Blog Assignment #9

After reading Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning, I have discovered many new facts about making projects for students. It's important to keep your students attention when introducing a project. Make the introduction something fun that will intrigue students. This will be your driving question. Next, it's important to let your students have a voice in their project. Let them decide how they will present it, and how they will make it creative. After the students make their presentations, the teacher should allow the students to critique each other using a rubric. This will give the students who are presenting a drive to do the best they can. Making the students do a presentation helps them to have more of a meaning to learn the materials.

As I watched Project-Based Learning for Teachers, I gained a total and complete understanding of what project based learning was in a nutshell. I like the fact that the video started off asking the audience if they want more in the classroom. Project Based Learning is a new way for teachers to allow students to investigate a driving question on their own, and do research about it themselves. Students learn so much more than they would doing a normal boring project. This video provided so many facts about PBL, it was truly a great resource.

The next video I watched was PBL:What Motivates students today. I found it very interesting that most young students answered that getting a good job, and keeping their grades up is what motivates them. These kids made really thoughtful observations in their videos. They state that they needed good grades to succeed, and that succeeding was extremely important to them. The students then talked about getting rewarded for good grades and behavior during class. One boy said that his teacher gave them pretend money if they were good, and then the students could spend their money on a treat at school. I thought this was such a smart and fun idea for the students. Lots of the students said that their teachers do a different activity for each day of the week. I think that could be something very fun for the students to look forward to. Overall, it was very interesting to hear the student's opinions for what motivates them, and different rewards they receive.

Two students solve the case of the watery ketchup by designing a new cap, was very interesting. It showed two senior boys who created a new cap for a ketchup bottle that does not allow water to come out with the ketchup. They showed their sketches and brainstorm ideas in a book that the boys had recorded. They then designed a new cap using a computer program. The two boys used project based learning for this assignment. They learned something new and also created something very useful.

Project Based Learning in PE is an article that shows that project based learning activities can be done in PE as well as in the classroom. Its's actually a great idea because everyone needs physical fitness in their lives, and everyone can benefit from the project. In this project, high school students were assigned to find ways of fitness that would be beneficial for middle school kids. Through this project students not only learn new ways of fitness, but also team work skills,strategies, and how it is to be a role model. This shows that PBL is something that everyone can use no matter what the subject is!