The Knowles Academy offers state-of-the-art professional development experiences for teachers. All Academy courses are designed and facilitated by experienced teachers who understand the complexities of teaching in today’s world.
Through this Knowles Academy course, math and science teachers will build their own capacity for planning and implementing projects that powerfully situate complex content and practice standards within real-world contexts.
PBL: Project-Based Learning for Rigorous Math & Science Instruction
Understanding math and science enables citizens to make critical, informed decisions that support individual wellbeing and civic participation. We see project-based learning (PBL) as a highly effective way to address these challenges. In order to harness the potential of these courses to improve the lives of all students, teachers need specialized support in leveraging PBL in math and science.
In our three-day PBL professional development course, math and science teachers will build their own capacity for planning and implementing projects that powerfully situate complex content and practice standards within real-world contexts. We will share a Project Planning Pyramid Framework and tools to strengthen the disciplinary content and practices present in projects, in order to help support all students in accessing rigorous math and science instruction in PBL courses.
Course Highlights
- Engage in PBL activities as a teacher, as a learner, and as a PBL teacher of math and science
- Produce a skeleton of a PBL-ified project for their course that includes a coherent content storyline and a disciplinary practice pathway
- Leave with a plan for implementing their project, including tools and resources to guide planning and instruction, and support for building a network of PBL math and science teachers, at their school and beyond
Agenda:
Day 1: Leveraging PBL for rigorous math and science learning
- Engage in project planning elements (i.e., entry event and end product brainstorm) as a learner
- Consider and understand the Project Planning Pyramid
- Explore tools for backwards planning projects around complex math and science standards
- Generate Need-to-Knows about planning rigorous math and science projects
Day 2: Designing projects for rigorous math and science instruction
- Build a coherent storyline for math/science content ideas across the project
- Build a coherent pathway for students to develop and use math/science practices across the project
- Revisit and add to the project planning template
Day 3: Refining a project for rigorous math and science instruction
- Receive peer feedback to refine the rigorous math and science content ideas in your project proposal
- Develop support systems for continued growth in designing rigorous project-based learning
- Finish constructing an outline for a project to run in your context
Academy Services
All Knowles Academy courses can be customized to meet the specific needs of schools and/or districts. Please use the below form to request information about custom services.