Sandra Iturbides, M.Ed Katia Zorogastua, M.Ed

Sandra Iturbides, M.Ed
Katia Zorogastua, M.Ed
World Language Teachers
Objective
World Language teachers will be
able to explain what Project-Based
Learning is and how it works for
motivating struggling students.
This is a rough draft
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Century Skills
Communication
Collaboration
Critical Thinking/ Problem Solving
Creativity/ Innovation
Information Literacy
Technology Literacy
Flexibility/ Adaptability
Initiative/ Self Direction
Social/ Cross-cultural skills
Productivity / Accountability
Leadership/ Responsibility
What must students know and be
able to do in World Language?
World Language
Linguistic Content
Cultural Context
•  Communication:
interpersonal, interpretive,
presentational-oral and
written
•  Control: vocabulary, syntax,
structures, and grammar
•  Concepts: How language
works, its purposes, and its
nature
•  Contexts for Communication
•  Control: The information
needed to understand the
cultural contexts
•  Concepts: How people relate to
one another in various crosscultural settings
Project-Based Learning:
A Definition
A systematic teaching method that engages
students in learning essential knowledge and lifeenhancing skills through an extended, studentinfluenced inquiry process structured around
complex, authentic questions and carefully
designed products and tasks.
What is Project Based Learning
•  PBL is curriculum fueled and standards based.
•  PBL asks a question or poses a problem that ALL
students can answer. Concrete, hands-on experiences
come together during project-based learning.
•  PBL allows students to investigate issues and topics in
real-world problems.
•  PBL fosters abstract, intellectual tasks to explore
complex issues.
How Does PBL Model Work In a
World Language Classroom:
•  Language-based outcomes shaped by the need to know.
•  Students learn the target language in connection with the
cultures of the people who speak it.
•  Vocabulary and linguistic structures are acquired as students
listen and read in the target language while doing research.
•  Students practice speaking and writing while interacting with
peers, the teacher, and others.
What are the Benefits of Project Based
Learning
•  Recognize students’ inherent drive to learn.
•  Engage students in the central concepts and principles of a
discipline.
•  Highlight provocative issues or questions that lead students
to in-depth exploration of authentic and important topics.
•  Require the use of essential tools and skills, including
technology, self-management, and project management.
•  Use performance-based assessments that communicate
high expectations, present rigorous challenges, and require
a range of skills and knowledge.
•  Encourage collaboration in some form, either through small
groups, student-led presentations, or whole-class
evaluations of project results.
How Does Project-Based Learning
Work?
PBL offers a great
opportunity to provide
students a context to grow in
these skills:
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Critical Thinking
Communication
Collaboration
Creativity
Students Develop Needed Skills
•  Information Searching &
Researching
•  Critical Analysis
•  Summarizing and
Synthesizing
•  Inquiry, Questioning and
Exploratory
Investigations
•  Design and Problemsolving
How Do We Start Project-Based
Learning in the Classroom:
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Question
Plan
Schedule
Monitor
Assess
Evaluate
The Teacher’s Role:
In a project-based classroom,
the teacher is a facilitator, not a
lecturer. Instead of being the
source of all knowledge, the
teacher is a collaborator who
helps students themselves gain
the information and skills they
need to succeed.
Student’s Roles
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Set goals
Explore and ask
questions
Work well with
peers
Stay
accountable to
self, peers, and
teacher for
project
outcomes
Question
•  Start with the Essential question.
•  Questions should be consistent with curricular
standards and frameworks.
•  Take a real-world topic and begin an in-depth
investigation.
•  Make sure it is relevant for your students.
•  Ask open-ended questions that are challenging.
What is global warming?
Should we be worried about
global warming in our town?
• Good beginning.
• Topic is central to both
earth science and current
events.
• Brings the Driving
Question home.
• Students can anchor their
investigation in local
geography, climate, and
ecosystems.
Plan
•  Plan which content standards will be
addressed while answering the question.
•  Involve students in the questioning, planning,
and project-building process.
•  Teacher and students brainstorm activities
that support the inquiry.
Well-designed projects ask students to:
•  Tackle real problems and issues that have importance to people beyond the
classroom. Projects emanate from issues of real importance to students and
adults in the community and answer the age-old student question “Why do we
need to know this?”
•  Actively engage in their learning and make important choices during the
project. Projects make room for student choice and creativity while still
demanding student mastery of essential content, enabling students and
teachers to interact as co-learners in the experience, rather than in the
traditional student-teacher relationship.
•  Demonstrate in tangible ways that they have learned key concepts and
skills. Projects provide opportunities for students to produce observable
evidence that they have mastered rigorous curricular standards as they apply
their learning and solve the problem at hand. Projects and exhibitions also
provide extensive evidence of process work and self-directed learning.
Schedule
•  Teacher and students design a timeline for
project components.
•  Set benchmarks.
•  Keep it simple and age-appropriate.
Monitor
•  Facilitate the process.
•  Mentor the process.
•  Utilize rubrics.
Assess
•  Make the assessment
authentic.
•  Know authentic
assessment will require
more time and effort from
the teacher.
•  Vary the type of
assessment used.
Evaluate
•  Take time to reflect, individually and as a group.
•  Share feelings and experiences.
•  Discuss what worked well.
•  Discuss what needs change.
•  Share ideas that will lead to new inquiries, thus
new projects.
Student Choice and Creativity that empowers and inspires the students to own their
own learning and engage deeply in the project.
Tackles Relevant Issues and importance beyond the classroom.
Exemplary Models by other students, teachers, or professionals, to set criteria for
high-quality work and set strategies to attain them.
Incorporates Hands-On Work, such as: art, technology, or processes- related to the
discipline.
Lasting Learning of a deeper learning skill, idea, or way of thinking that is relevant to
students’ lives, their futures, and transforms who they are as human beings.
Mirrors Real-World Work of professionals in craft, process, or skill (e.g. historians,
writers, mathematicians, artists).
Moves Beyond Classroom in purpose, audience, or contribution to community.
Free Project Based Learning
Technology Tools
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Mindmeister
Glogster
Myhistro
Animoto
VoiceThread
Fotobabble
Audioboo
Capzles
Dipity
National Foreign Language Week
•  March 9-15, 2015
Showcasing
WL Project-Based
Learning
Questions?
If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.
Ignacio ‘Nacho” Estrada
Exit Slip
2 new facts you found interesting
1 fact you already know
Questions you still have