Project-Based Learning

So, you want to work on Project-Based Learning...Now What?

• Start small!
• Search the Internet for people that share tips about their own PBL experiences.
• Think about how you can turn concepts you teach into authentic experiences for your students.
• Think about ways you can launch your project in an exciting and motivating way.
• What resources will your students use for learning while developing their projects?
• Share your thoughts with others for feedback. Don't be afraid to put your ideas out there!

Try these Challenges:

• Choose 2-3 of your content standards. Decide what type of project you can use with these standards. Create a driving question and share it with someone for feedback.
• Think about your curriculum for a quarter, semester, or year. Make a list of as many authentic projects you can think of that could be integrated for PBL.
• Think about your curriculum for a quarter, semester, or year. Make a list of as many experts that could be used as resources to help your students learn about these topics. Identify the experts that are local and could visit students in class and ones that are not local and would have to video conference or students could communicate with digitally. (This is brainstorming, so no idea is a bad idea. Write all of your thoughts down no matter how crazy they might be. Sometimes all we have to do is find the right person to ask and amazing thing happen.)
• Think of a project you do with your students now. Make a brief timeline of the amount of time it takes for the learning and this project to be completed. Then begin turning the learning into a PBL project where the learning and project work is taking place at the same time, but still takes the same amount of time as the current ;earning and project. (IMPORTANT: You may find that your new project is completely different than the current project. THAT IS OK! Sometimes the things we do can be tweaked and turned into a PBL. Other times, we realize that things need to drastically change and come up with something new.)
• Think of one or more concepts that you do not enjoy teaching as much as others or that students often have a difficult time learning. Make a list of 5-10 ways you could radically change your students learning of these concepts with learning projects. With your students in mind, think about which project idea your students would like the most. Start developing that as a PBL experience for your students.