Blog Post 9

According to the ASCD website, the seven essentials for project based learning is:

1. A Need to Know

2. A Driving Question

3. Student Voice and Choice

4. 21st Century Skills

5. Inquiry and Innovation

6. Feedback and Revision

7. A Publicly Presented Project

I also enjoyed the quote in the beginning of the post, "Some "projects" border on busywork. Others involve meaningful inquiry that engages students' minds."

In the text video, Project-Based Learning for Teachers, a few things stood out to me. A few quotes in particular caught my attention. “The question is deep and requires students to complete an end product to share their learning with others” I think it is important to share their learnings with other students. I will definitely take advantage of sharing in my classroom, because everyone learns differently. For example, a student might know the ins and outs of a certain topic, however, another student might know how to put that topic to use in some kind of experiment. One of the other quotes that caught my attention was, “While meeting standards and creating an authentic product, students learn: collaboration skills, communication skills, critical thinking skills, and career and life skills.” Not only is it important to meet your standards as a teacher, we are also better preparing our students for this new world of technology and experiments. I think it is important to always keep that in mind. 

I enjoyed the video of ‘High School Teachers Meet the Challenges of PBL Implementation. Not only was it real teachers being interviewed with made it more personal, it also was very informative. They are redesigning 30+ classes, to bring project based learning to the classrooms. 

I also enjoyed it because the teachers are really putting in an effort in learning how to incorporate PBL into their own study. Also, bringing students into the video, helped me see how much PBL is taking over and helping students be more engaged. It was very interesting seeing how the math teachers are letting the students make games when they are talking about probability. As a person who doesn’t enjoy math as much as some other subjects, I feel if math was like that in my school, I would also enjoy it a lot more. At the end of the video, they showed the statistics of how PBL is helping their school. They had a 15% increase in students passing the High School Proficiency Exam in reading and an 18% increase in students passing the Algebra 2 end-of-course exam. This alone makes me more excited to bring PBL into my own classrooms and hopefully help children succeed the way the teachers at Sammamish High School did. 

 In the video PBL: what motivates students today, the kids were very cute. The students were asked a simple question: What motivates you to do good in school? The answers vary from getting praise from their teachers, having good grades to get into business school, wouldn’t be able to go to baseball games, and getting grounded. Some of the ways the teachers are rewarding their students in giving them candy, money, and letting them walk around outside. Some go even farther and let the student eat lunch with him/her. I think it is important to reward your students for their hard work, especially younger students. School needs to be fun and rewarding. 

When I first read this title, Two Students solved the case of the Watery Ketchup by Designing a New Cap, I thought, “Really?” After reading about it, I think it is really cool. Not only are Tyler Richards and Jonathan Thompson taking time out of their schedules to create this ketchup lid, they are also getting recognized by a really large new site, PBS. They also got to eventually start selling the ketchup bottle lid for $3. This is very inspirational, and nothing is too little. They will be recognized by colleges all over, simply for putting themselves out there.