PBL 2020 Perspectives Project

PBL is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects. Students work on a project over an extended period of time – from a week up to a semester – that engages them in solving a real-world problem or answering a complex question. They demonstrate their knowledge and skills by creating a public product or presentation for a real audience.

As a result, students develop deep content knowledge as well as critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication skills. Project Based Learning unleashes a contagious, creative energy among students and teachers. (PBLWorks.org “What is PBL?”)

Students leverage a variety of academic content knowledge to create a story of their experience (and those in their community) during 2020. This project provides students the opportunity to create primary source documents for future generations who will undoubtedly study this unique period in history. The stories might choose to focus on student experiences in home learning, their experiences in their neighborhood or community, or their experiences as a person living during a global pandemic. This is a list of ways in which students might connect their project to academic content knowledge.

Students will also engage in one of the BVSD Essential Skills and/or their components. The Essential Skills were collaboratively designed in the 2019-2020 school year by groups of educators, local business, and community members. These skills will be integrated into learning so that our students receive both the academic content knowledge they need and the college, career, and life skills they need for post graduate success.

Students have a lot of voice and choice (a key element of project based learning) in creating a product to show what they have learned. Wondering what some examples of student products might be? Check out this list for ideas!

Student products that meet the required criteria will be showcased in the BVSD Virtual Museum Exhibit for Perspectives 2020: Telling the Stories of Our Community. We will share our stories with our community partners, as well as our media outlets. We also hope to host an exhibition of learning in the fall of 2021 for student presentations. Please submit your project here.

Use this Project Guide to help implement the work with your student(s) in order to complete the project. *This guide is modeled after PBLWorks’ “This Teachable Moment” eBook that contains 21 projects for parents / caregivers to do at home with their students.

In order to develop resources for teachers who would like to implement the project with their classes, an all call went out through our Insights Newsletter in November to create a Teacher Design Team. There were nine teachers who joined the Teacher Design Team to work to create Units for a variety of grade levels and content areas. From that work, we have seven examples to share. These examples could be tweaked and modified to meet the needs of many of our teachers as a planning guide. Additionally, if a teacher cannot find a unit plan to use or adapt, the more general Project Guide could be used to guide implementation of the project.

If you are planning to implement the PBL Perspectives 2020 Project, please complete this form so that the district team can send you any updates about the Project. 

Have questions, contact Kiffany Lychock at kiffany.lychock@bvsd.org