(I joked with a Cohort 21 member during our last session at B.S.S. that my action plan may need to be an action plan for having an action plan. I think I have moved beyond that, but perhaps only just\u2026)<\/p>\n
At Trafalgar Castle School, our Experiential Learning Coordinator, Christina Schindler, recently initiated a fabulous school-wide programme based on The Rotman School of Management\u2019s iThink methodology for problem solving. For students in Grades 11 and 12, the methodology forms the basis for a cross-curricular independent research project. Students were to find curricular connections for their ideas to at least two courses that they\u2019re currently taking. This proved more difficult than we\u2019d all thought.<\/p>\n
I wondered if skills-based assessments were the magic bullet for making interdisciplinary PBL projects truly cross-curricular?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Students easily discovered that their ideas related well to, say, math and bio\u2013but not necessarily to Calc and Grade 12 Bio. Connections to disciplines were abundant. Not so connections to specific courses.<\/p>\n
As a potential solution, I suggested that students ask their English teachers if they\u2019d be willing to assess their projects from a communication perspective, either oral, written, or media. This \u201ccatch-all\u201d expedient was possible because of English\u2019s unique position of having an entirely skills-based curriculum. (I\u2019ll let you know how this works out!)<\/p>\n
Based on this experience, I wondered if skills-based assessments were the magic bullet for making interdisciplinary PBL projects truly cross-curricular, so as to not stress over the content as much?<\/p>\n
Can English contribute more to PBL assessments than solely communication skills? If so, how?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And, as an English teacher, I wondered if there could be more<\/em> for English to contribute to PBL assessments than communication skills (and obvious thematic overlaps)? \u00a0(I don\u2019t for a second suggest that strong communication skills aren\u2019t essential. I\u2019m merely curious if we as teachers and our kids as students of English can offer more?)<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s the kernel of an idea for a potential action plan for developing an action plan.<\/p>\n
Should I uncover other usefulness for we English folk in the PBL\/cross-curricular arena, I\u2019ll certainly proliferate. If not, I\u2019d like to focus on how best communication skills should be employed in 21st-century learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(I joked with a Cohort 21 member during our last session at B.S.S. that my action plan may need to be an action plan for having an action plan. I think I have moved beyond that, but perhaps only just\u2026) At Trafalgar Castle School, our Experiential Learning Coordinator, Christina Schindler, recently initiated a fabulous school-wide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7,8,9],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-plan","tag-action-plan-2","tag-cross-curricular","tag-pbl","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/alanmacinnis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/alanmacinnis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/alanmacinnis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/alanmacinnis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/alanmacinnis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/alanmacinnis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/alanmacinnis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/alanmacinnis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/alanmacinnis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/alanmacinnis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}