PBL - What is it?

Mandarin Superstars uses PBL to engage young learners in exploring the Chinese language. This month the 2-5 year olds were given a question:

How can we create a child-friendly city?

We were about to delve into the topic of transportation when I had an idea. What if the topic was far wider than just transportation? What if the children actually used critical thinking and creative thought processes to make their own city?

This would involve team-work, creativity, problem-solving and so much more!

The young learners brainstormed what their city currently looks like? What do they see? A vocabulary list was created with characters and pinyin.

They were all given a name tag with architect (建筑师) on it and their task was to create a child-friendly city. I had no idea that a small topic initially would end up being a 6 week unit of work!

Apart from the buildings, Theyalso created their own playground from recycled materials, that would be in the center of the city and explored vocabulary to label the playground.

The children mapped out the city on the floor using blue painters tape and discovered they needed roads, signs like stop, go, traffic lights, speed signs etc.,

Children made lots of trees using paper cylinders and tissue paper. One student suggested having an ice cream truck, so a group of children created their own truck and added Chinese labels of the flavors of ice-cream sold. Parks were designed with plastic animals roaming around. Toy cars were used on the roads and children quickly picked up the different colors of cars on the road.

Have you ever had a class that could not stop learning?

They wanted to know numbers for speed signs, colors for cars, names of animals in the park, food in different restaurants, locations (next to, behind, in front of), directions to travel places, etc.,

I was very busy creating flashcards to labels, just to keep up with their enthusiasm. And this all started as a question I posed to the children!

As teachers we must avoid limiting learning possibilities by focusing on isolated topics. Turn your curriculum around by posing questions and follow the students’ lead in driving their own learning.

Project-based learning poses real-world problems so the students are engaged in authentic learning.