Project Based Learning

As mentioned in my previous post, I have chosen Project-Based Learning (or PBL) as my topic for my Honors Mentorship final project/presentation. There were many topics I could have chosen for teaching, but I believe that the PBL research I must do will benefit me the most for my future classroom because history can be a difficult subject to teach, and you have to be able to engage students or they will not remember or understand the material. PBL is a wonderful way to engage the students! Through this project, I want to know if PBL helps students understand the material better. I want to learn about the projects I could assign that would be helpful to students. I need to know what will engage students the most! That's why my project would be about distinguishing and evaluating the pros and cons of PBL and comparing and contrasting PBL techniques with other teaching strategies- What is PBL? One of my ideas for this project, is to use real-life examples. I could use some of the wonderful projects that I have seen in Mr. Cantrell's class to demonstrate the effectiveness of PBL. I plan to interview teachers, conduct student surveys and interviews, as well as research to help answer my essential question/statement. I am doing this in order gain a perspective of how teachers feel about PBL and their experiences of using projects in their classrooms. I think that the students surveys would also provide an unbiased (I would be considered biased) student view of projects and their effectiveness (or ineffectiveness). These can lead me into finding out what I can do to engage my students in history.

~Sarah