Project-Based Learning
Project-based learning is a teaching method that engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks. It engages students in rigorous academic work because they find relevance and meaning in the project and the learning. Project-based learning also utilizes a multisensory approach in which sight, sound, and touch are used to effectively engage a student's brain and helps to commit the information to their long-term memory.
Student projects will range in time from one to several weeks on a single subject to interdisciplinary projects that may involve parent volunteers and adults outside of school. The benefits of project-based learning are:
- Recognize students' inherent drive to learn, their capability to do important work, and their need to be taken seriously by putting them at the center of the learning process.
- Engage students in the central concepts and principles of discipline, including time management and organization.
- Highlight issues or questions that lead students to in-depth exploration of authentic and important topics.
- Require the use of essential tools and skills for learning.
- Specify products that solve problems, explain dilemmas, or present information generated through investigation, research or reasoning.
- Encourage collaboration in some form, either through small groups, student-led presentations, or whole-class evaluations of project results.
Students work on projects both in the classroom and at home. Classroom projects include group projects and individual projects in various subjects. Home projects are assigned using the following schedule:
K/1- once per semester
2/3- once per trimester
4/5- once per month
6/7/8- once per month