Blog Post #9

In the John Larmer and John Mergendoller article, Project-Based learning was broken down into seven essential sections. In Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning, they go in-depth about how to make a group project more effective.

1. A Need to Know

2. A Driving Question

3. Students Voice & Choice

4. 21^st Century Skills

5. Inquiry and Innovation

6. Feedback and Division

7. A Publicly Presented Project

In each section, the teacher picks out a topic that the student will be engaged with; if the student is not engaged in the topic then they will most likely not want to learn about it. Each of the seven sections is designed to get the best performance out of the students. It allows them to use their own creativity to finish their project while interacting with other groups. As they go further into the project they should come up with more questions, which makes them want to learn more about the topic and allows them to take charge of their learning. At the end, they give feedback amongst their classmates and peer edit ones’ work and present their finished project to the class.

In Tony Vincent’s video “Project-Based Learning for Teachers”, during the Project Based Learning the students should be trying to answer the driving question. The driving question should be deep and should take the students an extended time to answer; it gets them to think about the topic. It allows the students to take charge of their own learning. At the end of the project, the students should present their end product to the class. In the video, it has valuable lifelong skills for the students,

-          - Communication Skills

-          - Career and Life Skills

-          - Critical Thinking Skills

-          - Collaboration Skills

In the Video he quoted Einstein, “I never teach my Pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” It means that the student should take charge of their own learning and as teachers we should lay down helpful guidelines.

In Andrew Miller blog post,”Project-Based Learning and Physical Education”, it basically states how PBL and PE correlate together. In his article, he references Larmer and Mergendoller’s “Seven Essential of Project-Based Learning”.  He uses the example of high school students who are presented with a letter from the middle school principal to create the best workout for the middle school students. This is a great example of how PBL and PE work effectively together using the seven sections.

In the Blog Post, “Project Based Learning in PE”, the author used the same criteria that Miller’s post used, but gave ways the student could benefit from creating an exercise program for middle school children. It allows the students to collaborate with the middle school students and apply their teamwork skills. Along with teamwork skills, it helps the high school students to practice role modeling and physical fitness.

In the video, “PBL: What motivates students today”, students were asked what motivates you to do good in school?

-          POSITIVE feedback from the teacher.

-          To be successful later in life.

-          To get good grades to get into college and get a degree

-          To have more freedom if doing well in school

I remember in elementary school, my biggest motivator was to get good grades in school so I did not miss my soccer games on the weekends. Also, my sister and I used to have a competition to see who had the better grades; even though we are both in college we still have the same competition. Positive rewards are a great way to encourage the students to keep up their work.