Everyday Problem-Based Learning

Book excerpt: Educators know that problem-based learning answers that perennial student question: “When will I ever use this in real life?” Faced with a meaty problem to solve, students finally “get” why they need to learn the content and are energized to do so. But here’s the exciting part: problem-based learning doesn’t require weeks of study or an end-of-year project. In this book, Brian Pete and Robin Fogarty show how you can use problem-based learning as a daily approach to helping students learn authentic and relevant content and skills. They explain how to engage students in each of the seven steps in the problem-based learning model, so students learn how to develop good questions, launch their inquiry, gather information, organize their information, create evidence, present their findings, and assess their learning. Using practical examples, they also describe how to help students master these seven important thinking skills: develop, analyze, reason, understand, solve, apply, and evaluate. To put all this in context, the authors offer seven “PBL in a Nutshell” lessons that can easily be incorporated in a single classroom period. Depth of thinking and ease of implementation--this is problem-based learning at its best.