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This article is old (1971) but from a foundational theorist in PBL. He discusses using projects to teach students to be mathematicians rather than just teaching or failing to teach them math. Link on Boise site: http://www.tandfonline.com.libproxy.boisestate.edu/doi/pdf/10.1080/0020739700030306

The Teaching Channel has some powerful videos about Project Based learning.

I always find it helpful to watch instruction in action as I am trying to understand how the process works. The Teaching Channel has 16 videos on its site which are tagged as PBL. They cover a variety of topics.

The students will work in groups to create a Multimedia Presentation that informs an authentic audience as well as the class about civil rights figures, their speeches/quotes and how these leaders have impacted their life today. Each group will choose different civil rights leaders as their focus.

The students will recognize how people make a difference in the world by researching the volunteer work of others and showing others what they have learned.

Possible idea for an PBL in an English, History of AVID classroom. Focuses on the use of research, MLA and 21st century skills.

Editor's Note: Today's guest blogger is Don Doehla, French teacher and instructional coach at Vintage High School in Napa, California. Don recently stepped up to become the new facilitator of our World Languages group. He's got some great ideas for teaching world languages, including the use of project-based learning.

"Emily Pilloton: Teaching design for change"

This is a great site that lets you easily search for PBL ideas/lesson plans by grade level and subject matter areas.

Learning Through Landscaping: A fourth grade PBL unit where students explore the topic of landscaping to improve their grounds.

A Gardener's Dilemma Project Idea: Students act as community members and set aside plots of land for local citizens to establish small gardens.Students will design a plan for a family garden plot. I will adapt this PBL to include technology, ELA, Science and of course, Mathematics for elementary students. I like that it is a real-world skill, affecting everyone and involves community planning.

Title A Newspaper Project: It's News to Me! The West Virginia Department of Education has produced a variety of well thought out comprehensives Projects, this is just one. High level of detail.

The project revolves around the energy produced in various types of chemical reactions (a key concept in all chemistry classes) and asks students to propose a useful source of chemical energy after engaging in a series of hands-on experiments and online activities. I appreciate how this project not only requires students to think deeply about their experimental results, but also how it asks them to apply them in a new context. Students not only collect and analyze data, they must seek a useful purpose or application of their results, giving the project real-world relevance.

This PBL requires students to use persuasive techniques to create an advertisement of a product they have created. It could be modified to include an analysis of how advertisements affect our choices.

Title Immigrants: On the Move with the American Slide Project Idea: The challenge to students is that they must evaluate how immigrants have been influenced by the American culture and how the American culture has been shaped by immigrants.

This article from 2007 discussed the effectiveness and implementation of different inductive teaching methods to include problem-based learning and project-based learning.

comprehensive annotated collection of PBL research

Barron, B., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2008). Teaching for meaningful learning: A review of research on inquiry-based and cooperative learning (PDF) . Powerful Learning: What We Know About Teaching for Understanding. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. A comprehensive review of research on inquiry-based-learning outcomes and best practices in project-based learning, problem-based learning, and design-based instruction.

Project idea for an 8th grade math class centered around games and probability