Cristy

Posted on 10/24/09

Thematic units and learning-using-lots-of-different-projects are
different methods from Project Based Learning.

Project Based Learning is a teaching method based on projects that
take place in the real world, to solve real problems, using adults
from the community as mentors. For example, if a student wanted to
learn about communities, he or she would form a research question,
go out into the community to conduct research, and contact
professionals within the community who can act as expert guides in
the research. Instruction in the classroom functions as a support
for the project. So the student will learn to write letters before
writing to various community members. Or the students may learn
about statistics and writing effective surveys before gathering
and computing data.

Learn more here: http://pbl-online.org/

This kind of learning is very different from enormous or numerous
projects that are great fun, but have little or no learning value,
such as your dinosaur example.

Project Based Learning would require a lot of community support, as
well as a well- coordinated classroom environment prepared to
support learners at various places in the project timeline. If done
well, it has the potential to increase student retention of both
basic skills (reading, writing, math, speaking, time management,
etc.) and facts (which the students learn naturally as they
complete their project), as well as student motivation in learning.

But you are right when you say that this is a very slippery slope.
Like any other method, there is as much potential for disaster as
there is for learning.

On 10/24/09, Robert F wrote:
> On 10/21/09, Cristy wrote:
>> Looks like Project-based Learning to me. Has the potential to
>> be highly effective if done properly, although I think
>> creating one project that spans all subject areas is major
>> overkill.
>>
>
> It is certainly project-based learning. Does it have the
> potential to be highly effective? Perhaps, but I think we need
> to ask why it so often goes disastrously wrong in practice.
> Anecdotes abound. One is the notorious example of a school with
> poor academic performance having students spend dozens of hours
> building a papier- mache dinosaur. I have my own example. I was
> getting some pictures framed and struck up a conversation with
> the proprietor of the shop. When she learned I was a teacher she
> told me about a friend of hers who taught in a Catholic
> elementary school. The teachers of the previous grade combined
> all of their efforts on the theme of "salmon." Math, history,
> language arts, and science instruction all centered on salmon.
> The problem was that the teachers of the next grade found that
> the students had none of the basic skills they usually acquired
> the previous year. Why? I suspect it was because those skills
> were embedded in the study of salmon and given short shrift. If
> a parent where to ask a child what they learned about in school
> that day, the answer would always be "salmon" and not fractions,
> grammar, or anything else.
>
> More criticism of the project method can be found here:
>
> http://www.illinoisloop.org/project.html

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