In November, Eatontown Public Schools (EPS), located in Eatontown, New Jersey, approached the Consortium with an exciting opportunity to help expand and develop project-based lessons across their Pre-K to 8th grade system.
EPS had introduced their teachers to PBL by participating in a one-day session offered by PBLWorks, and reached out to CPE to help extend and deepen the learning of educators in the district. The CPE team tailored the training to align with Eatontown’s distinct grade bands, developing resources and strategies for pre-kindergarten to second grade, third to fifth grade, and middle school.
What does this type of personalization look like in practice?
- Lower elementary educators explored place-based learning opportunities, along with stations, and constructive play–often in collaboration with their colleagues in art, music, and the library.
- Upper elementary sought new ways to make authentic connections to their content, revamping the way students collaborate and demonstrate their learning.
- And many of the middle school teachers focused on ways to manage the often “messy middle” of their projects, incorporating thinking routines for brainstorming, feedback, and reflection.
“I like the way project-based learning allows the student to choose a topic that interests them and requires the students to use various skills in order to complete the project,” one teacher shared.
Another teacher, who was just starting in her new technology position remarked, “I think that having a better understanding will help greatly with lesson planning and the projects that I do with my classes.”
The Consortium’s team tailored the training by leveraging educator pre-surveys, as well as several planning meetings with the district administration. The team even revamped the second day of training as the needs of the cohort evolved.
The Consortium’s PBL trainers, Aaron Altemus and Christy Kuehn, have collaborated with more than a thousand educators to help design engaging, authentic projects across nearly every grade level and subject area. As an organization, CPE is committed to personalizing professional development, while bringing on-the-ground experience and a deep toolbox of practical, ready-to-use instructional strategies. Like much of the PBL training and coaching that CPE has provided over the years, the EPS work is similarly focused on translating the high-level theory of PBL into day-to-day application and design.
Working through the core design elements of PBL on the first day, teachers began drafting project concepts interweaving key learning outcomes with student voice and choice, real world connections, alternative assessment opportunities and curiosity-driven questions.
When they returned for day two, teachers jumped right back into the design process by sharing feedback with their colleagues, using a modified thinking hats protocol; through this collaborative process, teachers suggested community partnerships and strategies for adapting and differentiating instruction, while praising the creativity and strengths of their colleagues’ ideas. They then backwards designed their lessons to ensure students’ demonstration of learning aligned with key learning outcomes, ultimately sharing their progress in small cross-curricular discussions.
The CPE team will continue their work with the EPS cohort, coaching individual teachers as they continue to develop, prototype, and refine their projects throughout the school year.
