Reading Reflection Four

1. Discuss the potential pitfalls in project design.

There are four main pitfalls that teachers should watch out for during project design. The potential pitfalls are that it is long on activity but short on learning outcomes, the technology is layered over traditional practices, the thematic units are trivial, and they can be overly scripted with many steps. First of all a project should be right sized for what you plan to accomplish, if students could learn as much through a lecture or by reading about the topic then the project falls short. The second pitfall is that technology is layered over traditional practices. Good projects should focus on reaching significant learning outcomes not just about incorporating technology. Third, thematic approaches can be trivial when teachers choose a theme that is not interdisciplinary and doesn’t allow collaboration. When doing a thematic project teachers need to think about how a theme connects different aspects of learning. The final pitfall is that teachers plan activities with too many discrete steps. You have to judge the activity based on the outcome so that students make use of the steps and they lead to an individualized result.

2. Discuss the features of a good project.

The best projects share many of the same features. The project includes features such as

·       Loosely designed to allow for different learning paths

·       Allow students to construct meaning

·       Structured for inquiry

·       Capture students interest by relating to real-life

·       Realistic

·       Involve others beyond school

·       Use primary sources

·       Allow learning through collaboration

·       Get at 21^st century skills

·       Get at learning dispositions

·       Have students learn by doing

A good project needs to get the students involved by relating topics to their real life while also allowing the students to discover the information on their own through inquiry and research.

3. Discuss where project ideas come from.

Good project ideas are all around us, we just need to know where to look. Project ideas can come from successful past projects where more meaning could be found, project plans developed by and for other teachers, news stories, contemporary issues, student questions or interests, a classroom irritant, or a mash up of great ideas and tools. It is also important to know that one successful project may lead you to others so it is necessary to start out by finding a good project to build upon.

4. Discuss the steps to design a project.

Projects exist within a context of the school calendar, curriculum sequence, student readiness, student interests, along with many other factors that teachers need to keep in mind. The first thing to think about is the framework where the learning objectives, core subjects, 21^st century skills, and learning dispositions must be decided on. As well while planning a project you need to plan a level of understanding about what information the students need to take way from the project. One of the last things to do is to plan the project theme or challenge that the students need to inquire about or create to display what they learned. During this time teachers also need to think about how they will introduce the project to their students.

5. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

All of this information is necessary to consider when planning our lesson plan and project based learning assignment. Our topic is about food so we are going to have our 4^th graders research the food in a region other than their own and they will also need to research what factors determine what a regions diet consists of. When planning this assignment we need to keep in mind aspects like what we want our students to take away from the project, what will we assess them on and how will we do the assessment. These are all topics presented in this chapter. As well this chapter presented features that are exhibited in a good project so we can work to incorporate some of these factors to ensure that our students have the best learning experience and grow as a result of the project.