Why do it?

Project Based Learning units are terrific because you can embrace student voice, give them agency and allow students to work on their own projects. The learning comes directly from the project requirements - skills, research, data, questioning, experimenting, prototyping, conversations, making things etc. The ideal case is that the students are self motivated due to the project design being their own!

How to do it?

A good deal of time needs to initially be spent to establish an appropriate brief ie a statement that describes clearly what they are trying to achieve.  This needs to matter!!

You can use lead in statements (as in Y7 & Y8 Community STEAM) such as: 

"How can we ..........., so that .................." 

or

As in D&T subjects:

"Design and make a ............... to suit the needs of ................". The ............... should include the following features:

1.  A ..........

2.  Provision for .........

3.  etc etc

Who can you ask?

Tim Beare or any of the STEAM team

Examples

Year 9 STEAM wind farm project

This example is a few years old now, but it is still one of my favourites!

In the clip observe the sorts of things the students were doing with this project and ponder how the activities were organised and what learning took place. The students were fully engaged and felt very clever building this wind farm. The documentary (clip) also involved quite  good technical skills along with a full understanding of the workings of the system and how to represent and explain it..

Year 9 STEAM Tiny House project

docs.google.com/document/d/1m-BQW2GQdHPflvuq6TVfWF8bBpBI0-B3oyuKZHaliX8/edit 

This is another one of my favourites!

The initial idea for the house came from a year 10 Sustainable Architecture student who suggested the class make a real house instead of a model of one. The project grew from there and Year 10 Architecture students designed the house and selected the site. Year 9 STEAM students built the house.  It took 4 different Year 9 groups to complete the house.

The lessons each week were negotiated so that about 6 small groups were given a choice from a range of  building activities to work on for the day.  A briefing for each task was given to the groups and the students would get themselves organised to achieve the task. The tasks themselves all had different requirements, but essentially the groups needed to work out:

1. What skills were needed

2. What equipment was needed

3. What precautions needed to be considered and controlled

4.  Who would lead the group for the day

This project demonstrates the use of the Learning model quite well. 

• The climate change and climate action provocation, along with STC set the scene and Learning Environment for the project.

• The students each brought with them a skill set; set of personal interests, along with a rich cultural diversity.

• The teacher was a project enthusiast (some may say crazy!) and experienced designer and teacher.

• The relationships established throughout the project were significant. The students will remember this project and many of them still acknowledge the experience several years on! It was almost as though we became friends!!

• Communication, collaboration, working in a team and problem solving were all practiced over and over.

• Lots of Learning happened.

  • Human capabilities - lots of them!

  • Building construction skills

  • Problem solving

Year 12 Military Styled Hemp Fashion Jacket

This project also really represents good use of the Learning model.  The student is a year 12 Design & Technology student form 2021. The student came to the class for Unit 3 & 4 only and they had a particular interest - "Fashion"!

The student wanted to design and make his own piece of fashion for the SAT project in VCE Product Design & Technology;

The student came from a creative family with European heritage (French);

The student suffered from anxiety with examinations, but was happy putting together a folio of work;

The teacher in this case had zero textiles related skills;

The teacher had some ideas about how to make a fashion garment sustainable and also had a contact in NSW who sold hemp clothing;

The parents had some experience in garment making;

The school context provided resources, both human and technical resources to facilitate the design and construction of the fashion jacket;

The relationships between the student, parents,  teacher, suppliers and other experts in the field was key to the success of the project.

The folio linked below demonstrates the extent of the learning and reflection by the student.

Military Styled Hemp Fashion Jacket: student folio