Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Week 6: Brian Crosby's Classroom
Every time I watch a video like this I get inspired, energized and mobilized. Brian Crosby is one of those teachers you aspire to be like. His project-based learning activity and ability to engage children is impressive to say the least.
My next immediate thought after awe is.... how do I become that? How do I get my students involved at that level? As part of my classwork this week I have been diligently reading about project-based learning. As an educator I have thought about this for quite some time now. I know I want to implement this into my classroom, I just struggle with where to begin. I quickly get overwhelmed (I have been using that word A LOT lately). It is hard to step back and instead of looking at the big picture, look at the one step that is in front of me. That is what I would like to see from these videos. The step-by-step process. In looking at the final result it is hard to imagine all that went into a project such as Brian's. Perhaps by seeing the progression it would allow me to understand more about how to begin the process.
So my pledge to myself is this. Beginning today, I am going to look at the one step in front of me. I am going to focus on incorporating one thing into my classroom, a project-based learning activity to begin my school year on the scientific process. That is my pledge and I'm sticking to it (until I need to work on my blogging project)....
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I have the same feelings of "how to" be a teacher like that and it is overwhelming. Your idea of starting with the one step in front of you is a good one. We did a full year of PBL professional development as a district last year. We all had to develop and implement just one PBL activity to get us started which helped us from being too overwhemled. After we viewed some similar videos we all wanted the step by step process the teacher went through too!
ReplyDeleteThe Buck Institute website http://www.bie.org/
is a good resource for project based learning.
They publish a book titled, The PBL Starter Kit, which is very helpful.
Amy I couldn't agree more! It can be so overwhelming to think of where these educators are ending and wonder how "the process" went. I think what you said about taking it a step at a time is so important. I too am trying to implement project-based learning and I too will start with just a pbl activity and go from there.
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