WELCOME
START
DEVELOP
CONCLUDE
RESOURCESOne important aspect of project-based learning is how to bring the project to a close.
However, closing the project does not mean it's over; making real-life connections
and applying classroom curriculum means successfully translating the learning
and experience to new projects.
However, closing the project does not mean it's over; making real-life connections
and applying classroom curriculum means successfully translating the learning
and experience to new projects.
Overview of Phase 3 Structural Features
Students, the teacher, and community members discuss the project:
- Comment on the learning process.
- Recommend modifications for next year. What can be changed, improved, or expanded?
- Examine individuals' learning processes (metacognition emphasis).
- Ask essential questions and specific questions and identify resources for locating information.
- Gain closure.
Fieldwork
Present the final project to community groups:
- Students contact experts in the field (those who assisted the students and community members) via a survey for feedback on:
- Quality of student questions to the experts.
- Communication-what worked well, what needed improvement.
- The experts' personal insights to the experience.
- Students contact parents and other community members and other people involved in the process and ask for personal insights.
- Students request that at least one group of peers review their Web site and give feedback. Students then modify the site according to recommendations.
Representation
Decisions are made about highlights of the project and the most suitable forms of representation of the information, and evaluation is conducted through group, individual, or pair collaboration.
Students, the teacher, and community members:
- Modify the Web site after obtaining feedback.
- Present the updated Web site to a variety of groups (parents, the school board, the media).
- [Students] create a 2- to 4-minute presentation to explain the project and process to peers.
Investigation
Children can review what they have learned about the project by writing poems and retelling stories from different points of view.
Students and teacher analyze:
- Feedback from experts in the field about the experience.
- Feedback from experts in the field about what could be improved.
- Feedback from parents, the teacher, and community groups asking the same or similar questions.
- Individual students' learning process and growth in understanding.
- Individual students' involvement in the collaborative environment and their own strengths and weaknesses.
Display
Display can be in one or more of many formats, including a Web site, CDs, and classroom displays.
Students:
- Display final the Web site on the Internet.
- Print the Web pages and bind them into a book.
- Burn the Web pages onto CDs and give to:
- Each student.
- The school principal.
- The school librarian.
- The local historical society.
- The cemetery proprietor.
- The school-district superintendent.
- The county government.
- The county library.
- All community members and groups that assisted with the project.
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