Saturday, October 18, 2014

Blog Post #9

What can teachers and students teach us about project based learning?

From reading Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning  I learned that as teachers we need to remember that the world is always evolving and we should not teach how we were taught. There are seven essential elements of meaningful projects. The first is A Need To Know. This tells you that you should have some sort of entry event such as a video, a discussion, a guest speaker, a field trip...instead of a packet of papers. The second is A Driving Question. This helps the students get a clear concept of the project and gives them a challenge. The third is Student Voice and Choice. This tells us how we should let students do projects in a way that interests them. The fourth is 21st Century Skills. This tells how we should have projects that build students skills such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology. The fifth is Inquiry and Innovation. This tells us how when students answer one question this gets their brains working to come up with more and more questions. The sixth is Feedback and Revision. This helps students show that their work has meaning. The seventh is A Publicly Presented Product. When a student knows they are doing a project for more then their teacher and classmates they will usually do better quality work. As a result of all the seven essentials we are doing project based learning.

After watching Project Based Learning For Teachers I learned that project based learning is all about students teaching themselves what they need to know. Teachers are more of a guide to make sure that all the right materials are provided to the students for them to be able to do this. I think this will work good as long as what the students are learning about is something that interests him or her. If it doesn't then it may be a little harder to get them interested in the project based learning.

Before reading Project Based Learning in PE I never really thought about PE being a subject you could do project based learning in. I always thought PE more of learning different types of activities by doing them and testing over what you have learned. After reading this article though I thought it was a great idea for a high school PE class to come up with a physical fitness program for middle students. This project is under the Alabama state standard for physical education. From doing a project like this I think kids would get a better understanding of what kind of physical activity a person needs.

After watching What Motivates Students?  I learned that students can be motivated in many different ways. If you were to find a way that gets all your students extra motivated then more work will be accomplished. A few examples of things that motivate students from the video were students like to hear they have done a good job, they want to do well in life, good grades means they don't get grounded, fake money gets given out for good behavior and they can use that at their classroom store, and some students get candy for good behavior. An example I seen when I was in a school was if homework from the night before was not done then students can not take their Mac home that day.

After watching and reading about Two Students Solve the Problem of Watery Ketchup By Designing A New Cap  this made me realize how fun a project  like this can be for students because that is something they wanted to do. Sure you could shake a ketchup bottle and get the same solution as a new cap but that was not good enough for the students. So they brain stormed and came up with a new cap that looks like a mushroom. How it works is when the bottle is upside down the water gets trapped below the mushroom allowing the tomato paste to come through the lid. I was very impressed with what the students did to come up with this.



Project Based Learning


1 comment:

  1. Ronni, you did a good job with your blog post 9. I would like to point out one thing that is in paragraph "what motivates students". Towards the end where you have example you put " An example I seen when I was..." I think saw might sound better where seen was(past tense). But other than that you did fine. Keep up the good work!! - Heather

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