On Project-Based Learning Here and Elsewhere

In one of the best recent examples I’ve seen of a PBL lesson, my colleague who teaches American History broke his class into groups and had them choose strips of paper at random. The strips each contained one of the 8^th Grade history TEKS. The groups then had to make a video presentation of their TEKS standard over a period of a few weeks. You can see an example of the videos here in an Xtranormal movie in which two guys hash out the causes and effects of the U.S.-Mexican War and their impact on the United States. In order to create these videos, students needed to work together, rely on one another’s strengths, pull together in areas of weakness, MASTER THE MATERIAL, and prepare a finished product that would be ready for use in a flipped-classroom.

A more low-tech project that I’ve used many times in my English classes – the Bridge-and-Tunnel playset – also proves to drive material home deeper and more thoroughly than more traditional learning models. In this project, I build mixed-ability groups and distribute construction paper and art supplies (crayons, glue, tape, markers, etc.). The students use instructions to build a small playset featuring a road. A bridge forming a second road then rises over the first road creating a short tunnel through which the first road passes.  The students make two cars and then use their imaginations to add elements like trees, bodies of waters, pedestrians, and so forth. Once the playset is complete, the students “play” with the cars while other group members record the cars’ behaviors by jotting down the prepositional phrases that describe the cars’ movement (e.g. through the tunnel, over the bridge, into the lake). The project ends with students using their list of prepositional phrases to compose a short story which they later present to the class. My students have always responded positively to this project, and that response has always been verified through formal assessment of the concepts of prepositions and prepositional phrases.

In the videos we saw this week, Introduction to Project-Based Learning and Project-Based Learning: Success Start to Finish, I saw that same kind of passion and engagement coming out in the students.  Children connected lessons they learned to previous attempts and first versions in both the “wing” lesson in the first video and the “critical friends” portion of the assignment in Manor.  These connections, as any reading teacher will tell you, constitute the basis of comprehension.  Without them, we are pouring water into a sieve, and the rush to assess before memory fails is on.  With them, we give students the opportunities they need to learn concepts and skills that will last throughout their lives.