The activity "A Bad Day for Sandy" reframes my understanding of PBL in that I see it leaves a lot of open ended questions for the students to investigate. Without really requiring a lot application of formulas or specific skills, students can work on answering questions and focus on defending their answers with reasons.
A unit project would be quite an undertaking. If you could find ways to start units with guiding questions and problems that students progressively answer as they move along a unit, then I could see incorporating problem based learning in for students. My guess, though, is that this is a time consuming and difficult practice to pull off.
Sean, I agree that this leaves a lot of open ended questions for students. A unit project can be overwhelming to create for a teacher. I believe that it would have to be paced out properly in segments for the teacher to create.
ReplyDeleteSean, you make a good point that a unit duration project would likely require a large amount of planning by the teacher. As the reading said, these type of projects seem like they would be easiest and most commonly found in math or science classes. However, it is possible that it could be used in other disciplines, but it would require a lot of planning.
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