Gold Standard PBL vs. Just Doing a Fun Project
Gold standard PBL isn’t a fun project with a poster at the end. Lisa Mireles of PBLWorks explains what a real project based learning classroom looks and sounds like — and how to teach it without falling behind on standards.
Lisa Mireles, Ed.D., is Managing Director of Digital Curriculum at PBLWorks (formerly the Buck Institute for Education). She’s taught bilingual students in California, led schools in Indonesia and India, served as an IB coordinator, principal, and assistant superintendent, and was named HIDOE Kaua’i Complex Educational Officer of the Year in 2018.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
• What the Gold Standard framework actually contains — seven essential project design elements plus seven project based teaching practices — and why a great project still fails without the teaching moves
• What you see and hear in a gold standard PBL classroom: a productive buzz, a project wall with the driving question and milestones, students returning to their need-to-knows, teachers coaching instead of lecturing
• Concrete projects outside business and computer science: designing a community microgrid in high school science, designing a custom diamond in middle school geometry, and a second grade community heroes gallery
• How PBL turns literacy into an all-day practice — reading, writing, speaking, and listening — rather than something that only happens during the literacy block
• Lisa’s answer to the time squeeze: coverage isn’t enough, and going deeper on power standards teaches more than racing through everything
• The principal move worth stealing — have teachers mark what they planned to teach, then revisit after the project to mark what they actually taught deeply. It’s always about twice as much.
• Where to find more than 100 free project ideas, searchable by grade and subject, that scale up or down for your students
Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e958
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