Bringing It Home
Chapter 11

So what happens once the project is completed? Does the classroom celebrate the students achievement or do they just pat themselves in the back and call it a day? These are a couple of questions students reflect on their finished product of the project. Let the students talk and celebrate an achievement of why they were able to accomplish when the project is complete. Have a classroom discussion on what they learned along the way from PBL. When the students reflect on their work have them incorporate how technology was either useful in the project. Have the students look at what they accomplished. Then they can critique their work on what they have accomplished. The students can then show the other classmates what they learned form their project so they can show them what they learned. Once they have set the stage and have broadcasted their project to an audience have them bring it home by praising their work with seeing  their accomplishment on the finished product. Once the students have broadcasted their project to others then have them reflect on what they learned form the project.

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Celebrating and Reflecting
Chapter 10

Once the project comes to a close the students must realize how they can wrap up the project. When the students reflect on their work they realize how much they learned, what was difficult, what was frustrating and what was interesting throughout the project. If the teacher reminds the students of what they learned form the PBL the students can reflect on the overall experience. If the students can reflect on their experience then they can view what they learned from the project. Have the students write down ideas or start up a conversation with group members or class discussion to talk about what they learned about PBL. Finally have the students present their project to the community, school, or parents about their project. Have the students teach the people what they lean red about their project. Have the students discuss what they learned about their project. Once the students have shared their information ask them if they would like to do another project in the future or create PBL as a necessity learning tool for the classroom. Have the students become involved in their learning from PBL.

Chapter 9 Reading Reflection

It is very important for students to reflect during their project. As a teacher we need to set time aside for students to reflect. The school year moves very fast for student and you need to set time aside for students because reflecting helps students feel good about their work and students really learn from their reflections. Setting aside time helps students think about things they may not have before, like what they learned, what they enjoyed, their growth, and what and how they want to learn in the future.
As students wrap up their projects they need to reflect and elaborate on their learning journey. Projects open students minds and the more decisions they have to make the better they will learn. focus on the questions that matter most to students, those that make the material stick and having them develop and think for themselves and about themselves as evolving learners. Teachers need to prompt, probe, ask why, and encourage them to elaborate.
Schools build tradition and identity for students. School can make project based learning a tradition. Continuing projects year to year will prepare younger students for the future projects to come. Most students will look forward to the projects when its their turn. Communities can get involved in the project traditions as well. Doing this will establish an identity as a community of learners.
Celebrating students achievements is very important for students. Teachers can use displays, dioramas, parties, blogs, or anything.  Students learn the value in their work when it is displayed in the community, and they are proud of their work.
This is relevent to our project because the students need to reflect on their work at the end of the project and celebrate what they have done.

Making Assessment Meaningful
Chapter # 9

Once the students have completed all phases of the project what is the next step is to discover if the students learned something from Project Base Learning using an assessment. The teacher wants to find out if the students have learned anything from the project or did they not understand anything about the project. There were some key ideas on how assessments can help encompass on the students learning. One of the concepts in assessment is active learning. Active learning is a concept in which students can benefit from being involved in their project, and they can measure their growth from the assessment. "Assessing your students project work requires deliberate strategies to take stock not only of what they have created, but also the teamwork, effort and creativity that went into the project". (pg. 139) This gives the teacher an insight in which the students were able to comprehend from the project rather than having a multiple choice test at the end of the project. There are alternatives in assessing the students comprehension of the project rather than having a multiple choice exam to see if the students were able to understand PBL. Another concept that helps with assessment is introducing the KWL chart in the beginning of the project and have the students fill it out with ideas they want to figure out from their project. Then the teacher can reintroduced it when the students finished the project by going back and have the students fill out what they were able to grasp anything from the project by filling out the rest of the KWL chart as part of an assessment. Finally another part of assessing the students learning abilities of the PBL is by applying their concept to a real world problem and figuring out. Many projects requires for students to use different types of technology disciplines in which gives the student a hands on experience in learning through ideas.It then becomes factual given the students effort in creating something responsive from their project is how you find out if the students captured something from their hard work and effort from PBL through assessment.


                                                                                       
                                                                 

Chapter 9

Michelle Webb

Knowing where your students are at the beginning of a unit is very helpful so that you know what you need to teach them.  The book called these beginning places “anchors”. “Anchors” are the knowledge of which the student already has a good grasp. A common way for teachers to establish anchors for their students is to do a KWL chart. Once they have finished the unit students always need to review what they have learned. Ways to do this include interviews with the students and presentations the students can give to the rest of the class. Concepts in this chapter relate to what I am doing in the gardening group because as we set us our website we are using all different kinds of ways to present knowledge to our students. These can help us in the future when we have our own classes because we will know how to take these different ways of presenting information and delivering it to our students who might learn better from these techniques. 

Chapter 8

We all want our students to be able to handle things independently, but it takes time for that to happen. Sometimes for this to happen, you need to provide examples for the students. This chapter’s headings guide us to understand what it is we can provide for our students by way of enhancing the independent learning.

·         Connecting with experts

·         Expanding the learning circle

·         Communicating findings

·         Let students lead

·         Extending the benefits

If we model these suggestions we can show students different cultures and adults that use these ideas as ways of learning independently. The EAST initiative model is a network of schools that using technology to “solve problems and make improvements in their communities.” This model is built on four essential ideas.

1.       Student-driven learning: Students need to be responsible for their own learning.

2.       Authentic project-based learning: Students should be engaged in solving real problems in their communities.

3.       Technology as tools: Students need access to the relevant technologies that professionals use to solve real problems.

4.       Collaboration: When students collaborate in teams to pursue authentic projects, they accomplish more than any one person can do in isolation.

This is essential for our gardening project and any other project we do. We must allow our students the opportunity to take charge of their learning and by providing examples and allowing students to use the EAST initiative model we can achieve this.

Chapter 7

I love this quote provided in the chapter and thought it would be nice to open with it. “Keeping a project moving requires teachers to support students on their learning journey. It doesn’t always unfold the way you expect. This is where the art of teaching comes into play.” Basically we as teachers need to provide communication for our students, whether it is;

·         Teacher to teacher

·         Student to student

·         Teacher to student

All of these forms of communication will help to make the learning experience better for our students.  According to page 118, “In the middle of a project, student teams are likely to be going in many directions and working at different speeds.” Some questions we might ask depends on the types of information we want to know. The different types of questions are:

·         Procedural

·         Teamwork

·         Understanding

·         Self-assessment

Remember to always be the teacher and manage conflict when it arises but to also allow for student inquiry. I think this is important when putting together our gardening project. We want our students to be able to work collaboratively with each other but also with us as the instructor.