Real-World Issues Motivate Students

Read-World Issues Motivate Students - Edutopia.org

This article was about the effectiveness of teaching via project-based learning. Examples were cited at high school and elementary school levels. The projects are all conducted for six weeks or more and are not isolated to one subject area. Students first discuss their own knowledge base related to the project. Next, students gather data by conducting their own fieldwork, reading and interviewing or conferring with experts in related fields. They represent their findings in multiple forms, writing, drawing, and computing. Finally, their findings are presented to an authentic audience for review and / or comment.

One roadblock to the implementation of this type of lesson that was cited was that it is different from the way that parents were taught. Feedback from parents whose children were involved in these type of lessons was very positive. Their observations of conversations at home parallelled what teachers find in class. Students are excited and enthusiastic because they are wholly engaged in the lesson. These three "E"'s result in students being able to remember what they learned past the day of any subsequent testing and an increased transference of problem solving skills in other settings.