Week 8 Reflection

This week we discussed Project Based Learning and how it lends itself to differentiation. Through the readings this week, twitter session and reading other peers blogs, PBL is a type of differentiation. With our twitter session, Tyler asked which intelligence do you find yourself? I found my self as inter/intra personal, musical and audio/visual. With PBL, all intelligences can be used when completing the project. It is a way for students to work on an individual goal, but also work as a team to complete it. Thomas mentioned in his blog and from his findings this week, PBL is not the "magic tool for all student learning types and lessons" he also mentioned how he has many topics to cover in the school year and PBL is not the answer for all of the subjects. We can't do a project for each topic discussed in the classroom, we can use it when we feel necessary, but it's too time consuming to use for everything. Time is the major essence in making sure the project is successful. It takes a lot of planning time to create a project. One of our colleagues mentioned on twitter, how she found a spider at her house, brought it into her classroom and designed a project around that. To have a successful Project, it needs to be over a topic students can relate to and what they will find engaging. Using the Understanding by Design format is key to a successful project. Mia found a guide to use when designing a project. I plan on using this guide for my future PBL units. The whole time I was reading about PBL, I thought about Givercraft/Survival Craft and how it engages the students to the core. It's important when creating a project we find a tool that students will know how to use, or some so they can help others (another differentiation part!) and also a tool that will engage them, help them set goals and work together to achieve them.