Why Project Based Learning is a Teaching Strategy I'm Surprisingly Excited About (Projects Can Be Fun!)

 

My Initial Experiences With Projects

As a student I was never too happy whenever I heard the teacher bring up the word project in the classroom. I always associated it with the same tired trifolds and presentation boards that I would do over and over with sometimes less than enthusiastic partners. That's why I was perhaps initially skeptical about the teaching strategy of Project-Based learning but after learning more about it I quickly discovered that it wasn't your usual one or two day presentation board projects but instead an interesting way to engage students and motivate their learning in a self-guided way.

What is Project-Based Learning?

Project-Based Learning is an approach in the classroom where students engage with content through a long process of research, producing their own project, and presenting it to an audience. It all begins with a question or dilemma that intrigues the students and starts as a focus point for their research. This way the process is student-led since it is driven by the students curiosity where they direct their own research to find answers and then revise their project in several steps along the way. As a final way for students to take pride in their work they will present their work to an audience which also gets them excited to show off what they learned.

How Could You Use It in a Social Studies Classroom?

Project-Based Learning works best with a unit or topic where you would want engage students more by having them dive deeper into the content through their research goals and presentations. In a Social Studies context a good idea I would  recommend is using this strategy on a unit that focuses on transformative time periods such as the Industrial Revolution or the rise of globalization since it gives student compelling ideas to work with about changing societies or effects of that change as well as a lot of data to work with for their research. 

These frameworks would also allow for students to give their own perspectives on these changing time periods further involving themselves even into their projects and learning in a way that is guided by them instead of the teacher. Below are listed a couple of my ideas for how I would use the Project-Based Learning strategy in a classroom and I hope you find them useful as well. 

• Students can pick an important individual from the American Revolution and follow their journey during that time in some way chosen by the students with some examples from the teacher being a map with dots charted out or a picture collage that shows important images or paintings. They would research that figure and their contributions before presenting their finished journey in a show with other students along the school hallway. 

•  Teachers can have students choose a landmark building or part of the city or town from their nearby area and document how it was impacted by at least one economic, demographic, or political effect discussed in your unit with possible examples being the Industrial Revolution causing the rise of industrialization, the large scale projects created by the Great New Deal, or the movement of African American communities to northern states in the Great Migration. Once all students have completed they can create a replica of their building or location with their information presented below and combine it with the other students to create the full city or town that could be displayed somewhere like the city hall. 

Possible Benefits 

Every teacher's dream is a classroom where students are completely engaged and want to direct their own learning to the point where the teacher's work is simply to guide them. When used correctly in the ideal situation this a good description of what happens in Project-Based Learning as students become highly engaged and involved in their own learning through the process by following their interests. 

Through this process students also learn important skills like how to research a topic, how they can use several rounds of revision to make a better product, and how to present their information to an audience in an engaging way. It is also a good way for students to become involved in their local community as through their projects or finished presentations students can interact in meaningful ways with their community.

Potential Drawbacks 

This has been something that I've come back to frequently in my blog posts but time is a frequent and ever present obstacle of any teacher so like many other time intensive strategies Project-Based Learning runs the risk of taking up a lot of time in your teaching schedule. The multistep process of it which includes research and several rounds of revision causes it by nature to take up a significant amount of time for usually a single theme or topic that it will focus on. 

The student led nature of it as well could potentially cause issues as students might go down rabbit holes in their research and end up wasting time or choosing to due a topic that ends up not lending itself well to their project. If it is a group project as well it can also be difficult to track the contributions of each individual student to make sure that they are all working equally on the project. 

Why It's Important 

It is not only a teacher's role to help students learn important information but to also prepare them for the world beyond school and Project Based Learning is an immensely valuable tool to achieve this. In a future job, college assignment, or even side passion students might be expected to put together a finished product through a research and revision process that's very similar to how Project-Based Learning works which means that if they can practice it in school they'll be much more prepared for it in the future. 

Through this strategy students can learn valuable skills that will follow them throughout their life and also engage with the content in ways that allow their learning to be guided by their own interests. It is ironic that despite my aversion to projects as a student that now as a teacher I'm excited to use projects and the Project-Based Learning strategy in my classroom.