PBL & How it boils down

There are so many great ways to teach students new information. Why not let them use a hands on approach all the time? One of the first big ideas of Project-Based Learning, Here on out I will refer to it as PBL, is real world connection. Isn’t that exactly what all educators are trying to do for our students? Get them ready for the big bad world and make sure they have all of the necessary resources to succeed.

Basically, PBL boils down to five essential key components that are mentioned on Edutopia’s website, and also mentioned in the above embedded video. Like I mentioned above, real world connections is the first essential key to PBL. This is using real world problems, managing finances, and doing a project such as opening a school store and having the students learn this way instead of lecturing about it. This way students aren’t asking the question “when will I use this in real life?” With this component real world situations are driving their learning. Teachthought, has great blogs that gives you great ideas that you could implement in your own classroom. It also explains how you could implement these ideas using PBL.

PBL as a whole let’s the students drive their learning while they are working on hands on projects. They are able to incorporate their own ideas, designs, and creativity in whatever project it is that they are working on. Instead of teachers being at the front of the class as with a traditional lecture, the teacher is there to facilitate the students learning, with out giving them the answers. Instead, they must ask questions to help students arrive at the right answers.

This video above demonstrates project based learning in a classroom! Just as I explained earlier, instead of standing up and lecturing students on a certain subject, they go out and find the answers and learn in a hands on style. There were many more than 3 PBL style twitter profiles I followed, but I will give you the first three I followed: @suzieboss is an author, who also is an advocate for PBL. @TeamMurch4 is a teacher who has 4th graders that use PBL, it’s important to remember that PBL is not limited by grade level! Last but certainly not least is @MuziLearningLab she is also a teacher and uses questioning in addition to PBL to make it that much better!