Early on in my project-based learning journey, I attended a workshop where the facilitator shared a story of a semester-long high school entrepreneurship program he had led. I was intrigued by his story, his passion, and the impact that the way this project impacted his students’ lives. I already knew I wanted to implement more PBL into my classroom but now I had a bigger vision for what this could look like.

And yet . . .

I also felt overwhelmed. His students were in high school and mine were eighth graders. His students had shiny new laptops (which was a big deal back then) and we had paper. His students had the permission to go on field trips throughout a large bustling city and we were allowed one field trip a year — which we used to go to a water park as a reward after eighth grade promotion. But it wasn’t just about materials and opportunities. My biggest challenge was time.

How would I make time for PBL when I had a tight curriculum map with so many standards? How would keep students from procrastinating? How would I add this to my already crowded plate?

Over two decades later, when I lead my own PBL workshops, I often meet teachers who are experiencing the same challenge I faced back in 2004. The time crunch is real, no matter where you teach. It’s true for teachers of all subjects and all grade levels. We all have a limited amount of time and a big set of standards to teach. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula. Sometimes projects go longer, days get interrupted, and kids get sick. But there are some strategies we can use to maximize time in PBL. These are all key strategies that A.J. Juliani and I used when we first developed our Boost PBL curriculum (check out the end of this post for details).

Seven Ways to Maximize Time in Project-Based Learning

1. Break the Projects Up into Phases with Deadlines

Ever noticed that students tend to waste time at the beginning or middle of a project and then rush toward the end to get it done? It turns out, we tend to work harder on a task when we are close to finishing it. By contrast, there’s an idea called Parkinson’s Law, that explains how “work expands to the time allotted” (as described by this great Planet Money episode). In other words, if you give yourself three weeks to do a project and it should only take two weeks, you will find a way to use all three weeks rather than finish early.

When designing our Boost PBL curriculum, A.J. and I used our LAUNCH process as a way to break each project into distinct phases. We had both experienced doing our own big, open-ended projects that were too loose when we were classroom teachers. So, we designed projects that would break the larger projects into manageable, feasible chunks.

When we break work into phases, students actually work faster because they tend to work harder as they approach a deadline or milestone.

 

This also helps to reduce cognitive overload because students can focus on the current task at hand. In other words, they can put their full energy into ask questions, doing research, brainstorming, planning, and prototyping. On a daily level, we can also break down tasks even more by using quick, structured protocols. Which leads to my next point . . .

 

2. Use Structures to Save Time

Early on in my PBL journey, I told students, “I want you to create a documentary. You need to develop a plan and then make it happen.” It didn’t happen. Students stood around talking without getting started. The larger project was too daunting, so I began to incorporate structures that would build interdependence and collaboration.

Structures are actually vital for creative productivity. It turns out people who are inexperienced at a task often fail to plan and have more false starts and mistakes while those who are experts tend to plan ahead. Structures provide the necessary creative constraint to push divergent thinking and they help facilitate the actual work of creative work. This can also help save time when these organizations have tight time deadlines. One of my favorite examples is Pixar, who often uses protocols to guide their creative process.

One of the fascinating things I’ve learned in researching collaboration and innovation is how often organizations, teams, and companies use structures to facilitate creative work. If you look at this 20 minute peer feedback process, notice how efficient it is and how it can help students save time. At the same time, it’s still built on student voice and choice:

Nearly every discipline uses a framework or blueprint for their creative work; whether it’s a writer’s workshop structure, an engineering process, the scientific method, or a design thinking framework. When we incorporate these frameworks into our PBL units, we not only save time, but we also teach students how to do creative work in various disciplines.

In designing our Boost PBL curriculum, A.J. and I sat down together and chose our favorite 3-8 protocols in various phases of each project. Our goal was to create novelty with consistency. So, there’s often an overlap between aspects of each project. But this overlap into protocols and processes can actually reduce cognitive overload because students spend less time learning the process of the project and more time engaging in the learning itself.

3. Take Advantage of Interdependent Work

The best projects are the ones where the group creates something way more epic than what any individual student could have created alone. This is why I love interdependent structures. Too often in group projects, one member works independently while other members are dependent on the single member, merely filling in the gaps when asked to help. However, when they work interdependently, each member is adding value to the group project. Interdependence begins with trust, with each member depending on other members to complete their tasks. It can feel risky and even vulnerable, which is why it can help to establish norms or engage in team-building. This is also why, as an eighth-grade teacher, I often had teams work for an entire quarter on different projects before changing up the grouping.

Interdependence is the overlap between autonomy and group cohesion. It’s what happens when each student has voice, choice, and personal accountability while also depending on one another to accomplish their tasks. In these moments, they create something better together than what they would have created on their own.

Once you’ve developed trust, you can incorporate project tasks that build up interdependence. Take, for example, this brainstorming strategy. Students actually benefit from listening to one another depending on each other for new ideas. Even the “low” student has something valuable to add to the group.

In designing our Boost PBL curriculum, I did a color-coded audit of how often the teacher does direct instruction (which is still necessary in PBL), how often students work individually, and how often they work in pairs. Often, within a group task, two partners will work together and then together they will share their work with their team. Other times, they’ll work individually and then share that work with the larger group.

 

4. Teach New Content Through the Project

Earlier, I mentioned feeling overwhelmed by adding a new thing to my plate. I now realize that PBL isn’t about adding things to your plate. It’s about re-arranging your plate so that students can work at a deeper level. But how does this actually work? I’d like to explore how we can craft PBL units in a way that maximizes our time.

According to PBL Works, one of the key differences between a culminating project and a PBL unit is that students should be learning through a project rather than learning first and then doing completing the project afterward.

Note that you will still need to do direct instruction and you might even begin your project with a quick concept attainment lesson. In fact, John Hattie recommends focusing on concept attainment before ever moving into student inquiry. Moreover, there are times when you might need to review a concept or a skill together with students before they move into a new phase of their projects (this is something we have included as a part of the entry event on each of our Boost PBL projects). However, these more traditional approaches should occur throughout the project. The goal is to integrate direct instruction in a way that is intentional.

 

5. Chunk Your Standards

The traditional approach to teaching focuses on isolating specific skills and teaching them systematically to students. This tends to work well when students are learning discrete skills that build on one another, such as a phonics or blending mastery in learning to read or a set of math standards that lead up to two-step equations. But other standards work well in a framework where they students can master multiple standards at the same time. Here’s where PBL comes in handy.

With PBL, we can have students learn a concept while also practicing a skill. They can work on multiple, interconnected standards at the same time instead of going sequentially through each standard. When this happens, students move more slowly through the standards rather than going through the stop-and-go traditional methods.

In some cases, you might go fully competency-based and allow students to skip standards that they have already mastered. For example, in the research phase of a project, students can work on specific reading skills they need to master and skip the skills they have already mastered. For a mini-project, you might even have students use this choice grid, where they self-select skills and standards.

It also helps to go interdisciplinary. If you teach elementary school, you might have really tight, even scripted, curriculum in math and reading. But you might have more flexibility with science and social studies. Here, students can practice some of the standards in math and ELA in a way that asks them to apply the learning to an authentic context. But this interdisciplinary approach also saves time, because you are hitting multiple standards from multiple subjects simultaneously.

 

6. Provide Scaffolds and Supports

As I work with pre-service teachers, I continue to see this trend. Low-income students, ELL students, and Special Education students are less likely to experience student-centered projects – the kind of that truly empower them with voice and choice.

At the same time, we know that certain students freeze up during projects because they don’t have access to some of the key scaffolds and supports that they need.

Some common ELL accommodations might be:

• Front-loading vocabulary
• Providing additional think time within group projects so that ELL students can process information
• Providing translating help or partnering them with someone who is multilingual
• Incorporating resources in their first language
• Providing leveled sentence stems to help with discussions and writing
• Providing mini-lessons on verb tense structures or providing verb tense formulas for complex texts within a project
• Using visuals within the project to help facilitate language development
• Incorporating technology tools such as the option to slow down videos or audio during the research components of a project (the x .5 or x .25)
• Paying attention to a students’ affective filter and finding ways to reduce fear and anxiety they might experience during a project
• Use structured listening/discussions within the project, including sample questions, scripts, and sentence stems

While the accommodations will vary even more with special education students (and you should always check the IEP), here are some examples:

• Providing additional handouts to facilitate task-analysis and executive function
• Pulling small groups for additional interventions
• Differentiating the tasks within the groups so that each student can participate (see the example from interdependency)
• Providing the necessary assistive technology
• Teaching special education students how to access necessary tools and tutorials
• Being flexible with deadlines and requirements around specific tasks

When designing our Boost PBL units, we created specific checklists, handouts, and leveled readers that teachers can customize. We included front-loaded vocabulary, sentence stems, and other language supports for ELL students. But we also know that this is just the start.  The best projects involve a partnership with ELL and Special Education teachers. It might involve taking a deeper dive into an IEP, 504 Plan, or ELL/ESOL documentation. Ultimately, every student deserves access to meaningful PBL. However, it takes time and intentionality to make a PBL classroom truly accessible.

 

7. Implement Sprints and Mini-Projects

While project-based learning is a powerful, authentic way to learn, we don’t always need to do longer PBL units. Sometimes what we need is something shorter. This is why we created Sprints, Mini-Projects, and Full PBL Units in our Boost PBL curriculum. Here’s a quick overview of the difference between each model.

	Sprints	Mini-Projects	Project-Based Learning
Description	Sprints are shorter opportunities for creative work that often focus on one key area of the creative process (brainstorming, problem-solving, rapid prototyping)	Mini-projects are shorter projects that still encompass most of the elements of PBL. They typically last around a week and give students a flavor of project-based learning.	Project-based learning is a pedagogical framework where students learn the content through an authentic project.
Timeframe	45-90 minutes	3-5 days	3-9 weeks
Examples	Divergent Thinking Challenge, Wonder Day Project, STEM Challenge	Independent Science Experiment, Tiny House Project, Curiositycast Project, Invent a sport	History Documentary Project, Service Learning Project, Entrepreneur Design Thinking Project, Genius Hour Project
Standards	Introducing concept standards, quick practice of single skill-based standards, quick practice of methods standards	Deeper dive into concept standards, practicing multiple skill-based standards together, practicing method standards grouped together	A deep dive into concept standards (learning a concept in-depth) while integrating multiple skill-based standards and using method standards for an extended time
When to Implement This Approach	Introducing a unit, a closing activity for a unit, breaking the monotony of a longer project, using it on a “lame duck” day	Shorter unit plans with a narrower focus, final week or first week of a quarter	Longer unit plans with multiple concept or methods standards that are related to each other, a clear connection between the content and an authentic context
Models to Consider	Rapid prototyping, STEM challenges, design sprints, inquiry-based model*, game-based / simulation-based model	Scientific method, engineering method, design thinking (abbreviated), inquiry-based model*, problem-based model*	Engineering model, design thinking model, inquiry-based model, service learning model
Audience	Private or within the school	Private, within the school, or public / authentic audience	Requires an authentic audience with a strong emphasis on empathy
Strengths	This approach works quickly and can be adapted into more traditional lesson pedagogical frameworks. You can focus on a narrower part of the creative process (research, prototyping, problem-solving, etc.). This approach often incorporates necessary movement and hands-on learning. The faster pace of a sprint can help students avoid stagnation and risk-aversion. It tends to be low-risk with more permission to “fail forward.”	This approach encompasses many of the elements of PBL while sticking with a tighter schedule. Students experience less project fatigue while they move through each phase of the mini-project but there’s still a depth involved and an opportunity for an authentic audience / context. Students learn the building blocks of basic project management as they develop collaboration skills.	This approach encourages students to make connections between the subject matter and a real-world context. The longer project encourages a fully developed creative process with ample time for each phase. The emphasis on an authentic audience allows for deeper empathy to develop. Students learn the content through the project in a way that allows the learning to stick.
Challenges	It lacks an authentic context. The lack of revision time can lead to sprints that lack the depth needed in creative work. If there’s no reflection, it can come across as a fun activity and little more.	Mini-projects can feel rushed and students who fall behind during one phase might end up giving up too easily. The lack of longer revision time means certain students might focus on the finished product and rush through the creative process without engaging in longer, more open-ended creative thinking.	An authentic project-based learning unit takes weeks to complete. This is a challenge with crowded curriculum maps or in situations where there is a greater need for repetition and recall as they develop practical skills. If alignment isn’t solid and assessment isn’t well-embedded students can fail to reflect on their learning and improve in their metacognition.

You might be thinking, “Yeah, but that’s not the real, authentic PBL experience.” And that’s true. At some point in the year, we want students to get the full PBL experience. But shorter sprints and mini-projects can include elements of PBL while also connecting to the content in a way that fits within the time crunch.

 

Curious About Boost PBL?

Six years ago, A.J. Juliani and I met up in Philadelphia over some cheese steaks and asked the question, “What would it mean to design PBL units in a way that makes the process more realistic, feasible, and student-centered for all learners?”

We sketched out a series of projects, mini-projects, and design sprints for the K-8 level. That chance encounter led to a new project called Boost PBL. Our goal was to make PBL more accessible for all schools, teachers, and students.

We started with the question, “What do you wish you had when you first started out on the PBL journey?”

Our goal was to design standards-aligned curriculum that would connect PBL to the larger competencies that students would need in an unpredictable world. We also wanted to design lessons that would incorporate some of the hard lessons we had both learned in our own PBL journeys.

AJ Juliani and I have worked with a team of current classroom teachers to design authentic PBL experiences that also:

• Align to the standards
• Include clear structures in a way that reduces cognitive load
• Include scaffolds and supports for ELL and Special Education Students
• Save time and make the process more feasible

Each PBL unit contains the following:

• Lesson plans aligned to the standards
• Scaffolds and supports
• PowerPoint slideshows
• Boost Books that help students stay focused through PBL

We have spent the last two years after our initial Beta launch of Boost PBL adding new resources (like rotating reading activities) and refining the process based on the feedback we have received from current classroom teachers!