iLearn@ZPS

A new movement is underway to encourage PBL during summer vacations and after-school hours.

gives youth new opportunities to become leaders, thinkers, and problem-solvers

One team of teens spent this summer planning a carnival for neighborhood children as a strategy to raise funds and visibility for a nonprofit cause they care about: supporting youth in foster care. In another program, children have put their passion for the Earth to work by writing a play they are producing that teaches about environmental issues.

I have wondered for a long time how passion and project based learning would change my primary classroom

The questions came very slowly at first (they had only been in my class a couple of days and we were still getting to know each other), but by the end of our discussion, all of the students had had at least one question.

As they formulated their questions, I gave them a card with I wonder… printed on it, and they went to a table to draw a picture of their question. As each picture was finished, I printed the words to end their question for them, and the children trotted off to our Wonder Wall to post them. 

My own teaching practice has gone through a metamorphosis. My students write for authentic purposes and audiences and they see themselves as authors. How does that happen? I treat them with respect and I honor their voices. I focus on what my students CAN do and support them as they continue to make progress as writers. Every child is successful in my classroom. Students have choice in what they write. I no longer use “story starters” where each student writes to the same inauthentic prompt and moves along through the writing process at the same pace. It’s noisy and messy in our room most of the time because real learning is happening. Our classroom is a community of learners where diverse ideas are accepted and successes are celebrated. My students write informative pieces, narratives, poetry, songs, stories, scripts, and publish in a variety of ways: blogs, Glogs, posters, published books that are part of our classroom library, Voice Thread, wikis, podcasts and iMovies. My students learn through writing as they think critically and problem solve.