Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Reinventing a Public High School with PBL (Edutopia)


Sammamish High School was given a federal grant to redesign their curriculum and school with project-based learning (PBL). The school plans to transition the whole school to a PBL curriculum by 2015. Edutopia created this video to document the school's first year of PBL implementation. Here are some of the things Edutopia found out: 
  • All disciplines and grade levels are shifting from teacher-centered instruction to student-centered learning. 
  • There is a great focus in engaging students with authentic challenges. Students are learning academic content through the process of finding the solutions to authentic problems.  The hands-on experiences also help students to retain information better.
  • Students were motivated to created quality work when clients were involved. 
  • Teachers are required to attend a five-day professional development on PBL in the beginning of the year. 
  • ELLs can benefit from projects that require them to work in groups. These students have a hard time understanding concepts through teacher lectures. 

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