Learning by DOING

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” – Confucius

Some students easily grasp concepts in a traditional instructional setting with a teacher in front of the classroom explaining and demonstrating a particular topic. These students are often good note-takers and do not have a problem staying on-task and listening for an extended period of time. Unfortunately, not all students fit in this category. Many students need to DO things to get a deep and lasting understanding of a topic. Teachers attempt to engage these students by including hands-on activities and projects as often as possible, giving these Do-ers a chance to learn to the best of their potential. The intention of these projects is often good, but I have noticed a major difference between doing projects just for the sake of doing them and truly embracing the ideals of project-based learning.

Joann’s post on the topic introduces a few well-written activities using the project-based learning methodology. These are perfect if you can find one on the particular topic you need, and there are quite a few on the Gateway. Since I know many of us will have to write our own activities or customize existing ones to make them work well in our classrooms, I want to dig in deeper to figure out what project-based learning is all about.

A very helpful introduction to project-based learning is this pathway for designing your own project. This pathway, from PBL Online is based on The Project Based Learning Handbook from the Buck Institute for Education. It helps walk you through all the steps of planning a good project, so that when you are doing the project in class you will almost be able to just sit back and watch your students experiment and explore on their own. You will graduate from teacher to facilitator for the time and your students will hopefully learn a lot in the process.

I will run through the steps quickly here to give you an idea of how it works. The most important step in planning your project is to know what you want your students to achieve by the end of the project. Once you have a clear goal in mind, you will be able to carefully craft a guiding question or problem. A well thought out question will steer students in the direction you want them to go. This will allow them to discover the central concepts you have chosen through their own exploration and experimentation. A question that is too easy, too vague, or too specific may lead your students astray, so it’s important to spend time writing this. Your next step will be to create an assessment. There is a detailed module on the pathway to help you create an effective assessment. The module includes a guide for creating a rubric. Once you have an assessment ready, map out your project to be sure it is ready to launch. This may seem like an extra step, but this planning is similar to writing a lesson plan, and it will be very helpful for keeping the project on course with your intended objectives. You are now ready to launch your project! If you are worried about retiring your role of teacher and taking on the facilitator role, the PBL Online pathway also has a detailed module about being an effective project manager.

As a first-year chemistry teacher, I worked so hard on planning my lessons I think I wrote down every word I was planning to say. Every last minute of my 50-minute class periods was planned, because I was terrified of running out of activities and leaving my students with (gasp!) nothing to do. Luckily, a more experienced teacher who used project-based learning was my mentor, and I learned a lot about flexibility and planning from him. If you walked into his classroom on most days, it might look a little chaotic, and he would be milling around the room instead of teaching n front of the classroom. If you stayed for a while, though, you would realize that the students were excitedly working together to solve problems he had carefully planned. Although I believe there is a place for both direct instruction and project-based learning, his classroom has been an inspiration to me since my very first days of teaching.

I love doing project-based learning because it is fun and engaging for students. I can get a bulk of my planning done ahead of time so I can spend more time interacting with students and guiding them in the right direction. It can level the playing field by being a type of automatic differentiation. Students can approach the problems at all different levels while still learning the same concepts. Some students may keep their explorations and presentations low-key, while others will pull out all the stops. I know one who even sewed costumes and sticky-tacked her hair to her face to get into character. (Not a good idea..trust me! I should attach a picture.)

The goal of project-based learning is to lead students to the discovery of important concepts. This can be achieved through an in-class project graded with a rubric. Some students are very motivated by public presentations and competitions, so I am including a list of competitions and projects that could be ways to culminate a project-based learning unit.

Projects like the Global Water Sampling Project allow students to submit data they find to a worldwide database. This would be especially good for a science class studying water quality. The Square of Life Project is a similar collaborative effort where students “ investigate their local environment and share that information with other students from around the country and the world.” There are too many to list, but hopefully that will give some of you ideas!

If your students want to enter their projects into competitions, there are academic competitions for all different subjects and grades. If you are planning to tell your students about these competitions, be sure to check their rules and competition dates first. This list has a bunch of academic competitions in one place, so it’s a good start. Science fairs are also a nice place for students to display their learning. Check with your district or local university for details. National History Day is a good place for 4th to 12th graders to showcase what they have learned in history. A competition from ThinkQuest challenges students to solve a problem with technology. One of my favorite competitions is Odyssey of the Mind, which is an excellent example of project-based learning and creative problem solving.

Even if you choose not to enter student projects in formal competitions, I hope you will find a place for this methodology. Remember to create a Gateway profile where you can bookmark any resources you plan to use so you can keep track of them. We would love for you to share your PBL successes as well!