Project-based learning may seem like an overwhelming task to take on, but you can start out with a simple PBL to engage your students in just a few days or weeks of content. We have probably all attempted a project that relates to subject specific content, but many of us don't take on the daunting task of incorporating all subjects in an extended project over several weeks of time.
PBL Made Simple
One of the biggest hurdles is determining how content fits together and can lead to a final project that makes sense. Here are a few basic steps to help you get started in making a PBL that will work for your classroom.
Lay out your subject content and see which units might align together. When planning my first PBL, I was able to identify that we could relate all of our content to human rights. We were focusing on geography, reading Esperanza Rising as a class novel, and I had a science unit related to water resources that would fit in nicely.
Consider ways to bring in other necessary content through mini-lessons during the unit. I still had to teach operations with fractions and opinion writing. I decided we would incorporate opinion pieces into our thoughts on Esperanza Rising and our opinions on human rights. We could relate fractions to our geography work by looking at the fractions of our populations, rainfall, climates around the world, and languages in different countries.
Be creative! Students can find more connections between content than you may realize. While you might find one little connection between two topics, your students can probably find several more. Let them take the lead and continue to explore topics....even if the go OFF topic!!
Basics of a PBL
Make sure to allow time for students to explore, research, and reflect. We can fall into the standard of teaching all the content directly and not allowing time for students to be curious.
Don't focus on several mini-projects or assignments that students complete. Have an end goal that they are working towards and can add to their project throughout the entire unit.
Use mini-lessons to teach standards-based content. You don't need your entire day to incorporate PBL into your classroom. You can still take 20 minutes for mini-lessons, the first half hour of the day for morning work, and fit in those reading groups in the afternoon. Just use your time wisely!
Don't have your administration on board?
Create a unit plan that includes a driving question, milestone projects along the way, and shows how your standards are being taught even will doing other work.
Create a small presentation to share with your administration that demonstrates the importance of PBL and ensure them that you will collect documentation of student work and assessments throughout the unit.
Invite your administration, other teachers, and families to view the final student presentations. Show off your hard work!
Check out the pages I created to supplement our standard curriculum. There are teacher notes, directions for students, and lists of specific curriculum content that I used. You can adapt many of these graphic organizers to fit your content, especially if focusing a unit around Esperanza Rising as a class novel study.
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