Nell Duke: In the U.S., we have a persistent gap in the achievement of kids who live in poverty and kids in wealthy communities.

Aaron Phillips: What’s this over here?

Nell Duke: Project-based learning is a very powerful tool to connect students with their communities, with real purposes and audiences, and it does appear to be an effective way of improving student achievement.

Anne-lise Halvorsen: My name is Anne-lise Halvorsen, and along with Nell Duke, we designed curricula that integrated literacy and social studies using project-based learning.

Nell Duke: Project PLACE stands for “project approach to literacy and civic engagement.” We designed four big projects. We aligned the units around the literacy standards and social studies standards for 2nd grade. Then we commenced a fairly large study to test the impact in high-poverty low-performing school districts. Our study was with 48 different classrooms in 20 elementary schools. Half of them were assigned to teach the projects that we designed, and half of them were asked to teach the regular social studies curriculum. Teachers were randomly assigned to do project-based learning or not. These were teachers who did not have prior experience doing project-based learning. They taught sixty lessons and we tested children at the end of the school year. We found that students who received project-based learning scored at higher levels in reading and social studies. So that tells us that a project-based framework can be successful right out of the gate.

Aaron Phillips: So this morning, we are going to go on our field trip to Hawthorne Park.

Aaron Phillips: My name is Aaron Phillips. I teach second grade at Grayson Elementary. We are doing the civics and government unit of Project PLACE. We started the unit by taking a field trip.

Aaron Phillips: Go ahead, guys!

Aaron Phillips: We go to a park and kind of just discover the park and look at its strengths and weaknesses. All the kids were engaged, all the kids were interested. That is when they can shine and you can see a total difference in the learning.

Lynn Bigelman: It was very exciting for our kids to feel that they had a voice in what could possibly promote change.

Student: Wow!

Nell Duke: Right away the driving purpose, to improve the park or other public space, is established.

Aaron Phillips: All right, we’ll start heading towards the bus.

Nell Duke: Every lesson there’s a direct connection between what students are doing and that ultimate purpose that they have.

Aaron Phillips: So, the ground of the play structure is not safe.

Student: We were writing things that you did not like and you think that you can fix.

Student: You can, like, fall down.

Student: There’s no wood chips and the weed barrier is coming out.

Aaron Phillips: So anybody have any ideas of something we could do?

Student: We could say to the person who made the park to fix the park.

Anne-lise Halvorsen: Our hope was that students would see that they’re valuable contributing members to community and they can make a difference.

Aaron Phillips: I wonder if we could try to persuade people in the government to fix something at the park.

Aaron Phillips: We learned how to write a proposal. They got create posters for the different departments within local government.

Aaron Phillips: So what does the sanitation department do to help citizens?

Anne-lise Halvorsen: Children are curious about the world around them. They’re curious about issues
in their community and what adults do.

Aaron Phillips: This is what your group did, Kaylie?

Anne-lise Halvorsen: So civic education is a really important part of students becoming functioning citizens who are contributing and are active in their communities.

Aaron Phillips: We took the work and made it into a PowerPoint presentation to ultimately present it to somebody on City Council.

Student: Today is the proposing day where we propose to the councilman.

Councilman Carter: Hi, I’m city councilman Randy Carter.

Anne-lise Halvorsen: We know from research children’s writing tends to be stronger when they are writing for an audience beyond school.

Student: Good morning and welcome to Grayson Elementary.

Nell Duke: Part of it is that project-based learning conveys high expectations for students.

Student: Our class suggested adding more wood chips.

Nell Duke: As much as possible, we want to give kids an opportunity to write for an audience that’s not just their teacher but maybe members of their local community, their state, their nation, or the world.

Student: Councilman Carter, we hope you enjoyed our hard work.

Councilman Carter: They were able to show me with pictures and data exactly what the problems are. And I will act upon their proposal immediately.

Councilman Carter: Can we say Grayson Gators get things done?

Student: It just makes myself proud that I’m helping the whole community.

Lynn Bigelman: Project-based learning gives children of all ages, of all status, of all diversity an opportunity to have a voice. I see the level of engagement. I see that the learning becomes contagious. And I see that years later kids come back to me and talk about the projects.
Anne-lise Halvorsen: We were excited about conducting this study to be able to really say, project-based learning can make a difference in children’s achievement at the elementary level. It’s a great alternative to traditional approaches to learning.