10/22/12 Amy Gerard, Director of Project Based Learning in grades K through 8 for the Plymouth School Corporation is excited to announce opportunities for the public to learn about Project Based Learning.
The Plymouth Community Schools will be hosting informational meetings about Project Based Learning and these sessions are open to anyone who would like to learn more about PBL and the Plymouth Schools.
The meetings will be held on Monday, October 22 from 5:30 to 6:00 at Washington Discovery Academy in the cafeteria and from 7:00 to 7:30 at Lincoln Junior High in the auditorium. Another meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 23 from 5:30 to 6:00 at Riverside Intermediate School in the band room.
Project-based learning, or PBL, is the use of in-depth and rigorous classroom projects to facilitate learning and assess student competence. Project Based Learning was promoted by the Buck Institute for Education in the late 1990s. Project-based learning is an instructional method that provides students with complex tasks based on challenging questions or problems that involve the students’ problem solving, decision making, investigative skills, and reflection that includes teacher facilitation, but not direction. PBL is focused on questions that drive students to encounter the central concepts and principles of a subject hands-on. Students form their own investigation of a guiding question, allowing students to develop valuable research skills as students engage in design, problem solving, decision making, and investigative activities. Through Project-based learning, students learn from these experiences and take them into account and apply them to the world outside their classroom. PBL is a different teaching technique that promotes and practices new learning habits, emphasizing creative thinking skills by allowing students to find that there are many ways to solve a problem.
