Alana McSharry- Blog 5

In the past I would plan a project or unit by looking at the South Carolina state standards and decide on the goal of the unit. Then I would look for activities that would teach the standards to my students. I always tried to choose activities that would engage them. I read books to students or showed them videos to help them gain knowledge and information to complete the tasks I gave to them. Now I realize that I missed many important aspects of a well planned project or unit.

Project-based learning is a project that students work on for a period of time. The project begins with a driving question and a problem statement that leads the students to solve a real world problem. This connection to a real world problem creates a project that is both relevant and authentic which causes student engagement. Throughout the project students participate in individual and group learning activities. These activities promote students asking questions and finding the answers in their own research leading to more questions and research. As students move through the activities they gain the standard based knowledge but in a more engaging and individual way. Throughout the activities students participate in critiquing and revising their own work or each other's work. The students also reflect on their work which is important because students need to learn how to think. Thinking allows students to make better decisions or to understand their own learning process. The students work on a culminating product that reflects what they learned during the project. This culminating product should answer the driving question and the problem statement as well as demonstrate knowledge of the South Carolina state standards. At the end of the project students present their products to a real world audience.

Many of the aspects of Project-based learning encourages the skills in the Profile of a SC Graduate. Project-based learning students participate in collaborative group work which involves many of the skills in the profile. While working in a collaborative group students need to communicate ideas to each other, problem solve a conflict or a task, share the work and create new ideas. In project-based learning students have to motive themselves to research information and to finish a task.

Sir Ken Robinson's idea of "treading softly on our students' dreams" did affect the decisions I made while planning my project. In my project students have the ability to make their own decisions about what they want to include in their health plan. For a four-year old students just making that decision allows them to feel pride and autonomy which leads to students being hopeful about the future.

During the class we participated in many activities that promote critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication. The "critical friends" called for us to think about another person's project, consider how we could help them improve their project and communicate that information to her. The activity where we created an art piece with a partner promoted creativity and communication. We had to talk with each other about our ideas on how to solve a problem and about how we would proceed with the project in the manner asked by the facilitator. Then we had to express our ideas in a creative way. Both the critical friend and the art project promoted collaboration.

In the future I will be more thoughtful during my planning and I will include more of the aspects that I wrote about in the description of project-based learning, the Profile of a SC Graduate and Sir Ken Robinson's statement. It will not be an automatic change from one way of thinking to another but a slow thoughtful process to a more innovative way of planning and teaching.