This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 139 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode we're going to go step by step through the process of planning a project-based

learning lesson.

Project-based learning gets more popular every year and that's a good thing.

We want our students to take what they learn and actually do something with it rather

than just receiving a load of information, regurgitating it on tests and promptly forgetting

it.

But PBL is only a good thing if we're doing it right and unfortunately the likelihood

of that happening consistently is very low.

That's because a term like project-based learning is easy to misinterpret.

A science teacher could, for example, have students choose a famous scientist to research

and create trifold boards where they paste photos and facts about their person, date in

place of birth, most significant accomplishment and discoveries, family life, date of death.

This kind of project happens all the time in schools but it does not come close to true

project-based learning.

In my own exploration of PBL I have never felt like I quite got it 100%.

I could sort of tell you what it was but if you asked me to design a PBL unit I would

honestly be guessing half the time.

I think the reason is that I've never really seen it in action.

I get the philosophy behind PBL but I've never seen an entire unit from start to finish.

So that's what we're going to do today.

We're going to walk through a PBL unit that's designed to take about six to eight weeks.

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