Third Grade Project Based Learning

By Douglas Heckler

I was recently treated to a demonstration of Project Based Education by third grade students of St. Mary of the Assumption School. It is a method that presents students with complex tasks based on questions or problems that involves the students in problem-solving, creative thinking, decision making, design, research, and reflection that include teacher facilitation without teacher direction.  PBL focuses on problems or questions that drive students to central concepts and principles of a subject using hands-on methods. This type of learning is applicable to the students outside of the classroom in real world situations through stressing that there are many ways to solve a problem.

With a project reminiscent of one I did as a sophomore in college geography, the question the children were presented with was: “How can we use this plot of ground to attract people enough to make them visit and stay?” Working in teams of four, students were required to research the needs of a community, develop plots, and blueprints for their communities, build a model of their community and then report to their peers and schoolmates (and this reporter), their process,

findings, and materials used.

Two different cities were designed and while they shared some elements, as one would expect, the towns were geographically about as far apart as they could be in the United States. Tikyo City, Maine (pronounced Tee-ko) and Harlem, Hawaii both share a water attraction with Tikyo City adding an Arcade as a tourist draw, and Harlem being built near an inactive volcano (which was stressed  by the students so that visitors and residents would have no fear of an eruption).

Impressed with the thought and detail the students put into their projects, I believe that Professor Wetter would have been also.  I would like to express my appreciation to the third grade students and their teacher, Pat Johnson, for inviting me to the presentation.