Blog Post 4 - PBL PD

Blog Post 4 - Project Based Learning Professional Development

   For our Professional Development this year in kindergarten at Jesse Bobo, my colleagues decided to give Project-Based Learning a try. I was excited to share all that I had learned this summer and share my summer-planned unit on voting with them. We began our professional development by meeting weekly. During these first meetings, I began with an overview of the core concepts and the essentials of Project Based Learning. I also e-mailed a link to the Blendspaces from class for my colleagues to use as a resource as they began to implement the first unit.
     We all began the first unit "Voting in Kindergarten" together. I detailed my plan for implementation during our PD and planning meetings, I assisted with any questions (and there were many) and each teacher tailored the unit plan to their teaching styles while keeping with the core PBL concepts.
     We planned the second unit together, as a kindergarten team. The second unit was Arctic Animals, was more collaborative, the product of all of our input. We all had ideas and had to do some compromising. However, I was pleased with the end result and our students all learned everything there is to know about Arctic Animals and how they adapt to extreme cold temperatures!
     Overall, working with my team to share Project Based Learning has been a success and my team members particularly enjoyed the second unit on Arctic Animals. I think that is because they participated in the planning of the unit. We are all invested more in when we are part of the process! The voting unit was my idea and it was more difficult to convey to my team members what I had envisioned. Therefore, they struggled more with implementation and they did not see the value as much in that unit as they did in Arctic Animals.