2. Super Bowl Sunday: PBL

2. Super Bowl Sunday: PBL

This we believe (NMSA, 2010).

*Students and teachers are engaged in active, purposeful learning. Active Learning

This we believe (NMSA, 2010) provides sixteen characteristics of exemplary middle schools. This blog addresses the second characteristic and falls under the category of Curriculum and instruction.

Middle school structures include: teaming, intramurals, exploratories, interdisciplinary instruction, and advisory as common tools. Our principal is encouraging us to engage in Project Based Learning (PBL). In order to assist us, she shares weekly activities that can be found on the following website: pblproject.com 

One of the resources our team looked at provided resources for engaging students in conversations about the cost of commercials, and provided a viewing of the commercial that won a contest (Death Wish Coffee) and will be televised during the Super Bowl. The theme of this PBL was on the Super Bowl.

 http://pblproject.com/page.aspx?pageid=PBL-ww-Super-Bowl

The language arts teacher taught six types of propaganda, and the social studies teacher had students analyze propaganda using political cartoons. The Exceptional Childhood teacher led a Paideia based on the reading of “Are Super Bowl Ads Really Worth It?” in the mathematics classroom. After discussions of mathematics and history, we had students work in teams to create their own thirty-second commercial during math class. Students spent two days, twenty minutes of each day, coming up with the type of propaganda they were going to display. They worked in teams writing and rehearsing their commercial. We used our phone to video the commercials and saved them to a folder.

When students are learning how to write, we use activities to stimulate their thinking, give them opportunities to brainstorm, write, edit drafts, rewrite, and ultimately produce their products. In every class, this should be happening. We chose to celebrate the products on Club Day (see Clubs Rock blog).

Club time lasts for one hour. During the second half of Club Time students saw their commercials in the auditorium on the big screen. Between each commercial, the language arts teacher asked for student feedback to see if the rest of the students could identify the propaganda used. We celebrated together as a team. Go Panthers!

Advice

1)   Students have a propensity to want to produce. When students engage in experiences that allow them to produce knowledge, research suggests they gain a deeper understanding of material, retain the information longer, and enjoy it more. During this activity, there were very few students off task, or in trouble.

2)   One of the things I realized is that students will take as much time as you give them. If you say, “You have one class period to produce this,” they will take one class period to produce the product. Concentrate their time!

3)   Allow them to see their products as a means of celebrating collaboration and productivity. It took thirty minutes to show all the thirty-second videos.

4)   Some students did not want their videos shown. If you have students who insist, consider alternative ways to allowing them to produce it. Perhaps they could have a private showing with you and/or your team mates. Listen to your students. Are they not wanting to show their videos because they are embarrassed or because of other reasons. (A legitimate reason would be that there are students in foster homes, and in protective services who do not wish to be identified. Know your students.)

5)   Finally, I do not recommend you post any of their videos on YouTube or Teacher Tube. They are minors.