PBL in the Physics Classroom

This year The Frisch School is going PBL, so one of the things RealSchool is going to do is share how classes are adopting the model. Maren Scharf, a physics teacher at Frisch, has embraced the PBL methodology for her junior class.

A science course can obviously be very hands-on, as Mrs. Scharf was planning to make it, but committing to a PBL model meant incorporating additional elements as well. Here's a reminder of those elements:

The Driving Question and Need to Know

To arrive at a driving question she was satisfied with, Mrs. Scharf and I [Tikvah Wiener] searched the Internet for science PBL sites, particularly on the lookout for ones that taught the concepts Mrs. Scharf wanted to begin the school year with, speed and velocity. We found this site:

Teach21 Project-Based Learning.

We thought students would really connect with the driving question, which is:

How can forces influence motion to give athletes the winning advantage in a sport?

If you look at the Teach21 resource page, you'll also notice that the Project Design includes high-level and extensive content and skills that any physics teacher would be happy his/her students were mastering. One of the questions we constantly get asked by teachers is: how can I cover content while doing PBL? It's so important to understand that establishing content and skills -- which in PBL is called what students "need to know" -- is the first thing to do when creating a PBL unit. And once the content and skills have been mapped and a compelling driving question formulated, teachers then discover that the enticing question shows kids why the course content is something they "need to know."

Mrs. Scharf also liked that the driving question could be supported by sport science videos ESPN had made. What high school student isn't going to be engaged by course material that includes sports and ESPN videos?

Student Voice and Choice

Another element of PBL that Mrs. Scharf was immediately taken with was Student Voice and Choice. She saw it as a powerful way for her students to connect with science and see its importance and ubiquitousness in their lives. To start off the year, Mrs. Scharf reviews the Scientific Method with her students. This year, she asked them to make observations about a phenomenon that interested them. Students chose to observe the ways, for example, different ingredients and wand curves affected mascara. Because the science connected to something in their lives, the students' excitement level about the course rose. They said things like "This is really fun!" and "I'm looking forward to learning this year!"

Another way Mrs. Scharf gave her students voice and choice was in the mode of presentation they used to display their knowledge of the Scientific Method. Students made a Vine, a game, a Haiku Deck presentation, and more. Here's an example of a Haiku Deck presentation one group created:

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Joyful Learning

The student responses reinforced the notion that in PBL learning ends up being joyful, and Mrs. Scharf really wanted to build on that. As a result, when she wanted students to graph information, she took them outside and had them graph with chalk on the sidewalks in front of the school. This became an especially relaxing activity after the kids had been cooped up taking the PSAT's one morning. You can see from the pictures that something that could have been ordinary or even tedious now became fun and exciting:

Student Voice and Choice in Science Literacy

Another aim Mrs. Scharf had in her course was to develop her students' science literacy skills. In the past, she's used the course textbook to get kids reading about science, but she admitted that even a science lover like her found the textbook boring. Instead, she decided that Friday would be Science Literacy Day and that her students could use one of three websites on which to explore and find an article they would then summarize in a Science Journal they'd keep. Over the course of the semester, once students became familiar with the activity, she'd have the students write their entries on a blog and therefore learn as well digital literacy skills. The Science Journals would also then have more authenticity as, on a blog, they'd be for public consumption.

Here's a site that we think is much more exciting for students to explore than a traditional textbook!

Science News for Students

And again, because students get to choose the articles they write about, they feel much more invested in their work.

To Recap

This post focused on a few key elements of PBL:

The Driving Question

The Need to Know: Content and Skills

Student Voice and Choice

And we also saw that employing PBL led to more joyful learning and greater levels of student engagement. In fact, all the Frisch teachers now using PBL report that their students are more engaged than they've ever been. We'll continue to report on Mrs. Scharf's as well as the other Frisch teachers' progress as they adopt Project-Based Learning in their classrooms.

Additional Resources

1) RealSchool has a PBL and IBL (inquiry-based learning) resource page on our blog. Check it out:

RealSchool's PBL and IBL Resources

2) We always love edutopia, which you should explore to your heart's content (that may take awhile). To get you started, here's a post on Debunking Five PBL Myths.

3) The Buck Institute of Education is another site we're constantly visiting for PBL ideas, particularly for rubrics. You can check out some of those exceptional rubrics here.

The Possibilities in Joyful Learning

“Man's maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche (with thanks to Frisch teacher Mr. Joshua Gotlieb for pointing us to the quotation)

The school year has begun, and many parents are no doubt rejoicing about getting their kids back into a regular schedule. Nothing captures that parental feeling better than this famous Staples commercial:

However, we hope students, too, are pretty excited about learning. In fact, joyful learning is something we really value in RealSchool and something we try to infuse into the activities we plan and the classes that we've "RealSchool-ed." Of course, at MIT fun in learning can be seen in the pranks that are part of the school's culture. Check out this video about the hacking culture at the university. In fact, one of the first points the book Creating Innovators, makes is that PLAY is a key part of the learning process. The book quotes Joost Bonson, a lecturer at the MIT Media Lab, who says:

Look at the tradition of pranks here at MIT. What did it take to put a police car on a dome that was fifteen stories high [one of the most famous MIT pranks], with a locked trapdoor being the only access? It was an incredible engineering feat: They had to fabricate the car, get it to the base of the dome without getting caught -- and then the real challenge was to get it to the top of the dome, and get yourself down without getting caught or hurting yourself. In addition to everything else, you had to track security, create diversions. To pull that off was a systems problem, and it took tremendous leadership and teamwork. (27)

Creating Innovators also quotes Alison Gopnik, author of Scientist in the Crib, Philosophical Baby; professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley; and an internationally recognized leader in the study of children's learning and development. We were especially taken with what Dr. Gopnik said, given the exhibit we're planning for the Aseret Yemai Teshuva, the Ten Days of Repentance. We're juxtaposing student-collected verses from Devarim, Deuteronomy, about the possibility of repentance and bettering the self with students' favorite inventions from the MIT Media Lab. Frisch seniors learned about the MIT Media Lab in their summer reading book, The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices:

Dr. Gopnik writes:

We've found out that even very young children can already consider possibilities, distinguish them from reality, and even use them to change the world. They can imagine different ways the world might be in the future and use them to create plans. They can imagine different ways the world might have been in the past, and reflect on past possibilities. And, most dramatically, they can create completely imaginary worlds, wild fictions, and striking pretenses. 

Conventional wisdom suggests that knowledge and imagination, science and fantasy, are deeply different from one another -- even opposites. But the new ideas . . . show that exactly the same abilities that let children learn so much about the world also allow them to change the world -- to bring new worlds into existence -- and to imagine alternative worlds that may never exist at all. Children's brains create causal theories of the world, maps of how the world works. And these theories allow children to envisage new possibilities, and to imagine and pretend that the world is different. (26-27)


Tony Wagner, author of Creating Innovators, adds: "How do children learn such skills? In a word--through play" (27). 

So as we consider the possibilities of renewing and reinventing ourselves and the world, we should also keep in mind the vital role that play has in our lives and should have in our classrooms. We hope all students get to experience a year of joyful learning. 

Here's a sneak peek at the exhibit we're preparing, and thanks to Frisch Chumash teacher Mrs. Yael Goldfischer for having her students comb Devarim for quotations that inspired them to think of change, renewal, and repentance:

Frisch senior Eli chose a verse from Deuteronomy about the remission of debts
in order to show growth through economic renewal 

Another senior, Melissa, created an illustration of her favorite invention
from the MIT Media Lab, the iSet, which is a tool to help
those with autism to recognize facial expressions

For more on Devarim, click here. 

For more on the iSet, click here.