JESSE MAINE M.Ed.
Director of Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment
Project Based learning for the STEM Classroom
Project Based Learning....
Increases Motivation
PBL engages students in learning through the attraction or pull of problem dissonance or tension. They take on more and delve deeper as they make a personal investment in the outcome of their inquiry.
Makes Learning Relevant to the Real World
PBL offers students an obvious answer to their questions:
- "Why do we need to learn this information?"
- "What connection does school work have to the real world?"
Promotes Higher Order Thinking
Coupled with cognitive coaching strategies, the ill-structured problem scenario calls upon critical and creative thinking by suspending the guessing game of:
- “What's the answer that the teacher wants me to find?"
Students gather information significant to the problem and assess its credibility and validity. In bringing the problem to acceptable closure with evidence to support decisions, students meet high benchmarks of thinking.
Encourages Learning How to Learn
PBL promotes metacognition and self-regulated learning as students generate strategies for defining problems, gathering information, analyzing data, building and testing hypotheses, comparing strategies with those of other students and mentors, and sharing methods and conclusions.
Requires Authenticity
PBL engages student learning in ways that are similar to real world situations and assesses learning in ways that demonstrate understanding and not mere replication.
Edutopia: Best Practices for Project Based Leaning
Educational Leadership article: Essentials for project based learning
Educational Leadership – Teachers as Classroom Coaches: The nine Steps of Project-Based learning
Classroom leadership – Project – Based Learning
Edutopia: Use Project-Based Learning to Meet the National Educational Technology Standards
Over 25 Links Uncovering Project Based Learning Resources On The Web
Top Free online tools and resources for PBL
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