The end of the year is rushing at us, and I have a lot of content that still needs to be tackled in my 7th grade World History course. I decided to try to accomplish the work by doing a project. It wasn’t going to be a full Project-Based Learning project, because I just didn’t think that I had the time. I wanted, however, to add in some elements. I decided to have the students create a museum exhibit around a topic of their choice that answered the question: How did Europe in the 15th-17th centuries influence the development of the modern world? It was a very teacher-style question, but it covered the material over which I needed them to gain some familiarity: Renaissance to the Age of Exploration. I didn’t want to beat it into them with lots of textbook reading and notes on the board, but I also needed them to cover a lot of material.
I wanted to have them start by simply exploring, using textbooks, the library resources and digital ones as well, recording people, places and events that interested them. I was hoping that with some unstructured time to investigate a variety of resources, they would come up with a focus for their work. The goal was to have them research for 4-5 days after they made their choice and then build an exhibit. They were going to give an oral presentation of the information that they found. I knew I had some of the aspects of PBL as laid out by the Buck institute, such as Voice and Choice and Oral Presentation, but I knew I was missing a lot.
Saturday morning, I decided to take what I had built so far and go to the Buck Institute’s website and see how it measured up. I went to their Project Planner and started to fill it in. Suffice it to say, mine was a mess! I was simply pretending that this qualified as project-based learning. It didn’t. It might be a decent project for the students, and they might have learned from it, but it wasn’t PBL. It was time to decide to stick with what I knew or jump into something more.
So I jumped!
I basically started over. First I realized that I needed to think of a way for this to be a collaborative, rather than an individual project. PBL doesn’t happen outside of group work. I usually work in groups of 3-4, but I knew from my training that often the groups are often larger than that in PBL. I decided to make groups of 8 who would create a museum exhibit together, with each of them responsible for a specific aspect of it. I tried to think of who the Authentic Audience could be, perhaps local museum staff or AP European students. The more that I thought about teenagers and museums, the more it seemed like a typical class project that didn’t have a Hook that would engage them. I had to find a way to grab their interest!
Then it hit me, from all of my visits to museums with students and my own children! What was their favorite part of the museum? Always, always, always – the Museum Gift Shop!
And I knew I had it! The Driving Question became: How does a museum gift store capture the importance of the museum’s collection and sell items that are of interest to the public?
It will require them to do significant research to understand the time period and whomever they chose to focus on. They will need to collaborate and learn together. They will make decisions and create items for their shop. 5th and 6th graders, AP Euro students and History teachers will be given Renaissance “money” to place by items that they find worthy of purchase.
With an idea born, I spent the weekend running back to my laptop, typing up a new document to build the scaffolding that the project needed. After every drive to the market or time in the garden, I was back typing up each new idea. It is what teachers do! We dream and build for our students!
Monday morning’s Entry Event involved items that could be found in a museum gift shop, spread all around the classroom. Time for investigation! What were they? What did they have in common? Where might they have come from? Their curiosity was definitely peaked, and the project, a real PBL project, was launched.
More on how it progresses in later posts!
Middle School Matrix 
Thanks for sharing your process here. Personally, I need more of these types of posts from colleagues as they design their units–especially PBL. How many did you end up with in each group? I like small groups (2-3), but have found it tough to manage so many different projects simultaneously. That’s been one of the biggest rubs for me in my PBL dive–managing it all. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Or maybe we can discuss it at ISTE if we get a chance.
Hi! It’s the EDM310 student again from the University of South Alabama. I really like the idea of project based learning. I think it’s a great way to get students engaged and collaborating. As a future teacher, I appreciate the example you give of what teachers need to do to provide a learning environment for students. I will be following your posts to see how your students do on their project. I thought the best statement you made was “we dream and build for our students!” Thank you for your commitment to education and to the students.