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https://v.gd/5hBFnV

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Assessment as part of PBL should not only come at the end but should be seen as a learning activity that is embedded throughout the PBL process.

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I am a kindergarten teacher and at my school we don’t have to give children grades.

We assess children every day through observations, play time and adult-led activities.

At the end of each term we fill a grid with the five learning areas: personal and social area; expression and communication which includes, physical education, art and drama, music, oral language, approach to writing and math; knowledge of the world.

We must write about the child and what he/she has already accomplished.

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THE ROOT OF THE WORD "ASSESSMENT"

IS FROM THE LATIN "ASSIDERE"

WHICH MEANS "TO SIT BESIDE"

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For me, the easiest way to weaken students' confidence is by not believing they are capable. Children are smart and they are able to read their teachers’ thoughts and feelings towards them.

I LOVED THIS POST FROM:
Carla Martins, Portugal
The Ten Commandments to Weaken Your Students Confidence and Independence

1)      Give them activities you know they will hate (they can´t learn without effort)

2)      Give them goals you know they can´t achieve (if someone can do it, you will know he’s a really good student)

3)      Keep them in silence (you are the teacher, their role is to listen to you)

4)      Always criticize, specially in front of other students (they must know what they are doing wrong)

5)      Show no flexibility (otherwise how will they distinguish what is wrong from what is right)

6)      Always nurture competition (only the strong ones survive)

7)      Treat your students like scum (show them who’s the boss)

8)      Always expect the worst and you will never be disappointed

9)      All they must know is on the handbook

10)   Every student must be taught and learn in equal  way.

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"How Resilient Are You?

You got: You are quite resilient!"

Resilience is a quality that helps us through daily stressors and major life crises. While some of our resilience is associated with inborn personality traits, there’s much you can do to develop your resilience level, and the resources below can help.

Your answers indicate that you have many traits and thinking habits that are associated with greater levels of resilience, which is a very good thing. You are likely more able to handle life's crises – both major and minor – and turn difficulties to your advantage, or at least weather them optimally.

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3. Describe a situation in your professional or personal life where you were first unsuccessful but because you stuck with it you succeeded in the end. 

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3. Describe a situation in your professional or personal life where you were first unsuccessful but because you stuck with it you succeeded in the end. 

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When I first started teaching it was hard for me to adjust to all the school rules and I had way to many children in my classroom. Throughout the school year I was able to create strategies that facilitated my teaching and also gave more freedom to the children. Some strategies worked and others failed, but those experiences helped me grow to the teacher that I am today.

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IT'S NOT THAT I'M SO SMART,

IT'S JUST THAT I STAY WITH PROBLEMS LONGER

Albert Einstein

This quote captures one of the key essences of PBL : getting students' to develop grit and resilience to stay with a problem or project even though they have failed previously is one the most difficult parts of PBL.

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2.4 Finding collaboration partners outside the classroom

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2.4 Finding collaboration partners outside the classroom

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Our school is surrounded by a few organisations that we could try to engage with. The hospital, the local swimming pool, the restaurants and coffee shops, the gas station, the supermarkets, etc. These are the school’s neighbours and they are definitely sources of a wide range of information and knowledge.
The school has a parents association that is always available to help facilitate and identify the right people to approach for each project.
My school is also part of a group of several schools that have a common administration and work on similar projects. This allows information to be shared easily and facilitates the work that is done with the community.

But, for me, the best sources of knowledge in our community are the families. A grandmother that shares a recipe, a mum that comes to school to talk about her job, a dad that helps us plan a visit to a specific organisation.

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A key goal of PBL is not the project but rather the process of building the project.
Learning happens while working on the project.

Useful tips to help scaffold the collaboration process:

Teach the kids how best to work together

Offer tools to help kids manage time and tasks

Use tabletop directions to keep kids focused

Facilitate learning by moving among groups

Activity to develop effective collaboration:

The well-known “blanket game” but with a twist. Instead of dividing the group in two smaller groups, I keep the whole group together. One child stays outside the classroom waiting to be called.
The group chooses someone that will hide under the blanket. When the other child comes back, the group as to help her/him by giving clues and hints about who’s hiding under the blanket. The group has to communicate and work together to help their colleague.

Great icebreaker for younger students! And also a great way to improve children’s communication skills.

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2. Developing effective collaboration for PBL

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2. Developing effective collaboration for PBL

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Share a picture that represents collaboration for you!

This is a picture of my school’s team building activity that happened at the beginning of this school year.

We were divided in groups and had to work together to overcome different challenges.

At the end, all the teams came together and had to collaborate and communicate to achieve a common purpose.

During the debriefing of this activity we realized that we can achieve more if we work together and collaborate. Teaching and learning is about all of us. School, Teachers, Parents and Children!

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COMING TOGETHER IS A BEGINNING,

KEEPING TOGETHER IS PROGRESS,

WORKING TOGETHER IS SUCCESS

Henry Ford

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1.6 Optional P2P - Your PBL Design: Formulating your driving question

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1.6 Optional P2P - Your PBL Design: Formulating your driving question

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Student age-range – 4-5 years old (Kindergarten)

Subject topic - “Dinosaurs”

Driving question – “What if dinosaurs were still alive? What would their life be like?”

Learning Goals

(based on the idea of learning through play/learning by doing):

- being able to find answers to their questions;

- working together as a team

- exploring and using new vocabulary;

- participating actively in the class’s project;

- using technology tools that they haven’t used before;

- being able to share their project with their families and colleagues;

- feeling inspired and proud of their findings;

In order to provide some context I’m also posting my Learning Diary entry reflection from section 1.3.

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The question should be open-ended, engage and inspire students by creating curiosity, and be aligned to the learning goals I would like to achieve.
Good driving questions, according to Mergendoller, are non-Googleable questions.

Non-Googleable Questions
1. “What does it mean to be a healthy eater?”
The school canteen needs new ideas for the menu. What healthy recipes could we share with them?
2. “How are airplane wings constructed?”
We love making paper planes and playing with them outside. But how come some can fly longer then others?

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- FIVE KEYS -
1. Real-World Connection
2. Core to Learning
3. Structured Collaboration
4. Student Driven
5. Multifaceted Assessment

Studies show that students participating in PBL become more engaged and self-directed learners; learn more deeply and transfer their learning to new situations; improve problem-solving and collaboration skills; and perform as well or better on high-stakes tests.

QUESTION - "Which of the 5 components you feel will be the most challenging for you to realize and why".

These 5 keys allow the teachers to organize their methods and goals.

Working as a kindergarten teacher at a school that already follows the PBL approach, I feel that the most challenging key is definitely keeping the project student driven and promote a structured collaboration. Since I’m working with kindergartens sometimes it’s hard to keep them interested in a project for a long time or to get them to take the initiative.

The real-world connection is clearly the most important key for me because that’s what gets the children’s attention and interest.

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1.3 Optional P2P - Reflections on my current teaching practice

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1.3 Optional P2P - Reflections on my current teaching practice

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I'm an English Kindergarten Teacher working at a Private School in Lisbon. This school approves the PBL way of teaching/learning and is already implementing it.

I work with another kindergarten teacher, since our school is bilingual, which means that the children are exposed to two different ways of teaching. In the classroom, children learn to communicate both is English and Portuguese.

My classroom is small but it has several learning corners that the children can explore freely. From math, writing, art, games, play dough, cars, animals, playhouse, etc. children have a variety of options that help them develop different skills. It’s a group of 25 children and they are 4/5 years old.

Our approach is focused on the idea of learning by doing. As a teacher, my role is to support the children’s learning processes and also create situations/activities/materials that will facilitate and promote these learning situations. Children have a lot of time to play and explore the materials, but also to improve their problem-solving and collaboration skills. They are faced with several day to day life situations and they use their communication skills to try to solve them. As a teacher, I’m always there for the children and I help them find ways to solve their “problems”.

The school believes in and follows the PBL approach and adjusts it to the different grades.

In kindergarten, the most important PBL keys are real-world connection and student driven. The project has to be about something that is real to the children, and that doesn’t mean it can’t be a fictional situation. The driving question has to mean something to the children and has to drive them to want to know more about it. If the project feels real to the children then we will be able to learn a lot from it because the children will relate to it.

Working with such small children can be very challenging because what was really interesting to them yesterday might not be that interesting today. I address these situations with different strategies. For example, I always ask for the parents’ collaboration in the project. With the help of their families, children can do some research for the project; they can find new/different questions and ideas; they can bring new information and share it with the classroom, etc. Another way to keep them interested is by making sure that the project keeps evolving and that there’s always something new to add or to find answers to.

In kindergarten, the best way to find out about our students needs is through observation, and not so much through specific assessments. The way children play and interact with others gives me a lot of information and helps me set goals according to their needs.

With this course I hope to learn more about project learning and how it can influence children. I will be focusing on this age group (4-5 years old) and the subject topic will be “Dinosaurs” since my children have been showing a lot of interest on this theme.

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1.2  Why is PBL not used more widely in our education systems?

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1.2  Why is PBL not used more widely in our education systems?

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For me, PBL is not used more widely for different reasons.  In most schools, teachers feel pressured to complete the programs and achieve certain grades and goals. Because of this sometimes students’ needs and interests are left behind.  There’s also the fact that some schools are only used to traditional methods and find it hard to try something new. Lack of training and information makes it more difficult for both teachers and students to experiment and implement a new educational method.

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1. What is PBL? (reactions to the videos)

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1. What is PBL? (reactions to the videos)

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The videos were a great introduction to what PBL is and how we can implement it in our classroom.

Our focus should be on the children and on what they want to learn and not just on following a curriculum.

I hope to learn more about project learning and how it can influence children.

I'm currently working at a school that approves this way of teaching/learning and so I'm excited about getting new tools and improving my teaching methods.

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These are not projects where students simply apply what they have learned from traditional instruction. This is “main course” Project Based Learning where students learn the material from completing the project. A “main course” project:

-          is intended to teach signiﬁcant content.

-          requires critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and various forms of communication.

-          requires inquiry as part of the process of learning and creating something new.

-          is organized around an open-ended Driving Question.

-          creates a need to know essential content and skills.

-          allows some degree of student voice and choice.

-          includes processes for revision and reflection.

-          involves a public audience.

Project Based Learning is a ﬁlling meal of rich content knowledge and the skills valued by employers in a globalized economy (Wagner,2008). If we wish to prepare a generation of students who can solve real-world problems, we must give them real-world problems to solve. If we want to graduate students who can manage their time and collaborate with others, we must give them guidance and practice managing their time and collaborating with others.

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 There is a difference between "doing projects" and PBL

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 There is a difference between "doing projects" and PBL

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TELL ME AND I FORGET,

TEACH ME AND I REMEMBER,

INVOLVE ME AND I LEARN

Benjamin Franklin

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I hope to learn more about project learning and how it can influence children.
I'm currently working at a school that approves this way of teaching/learning and so I'm excited about getting new tools and improving my teaching methods.

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Hi everyone. My name is Rita and I'm from Portugal!
I'm an English Kindergarten Teacher working at a Private School in Lisbon.

I love to travel and getting to know new cultures!