In anticipation of sharing the PBL approach with my colleagues, I designed a mini-PBL project for my tenth grade honors students as an example of what the PBL process looks like in action. In November, my students and I took a hike, circling around our school, wading through milkweed meadows and climbing pine trees. Why? For our unit on texts focused on the theme of "The Natural World." We were looking for inspiration. Students read works by Barbara Kingsolver, Emma Marris, Walt Whitman, and more. We used our texts as mentors to guide our thinking and inquiry. And then I presented our driving question: "What is a local environmental issue that you can address?" We used our nature walks as inspiration to look carefully at what was impacting our local environment. We noticed butterflies and bees, trees and bats, garbage and water pollution. So we had to do something to help.
Why project-based learning? Here's why:
Maddie, Camryn, Amanda, Trinity and Maddie researched and built bee hives with the help of their science teacher.
And, here's why:
Students have real purpose and real audiences for the research they took on. My students taught elementary school students, interviewed hunters, built beehives, made posters to stop littering and promote recycling, tested our drinking water quality, and so much more.
This is what learning should look like.