Why PBL? 
I was never a particularly good student in school. I have always earned either average or sometimes below average grades, and never really was I good at anything. 
Perhaps what really was the main problem was that homework and classroom content was never really interesting or fun enough to care about, according to my perspective as a 6 year old. I think this type of "laziness" is common among not only to myself as a six-year-old, but also human beings in general.
We always end up becoming an expert on topics that we have a strong passion in, whether it is anime, movies, music, or food. In fact, I strongly, truly believe that every person’s level of expertise depends on what their true interested is related to.
The same concept, in fact, applies for education as well. As we all know, unlike adult learners, teaching ESL to young learners requires so much physical, mental and sometimes psychological energy. Unlike mature, businessmen who are always eager to learn, enhance, utilize and apply their English skills, kids are mainly here for either 1) their scores or 2)their parents. In fact, the numbers of students who are here at my workplace, with a strong intention to learn to speak English is quite rare that I could actually count with my fingers. Not to mention, I work at a cram “school” where the main aim is to create financial profits under the name of education.
As I have mentioned in my previous assignments, I have nothing against money-making, and I strongly believe that finance plays an important role in improving the school's infrastructure and security.
However, when the school material is quite narrowly focused on textbooks and its mechanical ways of "teaching", there is no way to describe the true challenges and hardships I, as a novice teacher, face every day.
In fact, I cannot tell you how many times I have encountered such injustices at my workplace, by being told to 'Study teaching', 'You can't teach'. There were also a number of times when I was criticized for not spending enough time on "creating a board work by adding more words", "speaking too fast", or "not spending enough time explaining like a lecturer, because that is exactly what young learners want". What I learn and read from my state-teaching licensure shares the complete opposite of what I get told to do at my workplace. Just like true educators, we are strongly encouraged to use our creativity to construct the newest, latest and most innovative ways of classroom teaching.
As a teacher who is learning new things every single day and feeling a vast contrast between these opposite styles of teaching, I cannot describe the psychological hardships I overcome on a daily or sometimes even an hourly basis.
In addition to my situation, it is more than obvious that my students despise the material which we are border-line forced to use, as it is redundant, repetitive, and some students don’t feel challenged as well as they feel no relevance to their daily lives.
So what is the next step to improve this type of scenario? Many would say project-based learning is the key to help resolve this matter. Project-based learning is having students do everything on their own through doing, exploring and doing. It is a way to help them grow through doing. Another important essence of project-based learning is also making sure it is strongly relatable and meaningful to students.
Here I would like to present a sample PBL lesson plan that I have come up with.
Project Theme
To address the issues of school bullying, students will be creating some type of presentation in order to raise awareness of the issues.
Driving questions:
How do you define being “mean to someone”?
What are some vocabulary words that describe bullying?
What are some types of bullying?
How would you differentiate “joking” and “bullying”, and what are the boundaries?
(aka. What is “funny” and “not funny”)
What are the effects of bullying, and what should we do to stop it?
How do you talk about a person humorously without being harmful?
Project Goals:
The nature of bullying is extremely common among people from any place or any age-group from around the world. While This lesson will be focused on bullying in a school context, my goal for this project is to have students raise awareness of the cause, the characteristics, and the impacts it creates. In addition, I would also like to conduct this PBL as an opportunity to differentiate between creating humor out of someone and harming someone.
Step one:
The lead-in: Have them watch a video clip from a movie:
Suggested video annotation questions after watching the clip:
1)What was the main culprit of the problem?
2)How did the “book” create problems?
3)How do you think Regina and Cady felt when Janise confessed her plans and mistakes?
4)Why was everyone cheering for Janise?
5)What are some parts which you thought was “funny” and “not funny”.
After the video, I will have students in small groups discuss and share their answers in class. While the students discuss, I will be sure to monitor them as I go through.
As a conclusion to step 1, I will have students to type annotations on the video. This would be a type of a formative assessment, as it can help students to make sure if they understand the idea of differentiating “humor” and “bullying”.
In addition to annotations, I will have them write a small reflection for this assignment. In the reflection, I expect students to write their overall thoughts about this assessment. They could start their sentences by adding, "In this assignment...I have learned that..."
Data Collecting: I will be collecting this type of data from Video Ant.
1)Make sure students have access to computers.
2)Have students create their account
3)One Student will create their own group
4)Students will share their video annotations either in class or for homework.
I will be able to monitor and see what students wrote in their video annotations, as this website has a particular tool that could help the teacher do so.
https://ant.umn.edu/documentation##section-user-groups
Step 2:
Implementation:
After annotating a video from a movie scene, they will find answers to the driving questions. While students look through the driving questions, I will make sure they discuss, perhaps interview friends, or present their work that would answer the question, “What is bullying, and how is it different from joking?”.
Here is an example of a wonderful PBL video assignment
Data/Formative Assessments:
I will be sure to add in a quick formative assessment before they start presenting their findings, by having them write an exit ticket. On their exit ticket, I will expect to have students write their findings. Since not all exit tickets have to be a literal small sheet of paper, I will definitely send in an email with a link from google forms.
Sample:
https://forms.gle/1S1qLUcmd3pTddoz6
In groups, students will answer their driving questions, by providing specific examples. The main purpose of this assignment is to find the major difference between “joshing” and “bullying”, I will not specifically say what format they must use, but I would suggest them to create a youtube video, a powerpoint presentation, or any other format they wish to present.
Rubrics!
In order to make the assignment legitimate for both the teacher and the student, I will present a rubric for students, as the image below. Creating and providing rubrics are beneficial to students as it would give them exactly what they need to get the grade, by finding out what exactly the teacher demands. It is also beneficial for teachers as it helps them envision what real-life, practical problem-solving skills young learners could obtain and flourish in the classroom.
Quick Rubric URL: http://www.quickrubric.com/r#/qr/---79529/bullying-pbl5
That is the end of my assignment, and if you have any comments or suggestions, please comment below!
