Blog Post #9

In the article, "Seven Essentials for project based learning"  the seven essentials are: a need to know, a driving question, student voice and choice, 21st century skills, inquiry and innovation, feedback and revision, and publicly presented product. A teacher can activate a student's need to know content by having a project with an entry event. The beautiful thing about an entry event it that it can be almost anything. Some examples are a video, a discussion, a guest speaker, or a field trip. An important part of project based learning is to make sure you have a driving question.  The driving question is one of the most important parts of PBL.

In the video, "Project based learning for teachers" I learned some valuable ideas. Project based learning is a fun tool that gets both the students and the teachers involved. This video gave some great driving questions like how can we stop the spread of the flu in our schools? Project based learning is the how. Students learn communication skills while meeting the standards. Students also learn career and life skills via PBL. PBL is questioning, investigating, sharing, and reflecting.

In, "Two Students Solve the Problem of Water Ketchup Bottles  By Designing a New Cap" two students designed a better solution for ketchup caps. They brainstormed ideas for a better cap. They designed the caps on the computer, they found the cap project to be fun. They said you can't design ketchup caps in a normal class.

In the video, "What Motivates Students to Learn" multiple students answered what motivates them. One student said she wanted to feed her family and have a good house, this is what motivates her. Another student said he wanted to be a business man and in order to do this he has to get good grades. One little boy said he would be grounded if he didn't do good in school.  Some students said they love it when teachers give them candy when they succeed. Another little boy said he would like notebooks from his teacher. One teacher does music Monday, she allows the students to dance around the classroom.

The next video I watched was " Wing Project: Crafting a Driving Question." This video taught me how to better draft a driving question. How can we create a better wing structure ? The teachers in this video explained that you would have to take in the dimensions. The engineers explained that wing designing has to deal with loads carried. One of the teachers said, " A good driving question sets up a process of inquiry, students are interested in, and guides them toward how they are going to do the work they will have to produce."