Project–Based Learning

We now have so many unique teaching styles and strategies for effectively communicating curricular content to your kids, including teacher-centered, student-centered, self-paced, competency-based, and even inquiry-based models among others. Then, there is culturally responsive teaching, which involves shifting instruction and language for kids from different cultures.

Earth Day is the perfect holiday to apply the concepts of STEAM education and project-based learning. After all, the central goal of each opportunity is for your students to apply creative and innovative thinking while working to solve real-world community problems. Plus, Earth Day classroom activities can help all educators highlight the critical importance of going green.

Through project-based learning, children get to see concepts in action and build up a bigger variety of vital SEL skills like teamwork and responsibility. Science teacher Jeremy Jorgensen knows all about these benefits. For this new Teacher Talk feature, we discussed how he incorporates PBL activities in the classroom and the skills kids develop from hands-on experiences.

Discovering connections through active experiences is a cornerstone of PBL and helps students establish authentic feelings for their causes. As such, knowing the impact these connections can have on students is key for the educators who are leading them. And, this is especially true when they leverage them across the curriculum to connect different subjects.

Since they’re so group-oriented, project-based learning experiences truly help students develop more than academic skills. They often learn to build connections with their peers, their communities, their teachers, and their work. And, this also helps students take greater pride in what they’re doing as they realize they can make a difference in their lives and other people’s.

Project-based learning, as you may know, is a highly effective approach to instruction that’s often tied to increased community involvement and active collaboration among students. So, we’re exploring what helps educators get PBL right, tips for implementing successful projects, and leveraging EdTech tools for the best results.

PBL units can be incorporated into just about any subject. Students can take part in projects, design simulations, and work together to better their school community or actual community. As plans for the 2021-22 school year are developed this summer, PBL could be a top strategy for ensuring access to game-changing learning opportunities.

PBL involves students working as part of a group most of the time on a community-focused project designed to affect authentic change. You can see how this might be tough to do in a remote environment, but a lot of progress has been made. It takes true teamwork, but PBL IRL (in remote learning) is certainly a possibility.

We’ve talked an awful lot about SEL in remote learning, focusing mostly on checking in on our students and teachers. One other important component to social-emotional learning, however, now involves creating the right kinds of environments for children to reconnect with some of the things that have been missing for them all throughout the pandemic.

When kids are sitting back, being spoken to, and completely passive about the content they’re absorbing in the classroom, how does that benefit them? They need active experiences and hands-on problem solving in order to become Future Ready. They need project-based learning and they need it to be of high quality.