The Zephyrhills Free Press in it’s November 10th edition describes how second grade students at Chester W. Taylor Jr. Elementary School in Zephyrhills, Florida created dozens of “unique, handmade brochures” to help encourage tourism to their city. The brochures are the end product of an authentic and relevant problem-based learning unit developed by teachers during […]
When you first learn to design a Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom, you are faced with the paradigm shift of launching each unit of study with an authentic, open-ended, real-world problem to solve. You start by thinking through the problems students could solve at the end of a five-week unit if they learned everything. Designing the problem-based task statement […]
What would most motivate you to learn how to calculate the perimeter of a space? Someone tells you to learn it. You want to fence in an area of your yard and need to know the distance around it. Someone tells you you’ll need it for your future. I don’t know about you, but I […]
At ASCD 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia, people are talking about: We’re enjoying the many great conversations with old friends and new. Pedro Noguera: “How do we teach teachers to make their classrooms come to life?” “Good teaching takes art and skill.” “Equity is the issue of our times.” Carol Dweck: “Growth mindset isn’t just […]
At its core, problem-based learning is an approach that offers students an authentic, open-ended, complex problem to solve, which requires applying curricular content. While there are many definitions of project- and problem-based learning, let me define them for the purpose of this blogpost. A “project” does not necessarily have to be open-ended; there is often […]