Whew! With day one of PBL training sessions in the history books, Educators of America and the teachers of Gaston Middle School are rolling along. The sun was shining and so were our teachers today, Gaston’s English Department!
If you’ve been on this journey with us for a while now you’ll know that this is an exciting bunch! Gaston Middle’s English Department brings some of the most important canons of PBL with them to work every single day; energy and effort! Today we channeled that energy into the PBL 101 class.
As you learn during the growing pains of PBL, choosing your stimuli is important when keeping students engaged. So it’s important to remember just as our Gaston English Department learned today, keep things visual! Make things interesting and ensure your students are on their toes.
English isn’t the prototypical PBL class but that’s what PBL is all about, stepping outside the box. Combining the multidisciplinary nature of English will be a guaranteed enhancement to your long-term project. Develop critical-thinking skills while practicing public speaking which naturally relates to essay writing. Take your curriculum as a starting point and infuse other disciplines.
Crossing over boundaries that are outside a specific curriculum are essential to allowing students to see how multiple subjects are interconnected both in education and real world situations. This drives critical thinking skills and creativity, which can allow for the development of potential solutions that can be effectively articulated to communities, local governments, and regional administrations.
Join us back here tomorrow for Day 3 of training with the Gaston Middle Math Department!