By reading the required articles and watching the videos posted on our blog assignment, I was able to gather a better understanding of PBL. When done correctly, PBL is very rewarding and effective for learners and the teacher as well. Buck Institute for Education has created a list of seven essential elements of meaningful projects. It is recommended that these seven elements are applied to PBL. The article makes an interesting point explaining that PBL will help students build real world skills. Teacher will
benefit their students by preparing them for beyond the classroom.
Essential Elements of Meaningful Projects
1. Need to know
2. Driving question
3. Student voice and choice
4. 21st century skills
5. Inquiry and innovation
6. Feedback and revision
7. Publicly presented project
This video does a good job explaining the main focuses and goals for PBL. One important key factor mentioned in the video is to focus on a driving question. The question should be specific and requires students to think and gather information. The end product should answer this driving question and students should be able to share what they have learned with others. I really liked how the video mentioned that Common Core is the "what" and PBL is the "how". I agree that choosing PBL to learn Common Core is the way to go. PBL allows students to take charge of their learning.
This blog post explains that PBL is useful in a PE class. Using PBL in a PE class brings relevance into the course. Miller writes, "PBL gives students a relevant and authentic task—a problem or challenge—that they, as a team and as individuals, must explore and solve." What I gather from this is that students should be given projects that they care about and want to explore the content. Students that are interested in projects typically tend to learn the material.
I find it important that teachers learn from their students just as much as teachers teach their students. This video displays students explaining why they want to learn and what encourages them to learn. As a future teacher I hope that I can find ways to encourage my students to learn. One student in the video mentioned that when his teacher points out when he does something well it encourages him to learn. Just something as little as giving a student a compliment can make a world of difference to that student.
This video exemplifies just how cool and successful PBL can be. These students were really excited about their project. Who knows the students may even be able to sell their design to a ketchup manufacturer? When students are excited about learning the possibilities of learning new material is at a high rate. Students should have projects they look forward to completing.
Taylor,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post. We have a lot of the same views. I completely agree that PBL is the way to go when trying to teach Common Core. It is interactive and fun for students, and if the students are having fun, they are more likely to keep interested and learn something. I also agree that it is very important to learn what motivates each individual to want to learn.
Although you had minimal grammatical errors, you could improve your future posts by proofreading before you publish them. For example, you accidentally typed "if" rather than "of" in your first paragraph. Do this and your posts will be even better. Great post, though!
-Taylor
Very good post this week!
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