Hooking them in

Developing a hook question

Teachers often develop superficial or low-level project questions which result in ‘finding simple facts’. PBL aims to develop the capacity of teachers to ask higher order questions which demand greater cognitive effort on the part of their students. It is through doing this that students move from the accumulation of facts, to learning to apply them and form opinions about them. An example can be seen here.

Launching the project

Launching a project can take a variety of forms and can range in complexity, but the fundamental point is that it is intended to act as an inspirational start that will spark your students’ curiosity and desire to learn more. The launch has several purposes:

It sets the tone for the project
It tries to engage all students
It might introduce the driving question/ challenge
It provides some initial context and subject content (students and teachers)
It initiates the enquiry process and generates questions which can then be followed up with what PBL Works refer to as ‘need to knows’ i.e. what do we need to know in order to be able to answer our questions? How can we find out? Who can we ask?

So what could you do to launch your project? Just like your project can range in scale and complexity, so too can your launch event. You may not have the time to plan a big event with visits out or visitors to hook your students in with, but you can inspire them with something out of the ordinary, for example, a film, a change in classroom layout, a relevant display etc. The case studies give some examples of how DSFC teachers have set up their classrooms to inspire Forensic Science and Applied Science students.

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