Reflection

What do you understand best about project based learning? Least?

I understand that PBL is a way to teach a variety of school lessons as well as life lessons through one long project. Standards can be hit in a variety of ways in school and by using PBL students have ownership of their work and become emotionally invested. This means that they will remember their lessons for years to come rather than taking a test and then letting the knowledge fly from their brains. There is a lot of work that will go into a long term project and the students have to be on board, they have to reflect on their own work often and the teacher must do the same. I imagine this gets easier each time it is done, but without having actually done this yet, the thing I would say I understand least is if students will do consistent work throughout a semester (for example) or if they will have to rush at the end. This is something that will obviously be different with different kids, but at the same time, I look forward to running a PBL unit so that I can really experience it.

What did you expect to learn in this course? What did you actually learn? More, less, and why?

I actually wasn't quite sure what this class was going to be like. I guess I thought it would be more discussion and not just making our own project. I am so happy I was wrong, because even though I didn't actually run this project in my school (yet), the experience of putting it all together and seeing what others were doing with their PBL made it so that I would feel confident going about running it in the future.

What will you do with what you have learned?

I am going to attempt to run this exact PBL next year. However, I would want to try to run it with another teacher and create something more cross curricular. There would be a million ways to add in any other subject area to this project, if another teacher was willing to try it.