Another PBL assignment gave me the opportunity to compile some examples of essential questions in different disciplines. Take a look to get some ideas of essential questions that may fit with your content. I am happy to sit down with you and create essential questions or work on a PBL unit with you. Another option is to have the students work in groups to write their own essential questions for a unit. I tried this last year and was amazed at the quality of the questions they created with little background on the subject. This gave us the opportunity to explore information they were actually interested in while completely our unit on the Stone Age. Here are the Google Slides I used to present the idea of essential questions to my 6th graders, followed by the questions my 6th graders wrote. To explore more PBL resources, click here.
The grant proposal activity was also very meaningful to me because I’ve already had a teacher ask for professional development related to grant writing. I had no prior experience with creating a grant proposal so I relied heavily on the provided resources and additional research of my own. Here are some good resources about grants if you are looking to receive funding for a specific project or supplies.
I am looking forward to integrating more PBL units into the middle school curriculum because of the valuable and practical skills they teach our students and the intrinsic motivation that occurs when students are given the chance to solve real world problems and help their community.
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