Viva PBL!

I believe in Project Based Learning.  I have taught as much in my classes at National University.  My son went to a PBL high school.  I speak out in favor of PBL at every opportunity.

But….this year I haven’t practiced what I preached.  I have been so dismayed by the difficulty of simple class management that I have taken refuge in lots of individual assignments rather than risk the disorder that can come with small group projects.

Boys, was I wrong!  My school encouraged everyone to close the year with a project, so another teacher and I came up with one for the persuasive writing unit.  The project asked students in small groups to identify a neighborhood problem and then research that problem and develop solutions.  This project continues the neighborhood theme I've followed all year.  They've previously written a neighborhood narrative and a neighborhood news story.  It was a natural idea.

It was a lot of work to create all of the worksheets and guides for the project.  The project requires the groups to write letters to their city council member, create a page in Comic Life (a computer program to create comics-like pages), and make an oral presentation with power point support about the problem they’re working on.  They also have to interview people in their neighborhood about the problem.  They are using the laptops for a lot of this work.

I began implementing the project in all of my seventh grade English classes three weeks ago.  It’s a long project that won’t conclude until next Friday.  From the beginning I have been very happy about how these students have responded to this project.  What I believed about project based learning (but hadn’t yet practiced) turns out to be true! 

The boys have worked hard on all the many parts of this project.  Classes that have been very difficult to manage (like 5th period) have worked diligently.  To be sure the classes have been noisy, and not every boy is working hard every moment.  Nevertheless I have been consistently impressed with the level of focus and collaboration displayed in all of the classes.

It turned out to be perfect timing.  During the final weeks of school it is always difficult to keep students focused.  This project is succeeding at keeping them involved….so far!  They make their oral presentations at the end of this week, and I’ve invited the principal and assistant principal (big proponents of PBL) to visit. 

So what have I learned?  Students work eagerly in small groups on interesting projects.  Next year I will act on this knowledge from the beginning.  The key is establishing clear and regular procedures to be followed and then providing interesting content for group and individual work. 

I’m glad to end my incredibly difficult return-to-teaching year so successfully.  It was very uncertain at many points how this year would end.  I am eager for next year.