Last spring I was standing in my fifth-grade classroom, mid-project, rearranging student groups when I realized we had a problem. My students were building scale models of dog houses and cat condos that they had designed—and would ultimately build—to donate to a pet-adoption event later that spring.
To ensure every student had a partner, we needed to pair up two boys, each of whom had a different scale model already in progress. One was designing his third iteration of a dog house; the other was three prototypes deep on a cat condo. I thought, “They’ll have to make a decision to go in one direction or the other—we can’t build both.” Would two months of preparation be derailed? Would they be deflated? Would they argue? They discussed the options and pitched their decision to me. “It’s a combo, not a condo,” they said—a dog house with a cat condo on the roof. For me, this is an epiphany. I try not to wonder if anyone will take it at the adoption event. They are ten years old. They believe in it and so will I. It’s an original idea born from unexpected changes.
But there’s a problem, they tell me. Their plans don’t align. His cat condo design uses a half-inch scale. The dog house was designed on a one-inch scale. How will they combine them? The mathematical concept of scale—a key standard we are learning through this project—is new to them. I watch them work it out. One is now convincing the other: “It doesn’t matter, as long as we read our scales right, the combo will come out right.” His partner is not convinced and wants to redesign the entire thing on the same scale. From a distance, I sense myself agreeing—better to have one set of plans on the same scale, I think. But I give them space. They make a decision: If they read their scales accurately when they measure their wood, the combo will still come out correctly. They don’t need to remake their plans—they need to accurately apply the mathematical concept of scale, and their motivation to do this comes from the authenticity of the project.
This type of moment has repeated itself in the many construction projects I’ve undertaken with students. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that construction-centric projects lend themselves to three important instructional approaches that serve students’ motivation and learning: authenticity matters; prototyping and critiques lead to deeper learning; and construction is a powerful way to bring math to life in the real world.
Construction-centric projects foster profound learning experiences for students of all ages. This is especially true for elementary students who are experiencing important milestones in developing their academic identities and sense of themselves. In these projects, they have the chance to apply their nascent understandings in math, science, and reading, as well as deeper learning competencies of collaboration, communication, and self-directed learning, to a real-life issue. This is exciting for them. Authentic construction projects can alleviate student hesitation and replace it with genuine enthusiasm and determination. The two students who combined their dog house and cat condo plans didn’t fall apart when asked to compromise, and they didn’t run to me when they discovered a legitimate challenge; they relied on their ingenuity and intellect and developed their collaboration and communication skills.
When a teacher introduces an authentic project with an expected level of independence, students are positioned to become more self-reliant and more collaborative. When you as a PBL teacher are guiding a group of students through a design and build project, you’re trying to meet them at their zone of proximal development. In this situation I wanted the two boys to figure it out on their own, which direction they’d go (dog or cat), because I needed both of them to be intrinsically motivated. Construction-centric PBL requires teachers to trust in their students’ ability to rise to the challenge of developing an authentic product. It’s also a reason to have design teams and not design individuals. Alone they know much less than in groups; someone usually has a solution, or at least believes they do. In this case, their animal shelters were being donated to adoption centers as gifts to people in the community who were adopting pets. They would live on in families’ living rooms and back yards—so they had to get it right!
In an authentic construction project with original plans, there are many important challenges that need to be resolved. Construction-centric projects typically require collaboration because students will likely encounter problems along the way. Most students and teachers quickly realize they are more likely to solve these problems by collaborating with peers. They need each other at all stages of the project, from the initial design through production.
These process and design discussions can at times get contentious among students, but that’s actually ideal. What looks or sounds like contention within a student group grows from their passion and engagement, and creates teachable moments. How should it sound when students collaborate on something they are all passionate about? These are discussions to have with your students! Through years of navigating these conversations and advocating for their resolution through authentic PBL, students learn to grow into articulate young adults who can talk out their challenges and work together.
Over the past 12 years, my students have built owl condos, dog houses, kitty condos, pergolas, cigar box guitars, and a full-scale “American Ninja Warrior” course designed for our school’s playground. In each case the product being created had a tangible purpose students could embrace. Construction projects focus each student’s learning on a worthwhile endeavor that contributes to the well-being of people or animals. For instance, the owl boxes offered a natural way to address a rodent overpopulation issue in the environment around our school. Constructing animal habitats necessitated research into safety and creature-specific needs. This motivated students to become subject-matter experts, which they leveraged to compose research-driven persuasive letters, informational brochures, and books, and to secure funding for materials. The dog houses and kitty condos served as heartfelt, useful gifts for families adopting pets from local rescue shelters. The pergolas protected and supported what ultimately became a California Certified Monarch Waystation, and our functional cigar box guitars filled students with the joy of music and song writing. The colossal Ninja Warrior Course delivered excitement and vital physical activity to all students in the school.
In each instance, students had to learn the subject matter to complete real projects that met actual needs in the community, and the process of doing so created countless teachable moments. Each of these projects had a life, a purpose that went beyond the semester. This reality helped to nurture motivation, collaboration, and ingenuity among the students.
Consider how authenticity mattered in another project in which High Tech Elementary students built wooden storage boxes for children in an orphanage in Tecate, Mexico. Each student became buddies with an orphan, wrote letters to them, and discovered they had a need for a box that would fit under their beds where they could keep their personal items safe. Under their beds was the only space these orphans had to themselves. The fifth grade HTe design teams visited the orphanage, took measurements of the space under each bed, and created plans to build a wooden box with a secure lid that would fit under the beds of their new friends. At this point, the students are no longer just building a wooden box. It’s the most important thing they can imagine, and their letters back and forth to the orphans took on a whole new meaning. Now that’s an authentic reason to build and write something! It’s the “why” that motivates and leads to problem solving and collaboration, which induces ingenuity and helps foster deeper learning.
Essential, vital, and engaging—prototypes and critiques are the business of deeper learning, and construction-centric projects are ripe with opportunities to practice both. Developing a critical eye requires learning about the subject matter, and offering peers impactful feedback requires using a shared language to communicate one’s thoughts. Prototypes are also critical to refine work as students progress.
The process of designing and building anything from scratch is ripe with opportunities for peer critique and prototyping. I like to start classes off by developing a sketch of what their product—say, a dog house—might look like. From sketches we move to simple three-dimensional miniatures made from cardstock and tape or glue. Then, we do our first critique of these prototypes. There’s no scale yet, no parameters given—students solely focus on questions like, “How big is it?” “Is it okay to have a window?” “Does it have to have a roof?” But as they begin to critique each other, they realize the need for a shared language and clear parameters. As the teacher I am ready to answer questions about discipline-specific language and academic vocabulary. Day by day, I carefully use words like base, floor, leverage, scale, wedge, etc.
We can teach our students to give impactful critiques by modeling these for them. EL Education Senior Advisor Ron Berger teaches that a good critique is kind, helpful, and specific. Always start with the positive (the kind): “I love how your edges are square and all your screws are flush with the wood.” After the positive, offer a helpful and specific explanation of something the student believes will improve the product. “My concern is that your center 2×4 has a small crack and might not be able to support the walls. I think you should replace it before you move forward.” The first part of this comment is a helpful notice, but it’s the part about replacing the board that counts as specific. Students are usually good at noticing something that might be helpful, but as a teacher, I push them to explain specifically what they think the group should do to accomplish it. This process shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes, and I might choose two students from other groups to critique one piece of work to show the rest of the class what to do. Lastly, I help the students understand that they are not required to accept others’ suggestions; they can just say, “thank you, we’ll think about it.” Students rarely overlook a good suggestion, though. Most love to offer a critique and equally enjoy getting one because their work is complimented and their product tends to improve.
We model and critique everything, including “drill practice” or “saw practice” sessions to learn to use tools safely and effectively. We began full-scale construction after several rounds of critiquing blueprints, scaled versions, and balsa wood prototypes. Finally we build the full-scale bases, a platform that provides a floor and supports the walls of the dog house or cat condo.
The bottom line is that the process of creating anything should require the class to stop and analyze each component to see what is working and what we need to question. Should one group get ahead of the others, use the opportunity to critique their work as a whole class. It’s not necessary that the work be accurate or even exemplary. We focus on the process of students determining what works about it and what needs improvement. This collaborative process helps all the groups figure out what to fix themselves or what to try and get right at the next opportunity.
Finally, construction-centric projects are wonderful for teaching the extensive array of math standards essential for both project and academic success. In order to create to-scale blueprints that accurately convey their hopes and dreams for a product, students must learn geometry, measurement, mixed numbers, fractions, converting fractions, equivalent fractions, scale, and how to translate two-dimensional blueprints into three-dimensional prototypes. Measurement systems are a fifth grade standard. Understanding how to draw a two-dimensional net that folds into a three-dimensional prism is definitely at the zone of proximal development of most fifth grade students, and it too is a fifth grade standard. I usually start there as I get the design groups ready to develop blueprints. All of the construction-centric projects require precise measurement (to the sixteenth of an inch) in order to engineer 90-degree angles on rectangular prisms and 60-degree angles on triangular prisms, both part of building a dog house.
During construction phases, I will cut wood that I know for a fact students have measured incorrectly. I want them to see the results of inaccurate measurement on their products. However, I won’t do this for too long; these problems are typically fixed in the early critique sessions, and students become much more motivated to understand rulers and measurement. Cylinders were vital parts of the cat condos, as they secure the platforms these animals enjoy hopping around on. However, I loved that some of the groups moved away from using cylinders, because they determined by trial and error that in some instances a long rectangular prism was more stable, easier to securely fasten a platform and just as effective once rope was wrapped around it to create a scratching post. They were using geometric vocabulary as they compare shapes like prisms and cylinders, all of which need to be measured accurately down to the fraction of an inch for the best outcome.
Elementary educators know the importance of using manipulatives to teach math. In their early years, students may use their fingers (and toes!) and then progress to tiles, base ten blocks, dominoes, fraction tiles, and more. Construction projects also provide authentic manipulatives for students to explore, understand, and deeply learn a range of math content and skills. Rather than Unifix cubes, a good tape measure and an understanding of how to calculate volume provide real-world manipulatives in a building project. Construction and measurement tools make abstract concepts concrete, and in the context of a construction project, help students achieve mastery. After all, if they are measuring, cutting, and fastening wood together to achieve a specific angle, they will quickly see if their math is correct when they begin to build their unit.
In all of these ways, construction projects not only infuse a sense of genuine enthusiasm in students, but also engender profound learning experiences in the realms of authentic learning, prototyping and critiquing, and achieving crucial math standards. And what happened to the boys who made the combo? They did build a dog house with a cat condo on top, and it came out beautifully, because they correctly used different scales (although not without a few hiccups) for each portion of their build. At the project exhibition, families met animals they might rescue and also perused student-built houses they could take home along with their new family members. The combo was among the first animal shelters selected by an adopting family. The family was all smiles. So were the students.
Last spring I was standing in my fifth-grade classroom, mid-project, rearranging student groups when I realized we had a problem. My students were building scale models of dog houses and cat condos that they had designed—and would ultimately build—to donate to a pet-adoption event later that spring.
To ensure every student had a partner, we needed to pair up two boys, each of whom had a different scale model already in progress. One was designing his third iteration of a dog house; the other was three prototypes deep on a cat condo. I thought, “They’ll have to make a decision to go in one direction or the other—we can’t build both.” Would two months of preparation be derailed? Would they be deflated? Would they argue? They discussed the options and pitched their decision to me. “It’s a combo, not a condo,” they said—a dog house with a cat condo on the roof. For me, this is an epiphany. I try not to wonder if anyone will take it at the adoption event. They are ten years old. They believe in it and so will I. It’s an original idea born from unexpected changes.
But there’s a problem, they tell me. Their plans don’t align. His cat condo design uses a half-inch scale. The dog house was designed on a one-inch scale. How will they combine them? The mathematical concept of scale—a key standard we are learning through this project—is new to them. I watch them work it out. One is now convincing the other: “It doesn’t matter, as long as we read our scales right, the combo will come out right.” His partner is not convinced and wants to redesign the entire thing on the same scale. From a distance, I sense myself agreeing—better to have one set of plans on the same scale, I think. But I give them space. They make a decision: If they read their scales accurately when they measure their wood, the combo will still come out correctly. They don’t need to remake their plans—they need to accurately apply the mathematical concept of scale, and their motivation to do this comes from the authenticity of the project.
This type of moment has repeated itself in the many construction projects I’ve undertaken with students. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that construction-centric projects lend themselves to three important instructional approaches that serve students’ motivation and learning: authenticity matters; prototyping and critiques lead to deeper learning; and construction is a powerful way to bring math to life in the real world.
Construction-centric projects foster profound learning experiences for students of all ages. This is especially true for elementary students who are experiencing important milestones in developing their academic identities and sense of themselves. In these projects, they have the chance to apply their nascent understandings in math, science, and reading, as well as deeper learning competencies of collaboration, communication, and self-directed learning, to a real-life issue. This is exciting for them. Authentic construction projects can alleviate student hesitation and replace it with genuine enthusiasm and determination. The two students who combined their dog house and cat condo plans didn’t fall apart when asked to compromise, and they didn’t run to me when they discovered a legitimate challenge; they relied on their ingenuity and intellect and developed their collaboration and communication skills.
When a teacher introduces an authentic project with an expected level of independence, students are positioned to become more self-reliant and more collaborative. When you as a PBL teacher are guiding a group of students through a design and build project, you’re trying to meet them at their zone of proximal development. In this situation I wanted the two boys to figure it out on their own, which direction they’d go (dog or cat), because I needed both of them to be intrinsically motivated. Construction-centric PBL requires teachers to trust in their students’ ability to rise to the challenge of developing an authentic product. It’s also a reason to have design teams and not design individuals. Alone they know much less than in groups; someone usually has a solution, or at least believes they do. In this case, their animal shelters were being donated to adoption centers as gifts to people in the community who were adopting pets. They would live on in families’ living rooms and back yards—so they had to get it right!
In an authentic construction project with original plans, there are many important challenges that need to be resolved. Construction-centric projects typically require collaboration because students will likely encounter problems along the way. Most students and teachers quickly realize they are more likely to solve these problems by collaborating with peers. They need each other at all stages of the project, from the initial design through production.
These process and design discussions can at times get contentious among students, but that’s actually ideal. What looks or sounds like contention within a student group grows from their passion and engagement, and creates teachable moments. How should it sound when students collaborate on something they are all passionate about? These are discussions to have with your students! Through years of navigating these conversations and advocating for their resolution through authentic PBL, students learn to grow into articulate young adults who can talk out their challenges and work together.
Over the past 12 years, my students have built owl condos, dog houses, kitty condos, pergolas, cigar box guitars, and a full-scale “American Ninja Warrior” course designed for our school’s playground. In each case the product being created had a tangible purpose students could embrace. Construction projects focus each student’s learning on a worthwhile endeavor that contributes to the well-being of people or animals. For instance, the owl boxes offered a natural way to address a rodent overpopulation issue in the environment around our school. Constructing animal habitats necessitated research into safety and creature-specific needs. This motivated students to become subject-matter experts, which they leveraged to compose research-driven persuasive letters, informational brochures, and books, and to secure funding for materials. The dog houses and kitty condos served as heartfelt, useful gifts for families adopting pets from local rescue shelters. The pergolas protected and supported what ultimately became a California Certified Monarch Waystation, and our functional cigar box guitars filled students with the joy of music and song writing. The colossal Ninja Warrior Course delivered excitement and vital physical activity to all students in the school.
In each instance, students had to learn the subject matter to complete real projects that met actual needs in the community, and the process of doing so created countless teachable moments. Each of these projects had a life, a purpose that went beyond the semester. This reality helped to nurture motivation, collaboration, and ingenuity among the students.
Consider how authenticity mattered in another project in which High Tech Elementary students built wooden storage boxes for children in an orphanage in Tecate, Mexico. Each student became buddies with an orphan, wrote letters to them, and discovered they had a need for a box that would fit under their beds where they could keep their personal items safe. Under their beds was the only space these orphans had to themselves. The fifth grade HTe design teams visited the orphanage, took measurements of the space under each bed, and created plans to build a wooden box with a secure lid that would fit under the beds of their new friends. At this point, the students are no longer just building a wooden box. It’s the most important thing they can imagine, and their letters back and forth to the orphans took on a whole new meaning. Now that’s an authentic reason to build and write something! It’s the “why” that motivates and leads to problem solving and collaboration, which induces ingenuity and helps foster deeper learning.
Essential, vital, and engaging—prototypes and critiques are the business of deeper learning, and construction-centric projects are ripe with opportunities to practice both. Developing a critical eye requires learning about the subject matter, and offering peers impactful feedback requires using a shared language to communicate one’s thoughts. Prototypes are also critical to refine work as students progress.
The process of designing and building anything from scratch is ripe with opportunities for peer critique and prototyping. I like to start classes off by developing a sketch of what their product—say, a dog house—might look like. From sketches we move to simple three-dimensional miniatures made from cardstock and tape or glue. Then, we do our first critique of these prototypes. There’s no scale yet, no parameters given—students solely focus on questions like, “How big is it?” “Is it okay to have a window?” “Does it have to have a roof?” But as they begin to critique each other, they realize the need for a shared language and clear parameters. As the teacher I am ready to answer questions about discipline-specific language and academic vocabulary. Day by day, I carefully use words like base, floor, leverage, scale, wedge, etc.
We can teach our students to give impactful critiques by modeling these for them. EL Education Senior Advisor Ron Berger teaches that a good critique is kind, helpful, and specific. Always start with the positive (the kind): “I love how your edges are square and all your screws are flush with the wood.” After the positive, offer a helpful and specific explanation of something the student believes will improve the product. “My concern is that your center 2×4 has a small crack and might not be able to support the walls. I think you should replace it before you move forward.” The first part of this comment is a helpful notice, but it’s the part about replacing the board that counts as specific. Students are usually good at noticing something that might be helpful, but as a teacher, I push them to explain specifically what they think the group should do to accomplish it. This process shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes, and I might choose two students from other groups to critique one piece of work to show the rest of the class what to do. Lastly, I help the students understand that they are not required to accept others’ suggestions; they can just say, “thank you, we’ll think about it.” Students rarely overlook a good suggestion, though. Most love to offer a critique and equally enjoy getting one because their work is complimented and their product tends to improve.
We model and critique everything, including “drill practice” or “saw practice” sessions to learn to use tools safely and effectively. We began full-scale construction after several rounds of critiquing blueprints, scaled versions, and balsa wood prototypes. Finally we build the full-scale bases, a platform that provides a floor and supports the walls of the dog house or cat condo.
The bottom line is that the process of creating anything should require the class to stop and analyze each component to see what is working and what we need to question. Should one group get ahead of the others, use the opportunity to critique their work as a whole class. It’s not necessary that the work be accurate or even exemplary. We focus on the process of students determining what works about it and what needs improvement. This collaborative process helps all the groups figure out what to fix themselves or what to try and get right at the next opportunity.
Finally, construction-centric projects are wonderful for teaching the extensive array of math standards essential for both project and academic success. In order to create to-scale blueprints that accurately convey their hopes and dreams for a product, students must learn geometry, measurement, mixed numbers, fractions, converting fractions, equivalent fractions, scale, and how to translate two-dimensional blueprints into three-dimensional prototypes. Measurement systems are a fifth grade standard. Understanding how to draw a two-dimensional net that folds into a three-dimensional prism is definitely at the zone of proximal development of most fifth grade students, and it too is a fifth grade standard. I usually start there as I get the design groups ready to develop blueprints. All of the construction-centric projects require precise measurement (to the sixteenth of an inch) in order to engineer 90-degree angles on rectangular prisms and 60-degree angles on triangular prisms, both part of building a dog house.
During construction phases, I will cut wood that I know for a fact students have measured incorrectly. I want them to see the results of inaccurate measurement on their products. However, I won’t do this for too long; these problems are typically fixed in the early critique sessions, and students become much more motivated to understand rulers and measurement. Cylinders were vital parts of the cat condos, as they secure the platforms these animals enjoy hopping around on. However, I loved that some of the groups moved away from using cylinders, because they determined by trial and error that in some instances a long rectangular prism was more stable, easier to securely fasten a platform and just as effective once rope was wrapped around it to create a scratching post. They were using geometric vocabulary as they compare shapes like prisms and cylinders, all of which need to be measured accurately down to the fraction of an inch for the best outcome.
Elementary educators know the importance of using manipulatives to teach math. In their early years, students may use their fingers (and toes!) and then progress to tiles, base ten blocks, dominoes, fraction tiles, and more. Construction projects also provide authentic manipulatives for students to explore, understand, and deeply learn a range of math content and skills. Rather than Unifix cubes, a good tape measure and an understanding of how to calculate volume provide real-world manipulatives in a building project. Construction and measurement tools make abstract concepts concrete, and in the context of a construction project, help students achieve mastery. After all, if they are measuring, cutting, and fastening wood together to achieve a specific angle, they will quickly see if their math is correct when they begin to build their unit.
In all of these ways, construction projects not only infuse a sense of genuine enthusiasm in students, but also engender profound learning experiences in the realms of authentic learning, prototyping and critiquing, and achieving crucial math standards. And what happened to the boys who made the combo? They did build a dog house with a cat condo on top, and it came out beautifully, because they correctly used different scales (although not without a few hiccups) for each portion of their build. At the project exhibition, families met animals they might rescue and also perused student-built houses they could take home along with their new family members. The combo was among the first animal shelters selected by an adopting family. The family was all smiles. So were the students.
