Blog Post #5 (Barwick)

Our peer presentation at Jesse Bobo is this week at our faculty meeting, so Shanna and I will be presenting about our experiences with PBL.  The blendspace we are using is modeled after Helen’s and Brittany’s (thanks, guys!) and is meant to be used more as a resource for teachers than as an intensive training.  We don’t have a ton of time allotted for our presentation, so we are going to talk about the basics, our experiences, then send out the blendspace with extra websites and resources that will help teachers that want to try PBL next year.

First, we will discuss WHAT PBL is – how it is not a project at the end of a unit regurgitating material, but rather learning through a project with sustained inquiry and an authentic product.  Then, we will discuss the WHY of PBL.  It is more engaging, can help students understand material deeper, develop real world skills, connect to the real world, etc.  The blendspace also has links to the BIE website that explains everything further.

Next, we will move into the essential elements of PBL, since those are what we have used to plan our units to make sure it is authentic.  There is a brief description of each essential element, examples of them in our units, and pictures to show how we used them in our units.  While discussing the elements, we will talk about our experiences with PBL in general and the benefits we have seen in our classrooms.

Finally, since the blendspace is supposed to be used as a resource, at the end I included a few documents that Dawn shared with us in Course 1 that I believe are the most helpful when trying to plan a PBL.  Then, we provided sample documents we used in our classrooms (parent letter, unit plans, rubrics) for the teachers to use as a guide if needed. 

We are excited to share our PBL experiences in the faculty meeting next week!  Here is a link to the (almost finished) blendspace.  We are still in the process of adding pictures and documents.

https://www.tes.com/lessons/dLTNsHrNKfq8tA/edit