You might be pondering this short little acronym. What is it? What does it mean…. for your students, your classroom, and your teaching? 

Project Based Learning 

P- projects 

B- based in deep inquiry 

L- everyone is actively learning 

A few years ago, one of my favorite principals and dear friend called one Sunday afternoon. She mentioned that she wanted me to lead a shift to PBL teaching and learning across her early childhood department. After graciously accepting this exciting opportunity, I hung up the phone and sat in complete silence for a long while. I have to admit… I was a little taken aback and a lot frightened… because this topic just wasn’t in my expert knowledge wheelhouse. So, if you’re still pondering PBL… I was too. 

That day was a career game-changer for me. I spent the next few months which turned into years, researching everything about PBL. I wanted to know…what it was and what made it so effective in an early childhood classroom. Much of my research led me to the baby and toddler stages of learning. Montessori and Reggio Emilia are two of the early childhood approaches that provide deep roots in project-based learning. Both learning approaches (Reggio Emilia and Montessori), keep the learner and their interests at the heart of the learning. 

This is exactly what project-based learning (PBL) highlights in every unit, along with a few more core values that we’ll be diving into and carefully chatting about over the next few blog posts. 

Exciting ♥️ I can’t wait to dive in and learn alongside you! 

In early childhood through 2nd, PBL is typically broken into three phases of learning. 

Phase One- Introductory and Immersion 

Throughout phase one, the learner is becoming acquainted with the topic of discovery and taking in new information, while the teacher is introducing the topic and finding out what the learner already knows or any misconceptions they may have about the topic of discovery. The teaching and learning can look many different ways during this initial phase. The most important thing to remember about phase one is that the teacher and student are both aquatinting themselves with the new topic of discovery and working to actively build their knowledge bank. The students share their wonders about the topic and a part of their work in phase two is to uncover the findings to their wonders. The teacher has a heavier role during phase one in supporting the learning through guided lessons. 

Phase Two- Deep Inquiry and Discovery 

During phase two, the teacher steps back in his/her role, and releases more of the teaching and learning to students. This phase invites learners to challenge their beliefs and wonders by researching to find the answers to their questions. Along with field studies, virtual field trips, and class investigations, students spend a portion of phase two in the much loved…inquiry stations. 

Inquiry stations are set up with the learner in mind and promote a deeper investigation on the PBL topic. Inquiry stations pose questions to learners, while providing resources to support them in a closer look into a specific area of the PBL topic. The stations promote independent discovery, build classroom community and support a framework for collaboration among peers. 

In the final days of phase two, learners take all of their expert knowledge and share it with the creation of a final project. The purpose of the final project is to help the learner organize their expert knowledge in a way that makes sense to them, while sharing their learning with others. The project can be created and displayed in a variety of ways. Often, when more than one student shares the same passion in a specific expert area, they team up and collaborate on their final project. The possibilities for final project ideas are endless. 

Phase Three- A Celebration of Learning

At the very end of the unit, after the bulk of the investigating, learning, inquiry stations and project creation, comes a time to highlight the learner and their expert knowledge. Phase three is generally short lived, because it consists of the project celebration, through project presentations. The students love this phase, because they get to celebrate their learning with others. Typically, the class will invite outside guests, administrators, other classes and a variety of other guests to make up the audience on their presentation day. This practice is such a huge win for all…parents see the learning connections from home to school, other classes see the hard work and brilliant creations, classmates add to their expert knowledge by listening to their peers share, and the administration continues to support PBL in your classroom, because they see evidence of the strong effects of inquiry based teaching and learning. 

If time allotment has been on your mind while reading this post, great thought…let’s ponder it together. So often in our world of teaching and learning, we like to equate things to a certain number of days or weeks. For example, phase one lasts one week, phase two another week and so on. However, project-based learning doesn’t always fit into weeklong plans.  Each phase can be a different duration of times, depending on the learning involved, the learners’ interest and the materials on hand.  Another great thing about PBL is that every project is totally unique, and every project’s timeframe is different.  Some projects last as long as three to four weeks, while other projects we teach…in a week. We tend to call those mini units, because they don’t have the entire PBL process, but we squeeze in as much as we can in five days.  

Lens over timeframes…

Typically, phase one lasts anywhere from three to five days. Phase two is usually the longest going from five to eight days. Phase three is the shortest at two to threeish days.  Sometimes these phases can be much longer or much shorter, depending on the content and learner interest.  The most important thing to remember when planning is…

What are the students’ interests in the topic?

How will we support their discovery of the topic?

If you’re wondering what this looks like in real-time… there are a few things to check out… 

1. Listen to our podcast, where you’ll hear many tips and tricks of PBL, hear answers to questions from our community and learn how to bring PBL into your learning space 

2. Check out our PBL Bright Project Units, written just for you and your students.  They are geared for PreK4- 1st grade students and contain everything you need to successfully bring PBL into your learning space.  They offer lesson plans, project printables, inquiry stations and clearly lay out a day to day plan for you. They also offer ideas for book purchases or online listening, materials to fulfill the learning outcomes and much more.  Check them out, you’ll find full PBL units, as well as mini units. 

3. Stay in touch with our weekly blog posts. Each post takes a careful look into an aspect of PBL and gives support for you and your students. 

If you’d like to continue to grow your understanding of PBL and learn how to bring it into your learning space, join on PBL early childhood community by signing up to our email list and have bits of PBL learning brought right to your inbox weekly.