Blog 6 PBL at Colombo's KTP program

Hello everyone ✌

For this new entry, I will write about one of the most important strategies in Colombo's curriculum, which aims for students to learn and engage by creating and doing: Project-based learning (PBL). First, I will write about what PBL is and what its role in Colombo's curriculum for the KTP program. Then, I will describe how my team teacher and I keep track of the progress of the project in class and how it's included in a regular class basis in the courses TB1 1.1 and TB1 1.3. Finally, I will reflect on the importance of the PBL concept and its advantages for English language learning.

The guiding questions for this entry are:

How do you and your team teacher keep track of students' progress in their project?

How does your team teacher include project work in class?

Project Based learning (PBL) Learn by doing

Project based learning (PBL) comes from the concept of practical learning, developed by Jhon Dewey. PBL sees learning as a natural process that comes from doing and interacting as it allows students to colaborate, discuss, and negotiate towards the resolution of a problem or the completion of a common goal. Some of the skills developed throughout PBL are creativity, critical thinkig, desition-making, colaboration and others 21st century skills. Likewise, PBL has different models depending on the concept the authors have for the project and the expected goals and skills to be developed. In the CCA, the model used is the Papandreous as it is considered practical, complete, and ist still valid for the vision of the institution in the area of English language learning.

The Papandreous model aims for a 7-step process that requieres students to be constatly active and atentive towards the development of a product. First, the teacher introduces the topic and project for students to start thinking and developing expectations and benefits of the projects. Then, the students and teacher plan and negotiate dates, outcomes, criteria of evaluation, and assessment. Then, the students research for information to start the project they will eventually present. Finally, the students present the project and assess their peers' projects.

In the case of the CCA, the PBL intially started in the AP and evetually was implemented in the Teens program, eventually including preteens and kids. Depending on the course, students will develop 1 or 2 projects during the classes of the semester. The idea of the project is for students to use and cultivate 21st century skills while using communicative, critical thinking and creative skills. The product is, most of the time, suggested by the CCA syllaby, and could vary depending on the course, but normally the first is centered on the development of writing skills, while the second in the area of oral communication. Nonetheless, teachers can foster their own project ideas as long as it doesn't divert from Colombo's vision.

PBL in my classes

With my team teacher we have 2 clases. TB1 1.1 and TB1 1.3. In both courses, there are two proyects. For now, students are working on the first one, which focuses on the development of writting skills, while students use critical thinking, planning and creativity. For TB1 1.1, the project is a school's profile entry, in which students will present their school, its rules, classes, activities and schedule in form of 3 paragraph text. Meanwhile, for TB1 1.3, the project is a blog related to social media and travelling, which is planned to be connected with the second project in form of a presentation for parents. 

To keep track of the project the teacher in each class is reviewing what students are doing. In both classes, students are in the phase of developing and they are gathering imput for the final product. In this way, the teacher is keeping track of the progress of the students by asking them to develop some sort of imput each class. For example, in TB1 1.1 the teacher gives students 10 minutes to write a first version of each paragraph. Right now, they are developing paragraphs 1 and 2 as they already have the imput and critiria for being evaluated, including the parts of the entry, the content and the grammar component (modal verbs). Regarding Tb1 1.3, the teacher is doing something similar. First, in the last class, students started reflecting on the advantages and disadvantages of social media. In this class, they worked on writing the first paragraph and brainstormed the second part of the blog entry by doing a sketch of an infographic for the travelling plan. In both classes, the teacher is tracking the overall progress and sticks to the idea of doing the project inside the class as it's intended to be developed inside the classroom's environment.

Reflection

Personally, I think the project is a good idea to maintain a transversal progression that aims to be completed in the middle and final part of the semester. I believe that a project is a good way to invite students to learn by doing something, while interacting and planning with their classmates. In this way they are not just learning grammar structures but using them, while discussing, reflecting and evaluating possibilities to create a final product. The product is a good result of the progression in each class and students have the opportunity of using 21st century skills that can be extrapolated to other aspects of their life.