Still learning "how to PBL"

Mary Anne and I have had several meetings now with Matt Anderson (PBL-extraordinaire) from WVU to develop our next PBL on ancient Greece. I'm trusting his reassurance that if we plan a PBL (or two) with him and he teaches us the structures integral in developing PBLs, then we'll be flying on our own in the spring.

We are so pumped about this Greece PBL! We're planning to challenge students (as travel agencies) to "re-brand" Ancient Greece to make connections to the modern world. They'll display their final products in an "expo" both during and after school and will have to advertise to entice visitors to their displays. They'll be competing among each of our four sections to see which agency gets the best overall evaluation score from the people who tour their section.

We're both excited and nervous about pulling this off because we'll be putting huge responsibility on our students to guide visitors through the expo, connecting ancient Greece to the modern world in a real way. We also want this event to display the wonderful work our students are doing to parents and community members. To work on their speaking and presentation skills, we're going to make these skills the major focus of their current PBL in which they're presenting proposals to a panel. To get them used to talking to people other than us (of whom they're not intimidated), we plan on bringing in upperclassmen and additional teachers/administrators to serve on these panels. Hopefully the skills they develop and the mistakes they make this time will serve them well for the expo!