There are many science standards addressed by this project. For example, students would have to demonstrate their understanding of energy and energy transformations, chemistry of the atmosphere, chemical reactions, and matter and energy in living systems.
The students will also develop an understanding of the inter-relationship between people, resources, and the environment.

The project provides many rubrics for evaluating end products and self-assessment.There are also worksheets and group progress reports.

The third objective would be tougher to implement. For this objective the students pretend to be scientists and write about a layer in the Grand Canyon. They describe the layer and write about the particular geologic time during which the layer was deposited. Most of my Earth Science students are not very good writers and I think they would not enjoy this aspect of the project. It would be a valuable endeavor, though.

Yes, this project contains key characteristics of PBL. The students work in small groups to achieve designated tasks. This is an extended activity, in this case lasting a month. There is no correct answer; instead, students move closer toward understanding the big idea that cities are complex systems.

Yes, I can certainly see how standards are being addressed. This isn’t an English lesson, but I can see various objectives that are being addressed in this project from the English 10 Course of Study:

–Apply both literal and inferential comprehension strategies…
–Recognize fallacious or illogical thought in…informational texts.
–Write in the persuasive mode…
–Apply principles of Standard English…
–Use the research process to document and organize information…
–Critique oral and visual presentations for fallacies in logic.

Yes, student learning can be measured. If I were doing this project with my high-school students, I would make it a little more in-depth (it was created for elementary students), but even with the project as it is, there are specific ways that we can come up with grades. (That’s the point of deciding whether the learning can be measured, right? I mean, really…)

The presentation to the outside audience appears to be the culminating activity. Students could be graded on their presentation skills, their presentation format, their ability to achieve the tasks of the assignment, and their ability to make a compelling argument. There’s also an excellent criterion list that the students are asked to reflect upon.

The “Uncommercial Project” also has some excellent rubrics for student evaluation. I think rubrics could be developed for any project like this to measure student learning.

What I like about all of these projects is that they incorporate students engaged in activities, and while the students are engaged, they’re working in groups. This is where all our training in Cooperative Learning will form a good foundation. I think I could incorporate this pretty well at this point. I found it interesting, though, that even in these exemplar lessons, there were still some examples of things not going completely smoothly. For example, in the town building video, there was a kid who basically blamed the other group members for things not being done perfectly (there was some bickering, followed by “that wasn’t my job.”) However, I really like this, because the real world operates this way, and these kids need to learn that working with others is a give and take. This “human” problem also highlights the very underlying principle of PBL units: there’s a messy problem, a real-life problem, a problem with either no correct answers or many possible answers. With enough work, I think I could create lessons with real-world problems.

The biggest concern or difficulty is that PBL takes a lot of time. I normally don’t gripe about not having time to cover all the required objectives, but I’m starting to get that way now that we’re being forced by NCLB to really ace the test scores. For example, this year I’m spending an extra two weeks doing reading objectives that I normally don’t do. Therefore, time is tight. However, like the teacher from the AEEC pointed out, with clever planning, it’s possible to cover TONS of objectives through the course of a PBL unit or project.

Some of these projects require a lot of technology or supplies (in one case, these were provided free to teachers by a foundation), but I’m not sure that’s really a concern here at AHS. It seems that we can probably get our hands on whatever we need. Oh, I learned that the Choctaw Band of Native Americans from Mississippi have the most tech-savvy reservation in the country, so if things get tight, perhaps we can open a tribal gaming center [this blog doesn't allow the "cas**o" word] here in Auburn. Hey, what a great way to fund the laptop initiative! Who has an “in” with the Creek Nation??

I also studied “The Black Plague Project,” since I already teach this topic in English 12 when we study Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales.” I agree with Amanda that this project makes use of the key elements of PBL.

Students were required to choose a role, write about experiences from that perspective, anticipate difficulties they would have faced, and draw conclusions about the chosen role. All of these tasks were drawn from the guiding questions provided by the teacher.

The class then met standards by reading stories written about this time period and applying their newly-gained knowledge of the Black Plague. Finally, students were required to create a multimedia project to demonstrate what they learned about the Black Plague in English and science classes.

Several steps of the project could be graded easily using the rubrics that the teacher placed on the website, so student learning is indeed easily measured.

I think this is a great project for younger students (7th-8th graders). I don’t think I could use it “as-is” for my English 12 class, but some components could be modified for higher-level thinking in the upper grade levels.

One of the projects I chose to view was about students who used several content areas to help them in developing a project for Microsoft. Two boys used physics, math, engineering, and English (creative writing) to write a screenplay and create a digital video for Microsoft. I found this to be an interesting experiment, and I liked that the boys used so many skills from multiple content areas to accomplish their real world goal.

I could definitely help students with writing projects for most any purpose, so I could easily implement this portion of the activity in my own classroom. Depending on the types of media needed to complete this particular project, I doubt that I could help students create a polished presentation for a company like Microsoft. I think that I would definitely need to work from a smaller-based scale.

If possible, I would love to implement ideas like this with other teachers cross-curriculum, but I know how difficult it is for all of us to coordinate lessons and meet our objectives for the state and AHSGE at the same time. These are the major difficulties I anticipate in attempting to implement such a project.

I think I already use this format of teaching when I assign projects in class, but I think I need to work harder to ensure that I have a clear, defining question that directs students in their tasks. I also have a difficult time relating some of the literature we study to the real world. Some texts are easier than others, especially if they are historically accurate. I need help in making fictional texts more applicable to the real world and to students’ future careers.