We had a pretty good day in our classroom this week, and I owe most of it to project based learning.
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| "purple passion FSOD" by Anthony Easton (CC BY 2.0) |
This week I started my first official PBL lesson asking my students to create a blog about something they are passionate about. Using the driving question of "How can I get more people to read my writing?" my students set out to create a blog to share their greatest interest with an authentic, world-wide audience.
To kick off the unit, I showed Neil Pasricha's TED Talk about his creation of the two-time Webby Award winning blog 1000 Awesome Things. His talk explains The 3 As of Awesome: Attitude, Awareness, and Authenticity. These three ideas gave us a great jumping off point to talk about the driving question.
As we talked, I got on a roll and launched into a full-fledged motivational speech. One of my grander moments in the classroom, if I do say so myself. More importantly I had as close to full class engagement as I have had in a long time. The last time I had this much engagement was just after I realized that I was wearing one black sock and one blue sock. Kids love my misery.
I spoke about my experience with writing and gathering an audience and working to create a product that might give something of value to my audience. When I was finishing my remarks (really, I was running out of things to say), the magic happened. I worked my way into a rousing conclusion, reinforcing my main points, and just as I finished, the bell rang to dismiss class.
This magic has happened before, but this lesson was different. This lesson expressed an important and personal topic with the opportunity for students to explore their own interests and follow their own passions. Finishing my remarks just as the bell rang created excitement but nowhere near the excitement we all felt about the opportunity that PBL created for us.
