Best Practices

Project Based Learning Examples

Kindergarten - 1st, 2nd grade

1) Lunch Project
This project, developed by Dunlap Exemplary Preschool in Des Moines, Iowa, turned a simple, every day event-lunch into a valuable learning experience. Note how it builds organically on student interests and integrates learning from a variety of subjects, including math, science, art, health, and nutrition.

2) A Study of Bones
This project, developed and implemented in a bilingual, five-year-old classroom at the Eton School in Mexico City, makes excellent use of local experts and gives students a chance to try their hand at a number of technological medical tools, while learning about the human body and bones. This project begins with personal stories-and the sharing of objects from home-and evolves to encompass the local medical community. Included are excellent integrations of math, science, language arts, and art.

3) Chair Project
This project captures the enthusiasm for learning that the Project Approach fosters in children. Written and developed by veteran project-based kindergarten teacher Marilyn Ornstein at Duke School in Durham, North Carolina, this project combines existing materials in the classroom with a few outside objects and experts to create powerful learning experiences for children. Also view the curriculum standards met by this fun and engaging project.

4) School Bus Project
Another highly-reflective write-up, this example details a project about school buses that grew out of interest in the fleet of school buses (and bus maintenance facility) housed on the campus of a mid-western Christian school. Note how the teacher, Ruth Harkema, makes strategic use of her local surroundings and resources-and solicits help from parents and experts nearby. Also note how she tailors learning opportunities (differentiates instruction), particularly in the representation phase. Be sure to view the excellent memory book of photographs accessible via a link at the top of the project write-up.

5) Bug Project
From a mixed-age summer camp (ages 3 to 5) known as the Red Room and run by the Center for Young Children, a lab school of the University of Maryland, this write-up explains how the instructors integrated learning standards from the Maryland State Curriculum into a project about bugs. Included is the integration of math, gross motor skills, language arts, science, art, and social studies. During one of the teacher's preliminary workshops, designed to introduce new teacher's to the project approach, teachers where required to help each other brainstorm ideas for their topics. Ideas for the Bug Study consisted of places to find them, ways they move, kinds of bugs, what they eat, etc.

What is the Project Approach?
The Project Approach is an investigation of a subject in the real world of children. A topic for investigation must be something that the children can readily find in their here and now world and field trips are planned to further their learning on the topic. For instance a Rain Forest would not make a good topic for preschoolers living in the Washington DC suburbs, but a study of the plants grown around their school would be. The topic needs to be something of natural interest to the children involved. The Project Approach has three phases.

Phase I initiates the project by having the children share what they already know about the subject in question and finding out what they want to learn more about. At this point questions are formulated by the children.

Phase II is the investigation where children observe, read, experiment, explore, draw, and ask experts to help them answer their questions.

Phase III is the culmination of the project where the children and teachers decide how to complete the study and document their learning. The event can be a book, a "museum", or a gallery. Sometimes others are invited to come and see what the group has learned.

Through all of these phases of learning standards for preschool children are addressed. With careful documentation using pictures and notes, children are exposed to personal and social development, language and literacy, mathematical thinking, scientific thinking, social studies, the arts, and physical development.

6) Talking Puppet Project
This project, from a special education class at the Warren Early Childhood Center in Indianapolis, Indiana, is an excellent example of how to use the Project Approach to meet diverse interests and needs in the classroom. Note how this teacher used a project about puppets to promote language development, self-expression, and creativity.

With this project, you may be able to bring in actors from Music Circus or some local theater group to talk with the students. That would be fun for all of them.

7) Northern Carolina Folk Life
For the Sacramento region, you might choose Northern Indian Life or Early Settler's Lives, whatever fits into the curriculum required for the class. This particular project was used for 4th grade students.

8) LEGO Robotics (used for 7th & 8th grade, but could be adapted for 6th)
This innovative pilot study was conducted by researchers at the University of Alberta with seventh and eighth graders. It uses technologies for children known as LEGO Robotics, which enable students to engineer robots out of small plastic LEGO pieces. The pilot study serves as a great example of learning with technology, instead of the more traditional approach to learn from or about technology. A number of project-based classrooms use this technology; click here to read an example from Duke School in Durham, North Carolina.