Reading Reflection #3

1.       Several areas should be considered when finding “the Big Idea” for a project. First, you should make sure the big idea covers multiple content areas. Using your big idea, you should be able to incorporate math, science, language arts, art, and history in the project. If one of those areas doesn’t fit into the big idea, then the project will not be considered a true PBL approach. Other areas to consider include being able to teach and discover the big ideas in multiple ways. PBL does not only use a textbook approach, it uses many other resources and avenues to get the students the information they need to complete the project. Finally in finding a big idea for a project, the teacher should look at the curriculum and decide one of the big themes that the curriculum is trying to teach. Teachers can take an overarching theme and create a project that uses multiple subject areas.

2.       The PBL approach helps students to develop 21^st century skills. PBL goes beyond the overall subject and helps students to follow higher-level thinking skills. Some of these skills include: analyzing, evaluating and creating. When students are completing the project, not only are they learning the content, but they are also learning the actions that go along with these higher-level thinking skills.

3.       The PBL approach also helps students to develop 21^st Century literacies. When a child is 21^st Century literate that means they can be independent, aware, and productive citizens. So not only do the students have the 21^st Century skills, as mentioned above,  they also have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use information and these skills in everyday life.

4.       There are eight essential learning functions. Ubiquity is a learning function that helps students have the tools that they need to become mobile learners, to be able to learn when and wherever they are at. Deep learning is a learning function that is occurring when students are navigating, sorting, organizing, and analyzing the material that they find. Making things visible and discussable is more about showing and sharing with the students about something, rather than telling them about it. Expressing ourselves, sharing ideas, and building community is a learning function where the students can use the web to express and share their ideas with others in the class or the community. Another essential learning function is collaboration. Collaboration is using tools that can help students learn together and use shared applications. Research is a function where students can use quality directories or search engines with filters that can help students find and organize the information they need to know for the project. Project management helps students manage their time, work, sources, feedback, drafts, products and all other aspects of the project. Reflection and Iteration is the final essential learning function.  This function helps the students to examine their ideas from every side and receive other points of view than just their own.

5.       Our project will be about making a school brochure. We will need to implement all the subject areas into our project…for history we will learn about the history of our school, when it was founded, changes it has had over the years, etc. For science, we thought about learning how paper is made and why it is good to recycle (because we will be making paper brochures). For language arts, we will write about what makes our school unique and what some of the defining aspects of our school are. For math, we will talk about how many brochures should be made to pass out around the community and for prospective students. For art, we will design a brochure.

Some of the skills they will be using will be analyzing – they will use this when thinking about their school and what makes their school unique and why they think so. Another skill will be creating – they will learn how to create and design a school brochure.

They will also be implementing many of the essential learning functions. They will be doing deep learning when navigating, sorting, organizing, and analyzing the material that they find about their school. They will be expressing themselves when they share with the class what certain things they like about their school. They will also be collaborating when creating their school brochure; they will probably be in groups and will have to decide what information to keep and how to design it using everyone’s feedback in the group.  They will also be using research to find certain information about their school. They will also be using project management the time, work, sources, feedback, drafts, and products aspects of their project. They could use reflection when assessing another group’s work and what they like/do not like about another group’s brochure.