ISP in the Grade-Level Classroom, Part One

The "Why"

Independent Study Projects (ISPs) have been a staple of my work with gifted and talented students for years. Hooray, right? A chance to explore a topic of interest in school and share your learning in any format that makes sense for that topic - preferably, with a real-world audience.

As part of an IB school, especially as a 5th grade teacher, we get to experience that process through Exhibition, which specifically focuses on taking positive action about an issue, in addition to research, product development, and presentation. (There are other components specific to Exhibition which may vary from ISPs, but it's in a similar activity family.)

I have long wanted to build in ISPs as an ongoing component of my classroom structure for every student, apart from Exhibition. It's a challenge with an ever-growing list of specific standards to teach and an ever-shrinking amount of minutes in which to accomplish everything. Social-emotional and organizational skills, number sense, reading habits, scientific thinking, history - these are already huge buckets of content, and they are only a fraction of the list of things to do. Still, I think it is a priority to value student voices and interests, and I believe that people learn by doing, reflecting, and trying again, with support along the way. As a result, I'm committed to carving out time to try.

Visual Management Tool: The ISP Board

Independent Study Project Board

Here is a picture of a board I created in my class this year. I've used similar structures in the past, with names on stars, or letter beads and different colored beads added for various student accomplishments. In this method, each student's number is on a clip. As students work through each step in the process of an ISP, they move their individual clips to a new ribbon. I like that the process is cyclical, so students can be developing projects throughout the year, and they can all be in different places, because trying to keep everyone in the same place with different projects never works.

A Closer Look at ISP Steps

Here are the steps I use in my classroom. They could certainly vary - I could use the Action Cycle from the PYP, or focus only on steps of the writing process, or use more specific components, but these work best for me.

In project selection, I teach students about collecting wonders and how to use the brainstorming process. Throughout the year, we add to our list of questions and topics that interest us, so we have them to come back to. We look at our level of interest, resources, and how much new learning this project would represent for us - would it be too similar to something we've already done, or would it be too overwhelmingly new? - when we commit to a project. We also consider possible research options and product formats at this stage, although those things will change over the project cycle. Finally, we refine our central question for the project.

In research, we work on collecting information from a variety of sources, including websites and texts, but also interviews, surveys, field trips, and experiments. We learn to cite sources and to choose information that best supports our research questions. This can be a challenging stage to support, but a strong community is a huge asset here. When we can break down the walls of our school and have interviews through Google Hangouts, or guest speakers or parent experts as interviewees, research collection is much more exciting and relevant.

Product development assumes there will be multiple drafts. I emphasize that this is not the crucial part - we don't want something that is only pretty and missing meaning. However, we know that a good presentation invites a larger audience, and we want to make our product - whatever it is - appealing. We look at a target audience for this issue and consider which product (film, model, game, speech, art piece, exhibit) would be the best vehicle to share the information. Then we look at qualities of good films, models, games, speeches, art pieces, and exhibits, and decide what our products need to get better. There is a lot of peer feedback at this stage, with the understanding that our first effort is just a draft on the road to a final, polished product.

To give students a full toolbox to show their learning, we have a demo session or project with a new tool about every other week. Sometimes we use the tool for a specific content-related project, but sometimes our Instructional Technology Specialist comes in to co-teach and introduce a tool as an exploratory activity for about half an hour. This year, I am keeping track of what tools we use so students can refer back to them and try them for specific project needs. I am seeing more follow-up at home with some of these tools because students are so excited to use them.

Presentation and Reflection

When students move their clips to the last ribbon, they are in effect "signing up" to present to the class. We have some time on Friday afternoons to work on projects and to share work. Projects with specific audiences might be posted on our YouTube channel or website, or delivered to a location, or presented a second time, depending on the format.

After the presentation, students are asked to reflect about the process. Essentially, we want them to consider what they liked about the project, what they learned from it, and what they would do differently next time, and why. Photos of the project and reflections are shared on each student's digital portfolio, which for us is a private Google Site. Then students move their clips to the first step and consider their next projects.

Requirements and Grading

I want to give every student the opportunity to develop projects, but some students take a lot longer to work than others, and some topics are more extensive than others. This makes it difficult to require everyone to produce x number of projects per year.

My solution is that every student will create a mini-ISP - which is a week-long project that walks them all through the process. It's not graded, because the projects don't all fit in the same subject area, and I want to show students that the learning and the process are important - not just a grade at the end. They will get feedback, but it won't be a letter grade.

Every student will also create a project as part of Exhibition in our PYP school, and every student will create a project as part of a TED - Talk style presentation in the spring. These projects are graded - they address standards in social studies and language arts, no matter what the topic.

Students are also creating projects within the tool exploration as part of our content studies - like the choose your own adventure stories we made as we studied U.S. regions, or the flow charts we made as part of our PYP summative projects, and these are generally graded. These are separate from ISPs, because I require them to try the project format and assign a specific topic, although I do build in some degree of choice within those requirements.

Otherwise, students are highly encouraged to create at least one ISP during the year. Some will create four or five; some might not complete one. I'm okay with that - I think it's so meaningful for students that it's worth the mess.

Technology Access

At my current school, four fifth-grade classes share two laptop carts. Our school primarily uses Google products. Our 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade floor has access to one iPad cart, and our district offers checkout of specific technology tools. We also have a designated maker space with some consumable supplies and technology kits to sign out. My previous school had 1:1 devices, and while I really miss that regular access, especially given the unpredictability of how long it might take particular students to finish a particular project, it is still possible to create ISPs. In fact, I like the idea of having some no-screen project development sometimes, since many of my students are more familiar with apps than board games or building materials.

We are just beginning our Mini ISPs this coming week. We selected projects on Friday, we will collect research on Monday and Tuesday, we will develop projects on Wednesday and Thursday, and present on Friday. There will be gnashing of teeth and unforeseen complications and impatience. There will be a lot more volume, and there will be discomfort, and there will probably be some unfinished attempts. But there will be persistence, and independence, and problem-solving. There will be communication, feedback, and prioritizing. There will be excitement and empowerment. And there will be growth and learning, which is why we're taking this journey in the first place.