to analyzing our curriculum guide at the high school (document for this found here), to finding out if robots will take their future jobs, to interviewing someone in their field of interest. They reached out to others via phone, e-mail, and even completed interviews in person. When they couldn't find them, I was hounding folks on my social media accounts. It was pretty 'epic.'

At the end of this preliminary research (my students were like, "Wait, we're not done? I thought the interview was it?"), I had each of them pose a question they still wanted to answer based upon what they'd discovered so far. Instead of the old research report, this was my big gamble. They had to create something (which was supported by graphics, included research with an MLA Works Cited, and included proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling, of course) and share it at our Showcase on May 3rd.

All students had access to the criteria for the project, and at this point in the year, many had experience with infographics in Canva or Keynote, some went to Google Slides, and still some created Google Sites, Adobe Spark Pages , and videos with iMovie and FlipaClip.

It was all sorts of fantastic.

And I invited parents, other teachers, and classes to come talk to my students about their creations. This authentic audience amplified their work. Each day they researched and created, and each day I'd remark, "Uh-oh - I have another parent signed up to see you at the Showcase" or "Looks like we have a class of 6th graders coming to see what you've created." Their response was almost always to redouble their efforts, practice and hone their projects and their presentations. At the showcase students gave short 60-90 second explanations of their process before sharing their project. I helped them out with this as well with this little graphic organizer and a little practice and peer feedback beforehand.

And that's what I discovered for myself during this little PBL adventure:

1. Students will work harder when they know there is a wider, more authentic audience consuming their material or asking questions.

2. Students will achieve and create WHEN you give them SOME restrictions and GUIDELINES but DON'T give them a 'recipe' assignment. (Thank you, John Spencer for literally posting this while I was working on this with students.)

3. Have deadlines, but roll with the punches. Let students resubmit, reflect, and correct up until the last deadline so that they can grow as learners. Having a presentation date creates a hard deadline for the final project.

4. Celebrate at the end. Enjoy the fact that they did it and let them enjoy it as well.

5. Don't let the kids that don't or won't detract from the students who do and will.

Here are a few pictures of the students actively engaged in their showcase last week: