Making Project-based Learning Works!
Educating modern students in 22nd century will be a challenging job for teachers. Students must be well prepared to become critical thinkers, collaborators, communicators, creators, leaders, managers, knowledgeable, risk takers, competitors, caring, and global citizens. To be able to prepare students to these roles, they must be engaged in active learning that arouse their interests and needs to awaken potentials and sharpen their skills. There are quite a few teaching pedagogies that are effective and one of these is project-based learning. As stated by PBLWorks, project-based learning is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects.
According to Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive growth, active learning experiences develop cognitive progress better than less passive experiences. Students get to experience hands-on skills and meaningful learning doing projects. Yet, there are still many teachers who try to resist using PBL in their class instruction because of the shortcomings and poor outcomes. Little they know that project-based learning has a lot of advantages to the learners like:
Business Expo - Financial Math, EAL, Design
Pet House - Math, Design
Rube Goldberg Machines - Physics, Design
Fairytale Story - English, Design, Arts
Healthy Lifestyle - PE, English, Biology
But some teachers insist that project-based learning is time consuming and that they can’t cover all the curriculum outcomes or core standards. Also, students are cramming to finish their projects on the 11th hour and usually weak students present poor projects. So how can you make project-based learning more effective and work successfully for you to avoid poor performance output? Here are some ideas to consider:
By being thorough, any projects can turn into an awesome display of students’ skills and work products by constructing their own understanding of knowledge and skills. Doing a project is not automatically a project-based learning approach. It involves a longer process from the start of the unit to incorporating the knowledge learned in class to come up with a project designed according to the needs of the students, powered with their interests and skills, to produce an outcome-a project that will define them. Students choose where to apply them and add some creativity and personal touch that shows ownership as well as responsibility into their works. Project-based learning is considered as constructivist approach, hence the students are constructing their own learning using the main concepts learned in class and applying it to a valuable output that gives them a meaningful life experience.
References:
Brooks, J. G., & Brooks, M. G. (1993). In search of understanding: The case for constructivist classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY, US: Random House.
Wadsworth, B. J. (1971). Piaget's theory of cognitive development: An introduction for students of psychology and education. New York: McKay.
According to Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive growth, active learning experiences develop cognitive progress better than less passive experiences. Students get to experience hands-on skills and meaningful learning doing projects. Yet, there are still many teachers who try to resist using PBL in their class instruction because of the shortcomings and poor outcomes. Little they know that project-based learning has a lot of advantages to the learners like:
- Students get the limelight in PBL. They can plan, design, create, and present their own ideas and express their knowledge in doing something meaningful like a product, presentation, case studies, etc. by through project-based learning. The teacher can act as a facilitator or manager that guides through the process of accomplishing a big task that they can relate to.
- PBL develops critical thinkers. Students are engaged in reflective thinking to make relevant connections of their learning to the real world. They use evidence (product outcome) and reasoning (knowledge concepts they learned in class) to support their presentation after constructing, analyzing, and evaluating their own learning.
- PBL can easily be differentiated according to students’ interest. Students’ work output can be aligned according to the students’ needs while covering the curriculum outcomes. They get the chance to use local resources and communicate in the local community to promote their learning and how it relates to the needs of the community.
- Projects are carefully designed by their teachers, which make it authentic assessments. It can be a guided instruction that is beneficial for diverse learners and/or ELLs. Instructional materials from the schools are maximized since it’s based on the needs and interests of the students.
- One of the biggest highlights of using PBL in classroom instruction is the final evaluation that showcases the outcome products. Not only the students are showing their own products but also they’re explaining how their learning is present on accomplishing their project. During the presentation of their work products, you can also see how the students value the ownership of their work.
- PBL develops and demonstrates the 3 C’s of 21st century learner skills - creativity, collaboration, and communication. These skills are essential to compete globally.
- PBL promotes growth mindset. According to Carol Dweck, growth mindset encourages a child to look for a challenge and increase achievement. By designing their own project according to the given guidelines provided, students believe themselves that they are capable of making something relevant and valuable, thus, they make extra time and effort that could lead to higher achievement.
- A collaborative by nature, PBL works well with interdisciplinary unit of two or three subjects altogether. Students learn to collaborate within the group or even within the class or community. They also develop sense of responsibility doing their projects and perform different tasks according to their capabilities within the group.
Business Expo - Financial Math, EAL, Design
Pet House - Math, Design
Rube Goldberg Machines - Physics, Design
Fairytale Story - English, Design, Arts
Healthy Lifestyle - PE, English, Biology
But some teachers insist that project-based learning is time consuming and that they can’t cover all the curriculum outcomes or core standards. Also, students are cramming to finish their projects on the 11th hour and usually weak students present poor projects. So how can you make project-based learning more effective and work successfully for you to avoid poor performance output? Here are some ideas to consider:
- Plan ahead. Embed your project design in a unit plan. Never give a project at the end of the unit. Projects work better if introduced earlier in the beginning of the unit and will immediately start small after you tackle some important concepts and finish this project at the end of the last lesson of the unit. By the end of the unit, students are almost halfway done with the project and can generalize and fully understand what they’re learning and applying on their project. They can easily explain their work because they’re doing it while learning the concepts in class.
- Availability of Materials and Access to Resources. Design authentic projects using local materials. During the planning stage, make sure the materials are available to students to purchase locally, avoid online orders that may trigger students to blame the orders delay for being late. Provide access to ready available resources from the school and support it with online resources for students to help them design their projects.
- Guided Instruction. Give the students a framework of the project plan. You can include them in finalizing the project design guidelines like in some aspects of the plan (due dates, resources, materials, etc.) to make sure it is feasible. Giving explicit instruction can guide students (especially English language learners) in accomplishing given tasks.
- Roles Assignment. Use 6 Thinking hats technique by Edward de Bono to assign roles to different members of the group. Each student should have a responsibility in completion and/or addition to the success of the project and write an individual reflection of the making of the project. This will be checked during work period and presentation, to make sure not only one student or few are doing the project for accomplishment.
- Work period. Give working period during class hour so you can supervise students’ work and can easily give some advice and feedback. This will give the teacher time to check if the students are preparing their materials or doing what are needed to be done.
- Peer Assessment for Feedback. Brooks and Brooks (1993) highlighted that constructivist teachers encourage students to engage in dialogue, both with the teacher and with one another. Let the students critic their classmates work aside from the teacher’s input. Provide a peer assessment evaluation sheet for them to fill up during pre-evaluation and then have a class discussion about all feedbacks and ask students what can be done to improve or refine their projects.
- Pre-evaluation. This is critical part of the PBL and mostly ignored. What is the use of feedback if students will not have time re-constructing their work or improving their project after giving them feedbacks? Other students may not have any opportunity anymore to do this kind of activity, thus they need to show the best they can come up with by giving them time to decide to improve or not.
- Final Evaluation and Presentation. One good thing with PBL is that after the work has been done; students can present their output to the audience. You can invite other teachers and parents to critic their work or you can even make it like a competition and award them in different categories. Students can also show essential learning skills like - communication, collaboration, and creativity on their project presentation. Other output can be displayed at school to promote students’ pride of their work and creativeness.
By being thorough, any projects can turn into an awesome display of students’ skills and work products by constructing their own understanding of knowledge and skills. Doing a project is not automatically a project-based learning approach. It involves a longer process from the start of the unit to incorporating the knowledge learned in class to come up with a project designed according to the needs of the students, powered with their interests and skills, to produce an outcome-a project that will define them. Students choose where to apply them and add some creativity and personal touch that shows ownership as well as responsibility into their works. Project-based learning is considered as constructivist approach, hence the students are constructing their own learning using the main concepts learned in class and applying it to a valuable output that gives them a meaningful life experience.
References:
Brooks, J. G., & Brooks, M. G. (1993). In search of understanding: The case for constructivist classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY, US: Random House.
Wadsworth, B. J. (1971). Piaget's theory of cognitive development: An introduction for students of psychology and education. New York: McKay.
10 Effective ideas in managing an ELL classroom
Keeping a well-managed classroom is a teacher’s ultimate goal. Managing a class might be easy to most of the teachers but certainly not for some, especially with teachers who have students learning in an English language environment. English language learners (ELLs) may not fully understand the discussion in a classroom but they may have the difficulty in finding the language they need to express the depth and complexity of their thinking (Fisher, Frey, and Rothenberg, 2008). Aside from effective teaching pedagogy and efficient teaching skills, teachers need to make their classroom environment fitted to the needs of the ELLs. Although language deficiency is the main problem for English language learners, many teachers may have understate the importance that effective classroom management do help ELLs to learn better and improve academic performance.
In a bilingual education, which primarily focuses on English and the national language as medium of instructions, teachers give heavy emphasis on memorization of vocabulary as if the students are living dictionaries. There is a difference between language acquisition and language learning. While language acquisition mainly focused on how to use a language to communicate, language learning is focused on learning the content of subject areas while acquiring English at the same time.
In an ELL classroom, teachers set up a learning environment that will help build students vocabulary by surrounding themselves with anything from English words to class practices in English so they can easily familiarize or get accustomed to expressing their ideas from one language to another. While most teachers may have been trained how to teach English language learners, they should also consider that the class or school culture does affect the learning environment of the students to improve their English language skills.
Here are some effective strategies and practices that will speed up the immersion of English into class instructions and students will gain more confidence in speaking up themselves in either languages or even more, fluently in English.
1) Class Routine. Develop an easy classroom routine for students especially when to study and what to study. In short, it is important for students to learn time management so they can cover their top priorities without neglecting other subjects. Write basic class routines on the wall, assignments due dates, and important notices in English briefly. If there are students who have weak English, add some translation.
2) Classroom Rules. Rules will keep students’ feet on the ground. Before posting the class rules, initiate a mature conversation with the whole class. Give only few rules for them, prioritize respect as the main rule. Let the students add few rules for the class to observe and follow and discuss with them why we abide these rules. Including them in rules making makes them feel a part of a team.
3) Word Wall. In a bilingual world, it is always recommended to remind students of commonly used words or academic words written on the wall in two languages. Classroom teacher can add academic words for the students to use every week. Be creative and innovative by sorting the words or highlight some important texts in phrases or sentences for English-content areas, flash cards, or post picture or diagram words for Maths and other related subject areas. Be innovative, add “Word of the Day” section. Assign students to write a word per day and write its definition, context, sample sentence, linguistic frames, or even draw a picture or diagram about it or its use. This can be put together in the center of the word wall.
4) Output Display Wall. Showcase your students outputs whether inside the classroom or outside, this boost students confidence and pride. It will also enlighten other students what to do next and improve their own works in the future.
5) Portfolios. Students should observe data management by subject areas and this is probably the challenging part as many students struggle to organize their stuff in any learning environments. Organizing students artifacts not only improve students’ organizational skills but also the portfolios itself can be used as a tool for reviews and parents’ interviews. Set a drawer or individual boxes where students can place their artifacts regularly.
6) Seating Arrangement. Let the students seat in different styles according to their class activities or needs. Pairing students with strong English with someone quiet or no English at all may uplift their confidence to speak up more.
7) Technology Support. Technology bridges the gap of communication especially for ELLs. Always keep a USB which is accessible to all students to copy and save presentations from their teachers or classmates. Encourage students to use laptops and other gadgets mainly for assignment purposes, not entertainment. Make use of the instructional materials provided by the school that promotes school’s principles, goals, and curriculum.
8) Class Goals. It is important that a class will work together as a group and collaborate with each other to achieve a common goal. Setting up a class goal and posting in in the class will remind each student where they are heading. Students can check these goals quarterly if they have achieved it or they can discuss as a class what prevents them to be successful. For IB classroom, you can simply add the diagram of the learner profiles or behaviors/skills you want your students to possess at a period of time in lined to your unit plans.
9) Message Board. Whereas many students like to talk, there are many as well who like to write their ideas instead. Weekly or monthly, ask the students to write something on the board, you can give them a theme to write about or simply just anything they can think about. This can also be used for graffiti wall for students who have cool or interesting ideas rather than bury it on their mind.
10) Paper Dictionaries. This sounds old school but the best way to get used to English words is by looking at them and its definitions using paper dictionaries by letting them to practice skimming and scanning English texts. Although electronic dictionaries can help bridging the communication gap, students can familiarize more words using paper dictionaries without too much strained on the eyes. This will also help develop students’ reading skills. Also, it will be helpful for students to have a Thesaurus to improve their vocabularies especially in technical writing.
These are just few ideas highly recommended for making a classroom more conducive to learning. Other ideas you might use are: Daily Homework Reminder’s Table for every subjects, Birthday Space Greetings, English famous Quotes, Excellent Assignment of the Week, Feature Song of the Week, and among others. They key is to choose ideas, which are promising and productive to raise excellent students.
Each teacher has his or her own way of managing a classroom but certainly there are some ideas that stood out and common in well-managed classes. A teacher who is a lifelong learner can never be out of ideas and will always keep trying new things till it will find a good fit to the needs of their students. An effective classroom management skill will surely amplify students’ productivity as well as inflate academic performance throughout their stay in the school.
References:
Brooks, J. G., & Brooks, M. G. (1993). In search of understanding: The case for constructivist classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY, US: Random House.
Fisher, D., Rothenberg, C., & Frey, N. (2008). Content-area conversations: How to plan discussion-based lessons for diverse language learners. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
In a bilingual education, which primarily focuses on English and the national language as medium of instructions, teachers give heavy emphasis on memorization of vocabulary as if the students are living dictionaries. There is a difference between language acquisition and language learning. While language acquisition mainly focused on how to use a language to communicate, language learning is focused on learning the content of subject areas while acquiring English at the same time.
In an ELL classroom, teachers set up a learning environment that will help build students vocabulary by surrounding themselves with anything from English words to class practices in English so they can easily familiarize or get accustomed to expressing their ideas from one language to another. While most teachers may have been trained how to teach English language learners, they should also consider that the class or school culture does affect the learning environment of the students to improve their English language skills.
Here are some effective strategies and practices that will speed up the immersion of English into class instructions and students will gain more confidence in speaking up themselves in either languages or even more, fluently in English.
1) Class Routine. Develop an easy classroom routine for students especially when to study and what to study. In short, it is important for students to learn time management so they can cover their top priorities without neglecting other subjects. Write basic class routines on the wall, assignments due dates, and important notices in English briefly. If there are students who have weak English, add some translation.
2) Classroom Rules. Rules will keep students’ feet on the ground. Before posting the class rules, initiate a mature conversation with the whole class. Give only few rules for them, prioritize respect as the main rule. Let the students add few rules for the class to observe and follow and discuss with them why we abide these rules. Including them in rules making makes them feel a part of a team.
3) Word Wall. In a bilingual world, it is always recommended to remind students of commonly used words or academic words written on the wall in two languages. Classroom teacher can add academic words for the students to use every week. Be creative and innovative by sorting the words or highlight some important texts in phrases or sentences for English-content areas, flash cards, or post picture or diagram words for Maths and other related subject areas. Be innovative, add “Word of the Day” section. Assign students to write a word per day and write its definition, context, sample sentence, linguistic frames, or even draw a picture or diagram about it or its use. This can be put together in the center of the word wall.
4) Output Display Wall. Showcase your students outputs whether inside the classroom or outside, this boost students confidence and pride. It will also enlighten other students what to do next and improve their own works in the future.
5) Portfolios. Students should observe data management by subject areas and this is probably the challenging part as many students struggle to organize their stuff in any learning environments. Organizing students artifacts not only improve students’ organizational skills but also the portfolios itself can be used as a tool for reviews and parents’ interviews. Set a drawer or individual boxes where students can place their artifacts regularly.
6) Seating Arrangement. Let the students seat in different styles according to their class activities or needs. Pairing students with strong English with someone quiet or no English at all may uplift their confidence to speak up more.
7) Technology Support. Technology bridges the gap of communication especially for ELLs. Always keep a USB which is accessible to all students to copy and save presentations from their teachers or classmates. Encourage students to use laptops and other gadgets mainly for assignment purposes, not entertainment. Make use of the instructional materials provided by the school that promotes school’s principles, goals, and curriculum.
8) Class Goals. It is important that a class will work together as a group and collaborate with each other to achieve a common goal. Setting up a class goal and posting in in the class will remind each student where they are heading. Students can check these goals quarterly if they have achieved it or they can discuss as a class what prevents them to be successful. For IB classroom, you can simply add the diagram of the learner profiles or behaviors/skills you want your students to possess at a period of time in lined to your unit plans.
9) Message Board. Whereas many students like to talk, there are many as well who like to write their ideas instead. Weekly or monthly, ask the students to write something on the board, you can give them a theme to write about or simply just anything they can think about. This can also be used for graffiti wall for students who have cool or interesting ideas rather than bury it on their mind.
10) Paper Dictionaries. This sounds old school but the best way to get used to English words is by looking at them and its definitions using paper dictionaries by letting them to practice skimming and scanning English texts. Although electronic dictionaries can help bridging the communication gap, students can familiarize more words using paper dictionaries without too much strained on the eyes. This will also help develop students’ reading skills. Also, it will be helpful for students to have a Thesaurus to improve their vocabularies especially in technical writing.
These are just few ideas highly recommended for making a classroom more conducive to learning. Other ideas you might use are: Daily Homework Reminder’s Table for every subjects, Birthday Space Greetings, English famous Quotes, Excellent Assignment of the Week, Feature Song of the Week, and among others. They key is to choose ideas, which are promising and productive to raise excellent students.
Each teacher has his or her own way of managing a classroom but certainly there are some ideas that stood out and common in well-managed classes. A teacher who is a lifelong learner can never be out of ideas and will always keep trying new things till it will find a good fit to the needs of their students. An effective classroom management skill will surely amplify students’ productivity as well as inflate academic performance throughout their stay in the school.
References:
Brooks, J. G., & Brooks, M. G. (1993). In search of understanding: The case for constructivist classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY, US: Random House.
Fisher, D., Rothenberg, C., & Frey, N. (2008). Content-area conversations: How to plan discussion-based lessons for diverse language learners. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.