My Wondering:

When we started the training for Project Based Learning, since, we had participants
from across grades (PH to Grade 12), initially, I used to think how this practice is going
to be helpful to such young babies.
My Learning:
What I understood is Learning is not something that happens to individuals, as in the operant conditioning
model, but something which they themselves make happen by the manner in which
they handle incoming information and put it in use. Learning in children is an active
process. Projects are the best medium in which they use their learning to put it into
action.
Project based learning is an approach that capitalizes on students interest in real life
problems. It is a process approach rather than a content approach. Students acquire
knowledge by using processes such as research, exploration, experimenting,
investigation, etc. Students are given an opportunity to find out their own medium of
communicating their learning to the audience.
Even at early age, if we involve children in projects, it helps them to get engaged in
questioning, hypothesizing and predicting. Exposure at an early age to Project based
learning will help the child to develop the attitude that learning is the search for
information to resolve real problems.
My Project :
I have made a project on the topic SENSES for grade level PreK. At this tender age,
children learn everything through their senses. We take this topic in isolation to put a
conscious effort on all the senses and make children aware how they learn. When I
converted this topic into a project, it helped open many arenas. Project is all about
Collaboration. Collaboration in terms of disciplines, experts, students, etc. This way
child is exposed to many real life problems. I could think of all the possible activities
through which they would be able to handle their own learning. First of all I wanted to
frame a Bang On Driving Question, which would allow each child to get engaged into
the project. It was a task to frame that one. Finally with the help of my critical friend, I
could come up with What do our Senses tell us? By creating an effective driving
question, all the activities of the project, became so effective and it could allow children
to apply in their real life. The project turned out to be in such a way that each child
would develop the ownership for the learning, which would help them apply the same

in their real life. It is very important for every teacher to be vigilant enough to create the
project in such a way that it allows students to be engaged, involved; stay focused and
help them match their learning standards.
Failures
Although the project was so well designed and acknowledged by all in the unit, we
could not implement the project due to time constraint.
Reflection
I find many of the practices almost same in TFU and PBL approach. In TFU approach,
whole unit goes around the Understanding Goal, while in PBL; driving question is the
key idea. All the activities and assessments answer the Driving question. Just the way
we have certain things in our lives which drives our life, same way Driving Question
drives the whole project.
We got good opportunity to share our learning with our team, during the students
holiday due to swine flu. We are 10 in our team who were taking this training. Each one
of us took topics for ourselves. I chose Driving Question. As we are using the TFU
approach at Savani, I tried to show them the difference between Projects and our Unit.
In TFU, sometimes there is risk of going beyond the boundaries of unit. While in PBL,
as the driving question should be such that
- it helps the learning standards
- should be open ended
- it creates curiosity in childrens mind
- it should have space for investigation, exploration, experiment and research
- it should be answerable
The project itself becomes focused because all the activities have to answer to the
Driving Question. It has even helped me becoming focused.
What next?
Become a better PBL practitioner
Build and sustain Project Based Learning within the Unit

Nairuti