An Introduction to Project Based Learning

Introduction to PBL

 I knew from a previous masters class that a Project Based Learning (PBL) is a way of teaching where students learn from “authentic” activities, meaning real word activities that they can export to their day-to-day reality. The video gave a very clear example of a PBL and many important steps of PBL were shown, such as: -teacher gave very clear indications and expectations to students before they started working, -it is hands on and student directed, -students learned through out the process, -they work in teams and they learn from their own experiences and –they need to share their knowledge and have a real audience. Every school year I try to include more and more PBL into my classroom. At the beginning I though it was more related to science, arts, math, and not for Social Studies, but I have done a couple of PBL this year (The Aztecs Peregrination” and the “Prehispanic Sites”) and I hink they were successful and the most enriching part was to see how motivated the students get and how they “appropriate” it. Also doing a PBL I learned that the whole unit it taught with a PBL and not and isolated project at the end of the unit. I know about some other PBL experiences at the MS like the volume project in science for the eight graders and the Chocolate exhibition for SSL students.