The students in Adam’s class are engaged in project-based learning. All projects don’t have to be as involved as this one: a project might be as simple as having students take charge of designing your bulletin boards. (For project ideas, see the "Project Prospects" sidebar.)

Project-based learning isn’t a new idea in education, but it’s one that’s finding new life. This renewed interest seems to come from the mounting evidence that we need to give our students more opportunities to exercise their higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills. As concluded in the oft-quoted SCANS (Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) Report, published in 1991 by the U.S, Department of Labor, "Good jobs depend on people who can put knowledge to work."

Current brain research shows that humans make sense of the world by synthesizing new experiences into what was learned previously and then constructing a new understanding. The most effective learning occurs when students are able to apply their new concepts to important tasks, thereby reinforcing the new patterns, says education expert Robert Marzano. Projects provide opportunities for students to do this.

Projected Results

Besides the link to brain research, project-based learning is effective for many other reasons. One major factor is that it increases students’ motivation by giving them responsibility for their own learning. In a 1993 article, Alfie Kohn examines student choice and its effect on motivation. In classrooms were children are heavily controlled, they experience burnout, or cessation of interest, he says. Students who get to make choices feel better physically and mentally, achieve more academically, develop positive attitudes, and feel respected as people.

Many other benefits come from project-based learning. This approach

• transforms learning from "telling about" to "doing";

• reconnects learning to the real world so that it’s meaningful and memorable;

• provides an outlet for every child to experience success by tapping into each student’s inherent drive to learn, ability to do important work, and need to be taken seriously;

• enables students to achieve academically by providing them with challenging content and a process for learning that engages their natural motivation and curiosity.

In addition, project-based learning requires students to

• draw from many disciplines to solve problems;

• engage in real investigation using a variety of methods and resources in their exploration;

• create a product or solution that demonstrates their efforts;

• present their work to an audience;

• reflect on their own learning;

• make improvements on their product or solution based on feedback, assessment, and reflection.

Skills They’ll Build

Too often in school, students have chances to solve only the simplest problems. The answers to these problems are in the back of the book, or the teacher knows what the right answer is. When children choose their own problem to tackle, they seldom choose a simple one. Instead, kids want to work on real-life problems that are complicated and open-ended, and that call upon many different skills.  

Organization. Being able to organize a project is something familiar to most teachers and parents. But students have little opportunity to plan activities, coordinate time, or search for needed resources. When students have these opportunities, their excitement and learning soar.

Social skills. Project-based learning requires the application not only of academic skills but of social skills: cooperation, communication, and the ability to try again when one doesn’t succeed, for starters.

Life skills. Talking on the phone, negotiating disagreements, using fax machines, and speaking out about what one believes are all real-life skills students can learn while involved in a project.

Community awareness. Projects help students become acquainted with the world beyond school, including possible careers.

Changing Your Mind

The way you go about implementing a project will determine in large part how successful it will be. You may find that you have to change your mind-set a bit to make projects most effective. For example:

Become the guide on the side. Before you do anything for the project, ask yourself, "Do I have to do this, or could a student do it?" As much as possible, you should provide coaching and facilitation in the background and let students take the lead.

See yourself as one of many leaders. You will facilitate some of the activities, but so will the students.

Respect all ideas, no matter how outlandish. Some of your students’ ideas will need to be put on the back burner, and some will be impossible to implement. But other ideas that seem outlandish actually are inspired. Consider all plans seriously. If members of the community are involved in the project, ask them to take the children’s ideas seriously, too.

Don’t "study up" on your subject before you start the project. The idea is to learn together. Model for your students the thrill of learning and risk taking.

Make decisions as a group. Consensus building, voting, and working committees are all good decision making methods.

Expect bumps, mistakes, wrong turns. Allow the students to do things their way as much as possible—even if you think it isn’t as effective as it you had done it.

Don’t let adults take over. If you have parents working in your room, carefully monitor them so that they are aiding the students, not doing the work for them.

Stay focused on not only what is learned, but also how it is learned. Meeting your learning objectives is important, but it is through the process of planning and discovering what works that some of the most valuable learning occurs.

Be open to new assessment strategies. Rubrics, portfolios, and demonstrations can help you assess what students learn and how they apply this knowledge to new situations.

A Concept That Works

Whether they’re saving an endangered species, planning a bulletin board, or designing a moon vehicle, kids involved in project-based learning are finding a new zest for school. As Adam put it, "I don’t feel like I’m going to school anymore—I feel like I’m going to work!"

Project Prospects

The California freshwater shrimp adoption that Adam’s class undertook is a project on a grand scale. But the size and scope of a project aren’t the things that make the learning meaningful. Here are some ideas for successful projects on a smaller scale:

• Base projects on books your students are reading. For example, after reading The Three Little Pigs, break students into groups to design and test wolf-resistant homes.

• Design projects that are in tune with your students’ interests. For example one fifth-grade teacher presented her class with the year-long theme of solving mysteries. One day during a field trip in to a nearby bay, a mysterious sea plant caught the students’ interest. Together, the teacher and students developed a new unit with the sea plant at the center.

• The next time you receive funds for new materials such as math manipulatives, give product catalogs to your students and ask them to order what’s needed.

Project Checklist

The Autodesk Foundation asked a group of teachers and administrators from 17 schools to come up with definition of project-based learning. They agreed that a project needs to have the following characteristics to be considered project-based learning:

• The kids are making decisions, and they have framework in which to do so.

• There’s a problem without a predetermined solution

• Kids design the process for reaching a solution

• Kids are in charge of accessing and managing the information they gather.

• Evaluation takes place continuously.

• Kids have chance to reflect on what they’re doing

• A final product (not necessarily material) results and is evaluated for quality

• The classroom has an atmosphere that tolerates error and change.