08 summer - zach, casey
musical instrument project

Prior to this meeting, both Zach and Casey had taught the first "draft" of the musical instrument project during the spring, and came prepared with videos to share of the students' final performances. We both had positive feelings about the concept of the project but realized that it was not real "Project-Based Learning" (PBL)... in which the project drives the students to learn the content, rather than being a summative assessment of content.

At this meeting, we worked with resource teacher Kevin Gant, an expert in project-based learning. We discussed our triumphs and tribulations, and concerns about how to modify the unit to better exemplify PBL strategies. We refined the goals and standards of the unit from the previous summer, based on what we learned from our experience teaching the unit once through; we developed rubrics to be presented to students, to help clarify goals and expectations of the project. We discussed student group contracts with Kevin, who directed us to his web site with example documents.

The a-ha moment for us was realizing that a rubric was critical not just to help the teacher assess the final products, but as a tool to guide student learning - giving them clues as to what content they would be responsible for, providing goals for their final product, and encouraging them to go beyond the "basics" and strive for excellence. The rubric also allowed us to illuminate common pitfalls that students might encounter in the course of the project.

documents and resources

next -->

(c) 2009 ronnster/oharanator productions