Below is written by guest blogger Emily Young. Ms. Young is the Title 1/Technology Integration Specialist at Winterboro High School.  Thank you for sharing Ms. Young!

Although we are only in the first 9 weeks of the school year, Project Based Learning is in full swing at Winterboro High School and we already begun to plan for the upcoming 9 weeks! Over the last 2 weeks, content area teachers have been given the opportunity to step away from the classroom and collaborate with peers in order to plan a PBL project for the next 9 weeks.

During their planning day, teachers revisited the 8 Essential Elements of a PBL project and utilized these elements in the planning of their next project. We also discussed the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and discussed how the activities within our projects should move students from a basis level of remembering to a higher level of critical thinking and creation.

After teachers were given time to brainstorm project ideas with their peers, they began laying the foundation of their projects through the use of the 8 Essential Elements of PBL (http://bie.org/object/document/8_essentials_for_project_based_learning)

and a PBL Overview planning tool (http://bie.org/objects/cat/planning_forms).

Teachers prepared “overview posters” to present to their peers and the Critical Friends Protocol (http://bie.org/object/video/critical_friend_protocol_overview).

Teachers were then given time to process the feedback received through the Critical Friends Protocol and use the feedback to revise their PBL plans.

These days were extremely successful for the teachers at WHS and  by the end of the 3 days, we had added almost 10 new projects to our PBL arsenal!