Tag: PBL

Alec talks to fifth grade teacher Jeff Govoni about a project he and his fifth grade colleagues did last year, in which students designed and built dog houses and cat condos for animals seeking adoption.

Teachers plan meaningfully and rigorously in ways that allow the synergy of soft and hard skills to interact

It was the week before the exhibition at High Tech Middle Chula Vista. My eighth-grade class had spent the last eight weeks exploring the question “What makes us resilient?”

Alec and Nuvia talk to artist Scarlett Baily about her life, her art, and in particular the process of collaborating with 200 elementary school students

Here is a paradox of teaching: if you want your classroom to be full of conversation and self-directed learning, you need to be able to quickly capture everybody’s focus.

Much like a movie’s opening scene, the launch of a lesson should grab everybody’s attention, spark curiosity, and get students asking questions.

Last spring I was standing in my fifth-grade classroom, mid-project, rearranging student groups when I realized we had a problem. My students were building scale models of dog houses and cat condos that they had designed—and would ultimately build—to donate to a pet-adoption event later that spring.

This collection is called “true project stories” because it’s all about teachers (and students) telling the stories of the projects they’ve done, from the heights of achievement to the depths of despair.

As a new teacher, I faced the same dilemma every fall: What to put on the walls of my classroom?

Ron Berger talks to Alec about why learning targets put kids in charge of their own learning, and how to make sure they are a success in your class.