Supporting Literacy in PBL
Writing
Elements of a hands-on approach to writing instruction may be found in several of the accounts in this volume. See, for example, the reflection questions in the Millionaire project, the quick-writes, multiple drafting and peer critiques in the San Diego Field Guide and Vietnam projects, and the approach to peer review in the Machines project.
Writing and Reflection: Some Reminders
- Write often.
- Write for many purposes.
- Write in many forms.
- Write for many audiences.
- Share the writing as part of an ongoing conversation.
- Teachers write and share their writing, too.
- Start where students are; take a developmental view.
- Respond to student writing as real and purposeful.
In any project, the rule-of-thumb is to write often, for many purposes and many audiences. Projects afford real contexts for writing, not mere pretexts. The criteria for good writing vary according to the purpose. A newsletter article must be spelled impeccably; in a student journal, a too-intense concern for spelling may inhibit getting the flow of thought onto paper. Here are some general reminders for those who would introduce or refine writing in their projects:
1. Write often. Students need to practice, and to see purposeful writing as part of their daily routine. The project journal offers one way to accomplish this goal. It serves as a spur to conversation, a resource bank for project development, and a place to record important thoughts, ideas, and reactions. In assigning journals, it is important to strive for a balance between freedom and structure. Some students prefer to write on their own with minimal direction; others ask, "What am I supposed to write about?" Suggestions for writing should be presented so as to accommodate these varying student needs while addressing program goals for shared reflection (observations in the field, important learning experiences, etc.). Other routines can be laid over the daily journal routine, such as bi-weekly journal summaries, end-of-term reflections, and the construction of indexes, tables of contents, and lists of recurrent themes.
2. Write for many purposes. We write to think, to remember, to discover, to create and communicate meaning--not merely to demonstrate competence, though becoming a better writer is a certain by-product of regular writing. Every writing should have a use. Shorter writings may turn into larger products: work log entries, field notes and reflections may be displayed on presentation boards as "raw data" or adapted for publication, as in the San Diego Field Guide project herein.
3. Write in many forms. Project based learning calls for forms of writing unseen in traditional school work, including memos, inventories, orders, requests for information, incident reports, and training manuals. But since we aim for more than mastery of "business English," the range should extend beyond these, to include free-write exercises, maps, webs, chronologies, narratives, interviews, dialogues, instructions, requests, reports, presentations, newsletter articles, scripts, autobiographical fragments, stories, and poems.
4. Write for many audiences. One of the great advantages of project-based learning is that it insists on authentic audiences: workplace mentors, outside experts, clients, and the general public. Such audiences lend an air of interest and support that both inspires and validates student work. HTH students regularly display written work in their project exhibitions and in the community--in local poetry slams, open mike nights, local papers and professional journals, and, in the case of their original children's books, to elementary school children on and off campus.
5. Share the writing as part of an ongoing conversation. As students hear each other's responses to common situations, they discover new possibilities for their own writing. Such conversations take practice, with plenty of explicit teacher modeling.
6. Teachers write and share their writing, too. Nothing demystifies writing more quickly for students than to watch their teachers struggle to put words on paper--and to see them write for the same reasons as their students--to learn, to collect thoughts, to discover meaning, to communicate.
7. Start where the students are, and take a long-term, developmental perspective. Good writers develop over time. Good coaches try to convey the value of writing and equip their students with strategies for development over the long haul. Students develop as writers when they see the results of regular writing and tune in to what their peers are writing. The key is to ask for multiple drafts, honor students' present work, and let complexity and propriety flow from there, as students become more practiced and fluent.
8. Respond to student writing as real and purposeful. The first priority to identify themes and issues in the writing, and help students figure out what it is that they want to say. It makes sense to ask questions that might lead to more writing, expressing a reader's needs while leaving ownership with the writer. Students, too, can learn to point out strengths and ask salient questions, as we see in the lesson strands on nature writing and peer critique in the San Diego Field Guide project. Again, the principle of authenticity comes into play: we can take the same approach to student writing that we take to the work of professional writers in our reader response journals: what is this piece about? What moves me? How is the piece put together? What questions does it raise? Students who learn to respond to each other's writing in this way are picking up skills of reading and literary analysis.
Reading
Project-based learning lends itself to an apprenticeship approach to reading development, where the teacher as an experienced reader models good reading strategies for students. It is not unusual to see HTH teachers and students engaged in pre-, during, and post-reading strategies:
- Pre-reading activities
- Anticipation guides
- Vocabulary
- During reading activities
- Double-entry journals
- Chunking/charting the text
- Post-reading activities
- Reciprocal teaching
- Socratic seminars
- Mind maps / graphic organizers
Most important, though, is the motivation that projects provide as students read for information to create their product or examine models for the writing that they want to do.
A Professional Learning Community at HTH
At High Tech High, supporting literacy is not just the responsibility of the humanities teacher; each adult on campus is a model, a teacher and a critic. Our team structure at HTH allows for constant communication between humanities and math/science teaching partners. Our unique schedule, wherein teachers arrive at school an hour before the students, affords daily opportunities for curriculum planning and discussions of student work. A Tuesday morning humanities meeting may focus on systems of documentation. At a Wednesday morning all-faculty meeting, teachers from High Tech Middle may present their experiences and suggestions for holding student-led conferences (which include a large, written reflection component). And at a Friday all-staff meeting, we may hear twelfth-graders present their senior project research, then break into groups to discuss related common standards and expectations. Not only do we recognize that we all share responsibility for supporting literacy development; we are well-situated to do something about it together.