My Journey With PBL

This year for my ICDP I started to dive into the world of project based learning. I have always implemented projects into my classroom, but I wanted to have the projects be more meaningful to students. This summer I had the opportunity to attend a PBL conference that was put on by the Buck Institute, which is one of the main leaders of PBL. While at the conference I learned a lot of information and began a project to implement in my classroom for this school year. I was able to receive a lot of resources as well as feedback from teachers from across the world.

            

At the conference I came across an article in the Nevada Journal talking about minimum wage and the cost of living in Ames. This sparked the idea for my project that I could implement in Algebra that would also have real world implications for students. After the conference I had a basic outline for my project and spent the rest of the summer doing research and gathering the information that the students would need in order to complete the project.

           

I implemented the project this year in my Algebra 1A classes. Overall, I think the project went well and that the information definitely made students think and apply their knowledge to a real world situation. After seeing the finished products, I knew that there was definitely room for the project to grow. Originally the project was to compare minimum wage to the cost of living, which proved difficult for students to find a comparison. I changed a few of the items on my rubric to make it easier for students to compare working 40 hours a week on minimum wage to the cost of living in Ames, Nevada and Des Moines. I also added a collaboration piece for students to work together to improve their writing. They now have to peer critique a partners proposal and offer feedback. This will help students learn how to work and collaborate together as well as to apply skills that they have learned in language arts into a math classroom.

            

This summer I have two exciting opportunities that I will be a part of with hopes of improving my PBL knowledge. I was accepted to an externship opportunity with Accumold in Ankeny. Through this I am hoping to create a PBL project that will have real world application based on skills that I learned and used at my externship. Then at the end of July, I have the opportunity to travel to Ohio and attend the second level of the PBL conference that I attended last summer. I am hoping to take the project that I implemented this year to receive more critiques and improve the project even more. I am also hoping that I can create a project through my externship to take to the conference as well. I am excited to continue my journey with PBL, and I am hopeful to be able to create projects to implement in all of my classes that have real world applications for students.