I’M BACK! And I’m doing a for-real PBL project that I started planning in Hawaii! (Well, technically before Hawaii, since it’s the one I shopped to NFLRC to GET to Hawaii.)

Here’s the thing, though. I’m at a new school again this year, mostly because things just fell into place. So, you know, there’s an adjustment phase. Also, I’m suddenly hosting an exchange student from Spain for the first time this year, again, also mostly because things just fell into place. Plus there’s still Wine & Design and scouts and now parenting a second grader AND a MIDDLE SCHOOLER…

What I’m trying to say is I don’t have a lot of time.

Fortunately, I had done some resource gathering for the inquiry phase of the project to equip a local business with children’s menu placemats back in Hawaii. UNfortunately, I hadn’t really fleshed out what I was going to do WITH those resources as of about 5AM Wednesday morning.

So here’s the plan I threw together:

1. Print 7 infographs

It’s as simple as ABP: Always Be Pinning. I started searching at the NFLRC workshop and would occasionally add infographs related to diabetes, healthy food choices, obesity, and sugars to the Pinterest board I started. By about 5:30 AM I had narrowed my choices and added them to Google Slides (with links for makeshift citations) so I could print pages easily at school.

2. Set up problem/solution notes page

Notes in general go a lot more smoothly when I have a slide like this:

Plus one like this:

And really, after that point, I CAN fake the rest with whiteboard illustration. But you know, color-coded animations go a long way too…

You see, all students have to do with the infographs is copy what they understand, BUT they have to decide the right category BEFORE they copy.

You see, they had just finished revising their writing tests using my intricate proficiency-based color coding that matched up with the cones we took goal-setting selfies with Week 1. So they would already know from their colorful returned tests, plus spontaneous poster references throughout ALMOST every class this year that:

• Red = Novice Low (words)
• Blue = Novice Mid (phrases)
• Yellow (which I didn’t feel compelled to mark on the page… partially because I lack yellow dry erase markers) = Novice High (sentences)

Being as these were infographs and therefore necessarily sparse in words and ALSO relatively new topics (hence: inquiry), we did not go beyond intermediate for this particular collection mission.

SO my kiddos are deciding not only what level of chunk they can understand but ALSO whether that chunk seems more like a problem or a solution. SUPER useful conversations ensue.

HINT: encourage them to start with the infographs titles, and go through an example of a word-level and a phrase-level at least.

3. Give groups 5 minutes at each infograph

So it wasn’t exactly 5 minutes, even though I kind of SAID it was. I actually started out with 5:30 and snuck it down to 4:00 by the fourth round. And while I had groups stand up and rotate to new infographs for my own nefarious keep-them-on-their-toes purposes, all I had at each “station” was a group of four seats facing each other and two pieces of paper (so both sides could examine at once).

Also, I didn’t send every group to every Infograph, as after 4, they start to lose momentum. In the future, though, I would be more intentional about distribution and ensure that problem-heavy infographs alternates with the solution-heavy ones.

But seriously, if you could have heard them debating–albeit in English–what words meant, piecing together clues from previous infographs, and negotiating what was a problem and what was a solution…your little language teacher heart would have burst.

4. Review key terms from infographs

I figured out by third period that it’s a good idea to just go back over all 7 infographs–which I already had in Google Slides anyway–and highlight some of the salient terms and discussion I had heard. It occurs to me now, two days AFTER third period that I should have had students actively adding to their lists while we did this. But, you know, hey. Not bad for a 5:00 AM plan started several time zones away and months before, right?

PBL Process notes

I am often asked about how I get students to conduct “in-depth inquiry” and “keep it in the TL.” My answer usually is twofold:

1. Keep the inquiry topic APPROPRIATE–make sure it’s familiar enough that only the vocabulary is really new, and that that vocabulary is still accessible (read: high-frequency and cognate-filled) enough for where your learners are and
2. Consider your target mode–if they’re interpreting language, should they really be wrestling with conversing in the target language simultaneously?

I know some people might feel that means the students are learning “about” the language instead of with it, and I can see how that interpretation is possible. However, I’m a huge fan of metacognition and thinking aloud, and by golly, I heard some of the best thinking aloud of my career in those groups! And it wasn’t just about the language, because they were interpreting in order to classify the problems we would be addressing AND possible solutions that they could address in their projects! They were collecting language and ideas all at once!

So if you’re starting a project and need to throw something together quickly, round up some infographs, print ’em, and let the kids sort ’em out.

You will seen some true TL inquiry.