Monday, March 20, 2017

Why talk when being a toddler or young child?

Why talk when being a toddler?

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“Early language and communication skills are crucial for children’s success in school and beyond”
“Children who develop strong language and communication skills are more likely to arrive at school ready to learn and are more likely to have higher levels of achievement”

Gardner-Neblett, for the FPG study.

The importance of communication

Oral communication is an essential aspect for the integral development of the child. The development of thought, memory, imagination, the ability to learn, to know the environment around him, to learn to transform it as well as many other cognoscitive skills.


The progressive characteristics of the development of verbal language in the different levels of age, are ascribed to the stages of integral development of the child, being closely associated with the following aspects:
• The maturation process of the nervous system, both central (CNS) and peripheral, correlating its progressive changes with motor development in general and with the particular vocal apparatus.
• To the cognitive development that includes from the perceptual discrimination of spoken language to the function of the processes of symbolization and thought.
• And, to socio-emotional development, which is the result of the influence of the socio-cultural environment, child interactions and reciprocal influences


And why are they so important? Because by developing language and communication skills children can develop different actions that improve their self-image and esteem, since they can understand others and can explain themselves, what make them feel motivated to communicate with others. Communication involves using words, body language, gestures, or facial expressions. Toddlers who develop conversation skills are more likely to succeed academically. Besides, they develop problem-solving skills that help them have higher stages of achievement.


The interactions that children have with adults have an effect on how children broaden and analyze. Those interactions should start with the family, since parents and siblings talk with the child, and later, at school, with their teachers and classmates. As a result, at school Early Childhood teachers offer them multiple opportunities with interactions which support kid's  improvement. It is important to underline the fact of language instruction in early stages of education: simple sentences, adapted to children’s level of comprehension and checking questions. These characteristics of adult-child communication will help children foster their increase and improvement in language interaction and conversation.


In this process, adults should use nouns, adjectives, and actions that form part of the child's daily life. This undoubtedly contributes directly and effectively to the development of language, intelligence and other areas with which this learning will be carried out.


Stages of Language Development



According to the previous references and taking into account the contributions of different researchers, here we divided the development of the language in two main stages:


• Prelinguistic Stage


• Linguistic Stage


Each of these stages is marking the emergence of new properties and phonemic, syntactic and semantic qualities as the child grows, as we will describe below.


Prelinguistic Stage (preverbal stage - from 0 to 12 months of age)  



It is characterized by the expressions with mouth movements and sounds which in itself has hardly any communicative value, most of the sounds emitted are onomatopoeic. During this stage, which covers the first year of life, the communication that establishes the child his environment (family), especially and particularly with his mother, is emotional and gestural. As part of a proper language stimulation, the word should always accompany the gesture and activities of the mother with her baby.


Lately, neuroscience and neurolinguistics have proved the importance of this preverbal stage, that has a relevant and transcendental value in the configuration of the bases of Linguistic development, since both vocal expressions (sounds or group of sounds of simple signification) and verbal expressions (sounds, group of sounds, isolated words, etc.) influence in a decisive way in the later development of the linguistic communication of the child.


This stage comprises, in turn, substeps or stages with particular characteristics that are in agreement with the chronological sequence of the integral development of the child, which we describe:


a) From birth to month and/or two months
During this period the only expression that is heard of the baby is crying, which is the first sound manifestation purely mechanical or reflective and, as such, undifferentiated in tone, whatever the reason of its state.
With crying, the baby puts into operation the speech apparatus, allowing him also oxygenation of the blood and the establishment of normal breathing. After this period, usually at the beginning of the second month, crying is no longer a phenomenon or a mechanical and undifferentiated manifestation, but the tone of the sound changes with the emotional content of pain, hunger or other discomfort; that is, the variation of the tonality is related to the state of well-being or discomfort of the baby. With the crying the baby manages to communicate his needs to the world around him and, as he realizes that thanks to crying his needs are satisfied, he will use it voluntarily, no longer being then a reflex or undifferentiated sound. That way the baby is communicating with its immediate surroundings, especially with master, understanding better and better what it communicates to him, although he is incapable of expressing it.


b) From 3 to 4 months
At the beginning of the third month the baby produces guttural sounds and vowels that last 15 to 20 seconds. It responds to Human sounds through smiling, cooing or murmuring.
At this age the baby already distinguishes between the sounds: / pa /, / ma /, / ba /, / ga /. Their vocalizations can already show joy or other feelings. The baby knows how to distinguish, affectionate intonations, reacting with joy, surprise or fear to the tone of voice, especially of their parents. At three months appears the babbling, which consists of the emission of sounds through redoubled syllables like "ma ... ma" , "Ta ... ta" and others.
In this way the child is progressing and increasing his vocalizations, which are already close to the word and, as such, are loaded with communicative intention with the mother. These varied vocal sounds and phonations close to the word that the child directs to the mother, must be attended to, understood, interpreted and answered by it in a repetitive way, stimulating and thus promoting its linguistic development.


c) From 5 to 6 months
The “babbling” (first attempt of communication) extends until the eighth or ninth month, progressing in the fifth and sixth month towards what is called "imitation of sounds". This begins in the form of self-limitations of the sounds produced by the child (circular reaction). Later it begins to repeat sounds that the adult or another child produces.
In this age there are clearly discernible intonation structures in certain contexts in which it emphasizes and excites.
The earliest vowel utterances are phonetic realizations that appear in the following order:
• / a / and variants close to the phoneme / e /, although before they usually emit sounds similar to / oe /
• Then the / or / and finally appears / i /, / u /.
The sounds of the consonants appear later in the following order:
• Labials: p (pa
-b) m (ma-ma) b (ba-ba)
• Dentales: d (da-da) t (ta-ta)
• Velopalatales: g (ga-ga) j (ja-ja)
In this way the child usually emits the first vowel and consonant elements, being an important progress with respect to the cries and different laryngeal sounds of the first months of life. As the child progresses, he will gradually replace gesture communication with verbal language.
Here it is important to emphasize the utmost importance of maternal language directed to the child during the middle of the first year of life, in which not only it is convenient to increase vocalizations, gestures, smiles and other expressions within the home, but also verbal communication should be something common among adults and the child.


d) From 7 to 10 months
Bruner (1979) points out that between 7 and 10 months the child progressively shifts from the "modality of demand" to the modality of exchange and reciprocity in child-child interactions. The giving and receiving of objects pronouncing the name of each one, while looking at the mother and son face and looking at the object together, manages to multiply and enrich the linguistic and communicative capacity of the child, this "conversation" forming a training exercise for speech , As well as for his nascent socialization. At this age the child performs multiple spontaneous vocalizations, both vocalic and consonantal, and even syllables and diphthongs. These vocalizations next to the word, are those that will soon lead the child to utter his first words. Here the alternating vocalizations between mother and child will allow early access to language.


e) From 11 to 12 months
The 11-month-old baby has more than five words in his linguistic repertoire. In this age the child uses the same words as the adult, but does not attribute the same meaning to them. However, as it progresses in this process, the meanings that are attributed to the words are approaching the meanings attributed by the adult.
In this way the child is forced to simplify adult language, without this meaning that he does not understand, but his expressive capacity is still very limited. However, according to some specialists, at 11 or 12 months the child usually articulates his first words "fingers" direct syllables: "mom", "dad", "poop", "tata", starting the next sentence or denominated linguistic or verbal, progressively sign language and "overcoming" the simplification of adult language as it increases his/her vocabulary.
With regard to the appearance of the "first word", it should be clarified that this depends on the moment the parents identify him as such, since the units of meaning that the child uses correspond to segments of speech. The child of this age (a year) usually occupies the center of attention of the family, whose actions, thanks and occurrences are usually celebrated and applauded, reinforcing the behavior, which will be repeated over and over again. This is good because it helps the child feel and live their own identity. In addition, the mimic and verbal gesture exchange of his communications with the adult, accompanied by the "giving and taking" behavior, allows the greater development of language.


• Linguistic Stage



a) From 12 to 18 months
Within his lexical repertoire he counts with 5 to 15 or 20 words, and each time he will demonstrate greater increase in his vocabulary by means of the inflections of his voice when he wants to identify something. Einsenson maintains that in this stage the true speech arises and it indicates that the child uses words to produce events or attract the attention of others. In some fairly advanced children, it is usually observed the use of some phrases with two words, mainly objects or actions, without ruling out in certain cases, also, the use of adjectives (qualifiers). However, before being able to make word-finger combinations, he will often continue to use a single word to refer to many objects. This semantic extension in childhood vocalizations will continue to accompany him for a long time. But as you increase your vocabulary and evolve your speech, you will progressively reduce this semantic extension.
From 16 or 17 months to two years of age, you will increasingly make the use of spontaneous combinations of several words and phrases, increasing the flow of words in its expression.
At 17 months the child increasingly extends his linguistic repertoire and begins to make combinations of two words. At this age, the identification and naming of objects, figures and different parts of one's body are highly recommended exercises for the development of the child's verbal language.


b) From 18 to 24 months
During this period, most children have a vocabulary greater than 50 words, going on to combine 2 to 3 words in a sentence, beginning with "syntactic" speech, that is, the child begins to articulate words in sentences and simple sentences. In their verbal expressions they use nouns (Names), verbs (actions) and qualifiers (adjectives and adverbs). Among these grammatical classes usually establish the following relationships:
• Between two names/nouns: "Shoe dad" (possessor and object possessed) "soup chair" (fortuitous relationship)
• Between name and verb: "Open door" (verb and object) "Papa eats" (subject and verb)


• Between qualifiers and adjectives: "Beautiful doll" (qualifier plus name) "More game" (qualifier plus verb) "More beautiful" (qualifier plus qualifier) ​​


By the age of two, the child has a vocabulary of approximately 300 words. In their expressions, the use of the personal pronouns "I" and "You" and the possessive "My" and "Mine" are also observed. His phrases express intention and action: "he does what he says and says what he does".


At this age the symbolic function in the child arises and the predominance of the intelligence-motorist gives rise to the representational intelligence. With the symbolic function the child has the ability to mentally represent things and evoke them without the need for them to be present. With the symbolic capacity, gestures and verbal expressions of the child begin to refer more and more frequently to more abstract realities, becoming more dominant In language. (Significant) symbols come to play a unique role in the development of the child afterwards, since these are the ones that will allow us to construct the codes on which the bases of the higher functions conform.


Through these codes is that we access emotions, abstract realities, language and convert the implicit explicit. This symbolic ability allows the child to explore and increase their verbal language, expressing interest in hearing stories about themselves or their family, in Which vacapt the sense of the words and sentences of the stories that the parents give.

Here you can find more information about the importance of language development at the age of two.


c) From 2 to 3 years old


There is a rapid increase in vocabulary, an increase that is much greater than what will occur later, reaching an average of 850 words and at three and a half years more than 1200 words (Smith, 1980).
The child in his verbal expressions already employs auxiliary verbs "to have" and "to be" and gives a certain prevalence to the determined article. In the course of this age begins to use the propositions and the child already has a understandable language use, even for people outside the family, manifesting a mastery of the majority of the grammar of their mother tongue (syntax), so that the specialists pronounce him as the period of "syntactic competence".


D) From 4 to 5 years old
At the age of four, the child virtually dominates the grammar, but begins expressing and pointing out. The child begins to use the pronouns in the following order: I, You, He, She, We-you, You; With a vocabulary of 1,500 words and at five years, 2,300 words approximately.


Among the 4 or 5, the child is usually already trained to answer questions related to the social behavior learned, since their language already extends beyond the immediate environment. This is due to the symbolic capacity of the child and, as such, can mentally evoke and represent things, actions and situations, transcending the reality and the present. This ability and the need to communicate, make possible a greater and rapid development of children's language, Also facilitating the development of intelligence.

If you are interested in "More Than Baby Talk" with its 10 ways to promote language development, click on here.

This is a brief summary of the process of verbal language development that occurs in average children, such as evolutionary psychology, psycholinguistics and others describe it. In this process many factors intervene, all closely linked to the development of the child. It should be noted that the development of verbal expression is usually after the understanding of language, that is, the development of the capacity for comprehension is anticipated to that of the verbal expression.

Friday, March 10, 2017

Thank you all!



This post is dedicated to everyone who has supported me to become the person and the professional of education that I am. THANK YOU ALL!

First of all to my colleagues at Ninfa Laurenzo ECC to choose me as the Teacher of the Year 2016/2017, last year I was the Beginning Teacher of the Year 2015/2016. My email to them:



Thank you very much my NLECC family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I really appreciate your support!!!!
This is the second year you trust on me!!!! I don't know how to show you all my feelings of gratitude for that.
It's an honor and a real satisfaction to be recognized by my dear colleagues, who teach me every day to be a better person and professional.
Thanks to the whole school staff, and thanks to Ms Rogina and Ms Tovar for letting me do new things... without your trust nothing of it could be possible.
Thank you a MILLION!!!

I consider that everyone in the campus deserves to be named as a Teacher of the Year, because they contribute to the whole community and I am learning a lot from them, every day! The real recognition is the one of the students and our community. Together we can get better and greater results!



Besides, all my contributions to HISD community have been valued by other professionals: teachers, principals, administrators,... Above all with all the invitations to participate on different chats, and the HISD Multilingual Department with the interview as the "Top Story of the Week": From Sevilla to Houston, fulfilling a dream.


Tuesday, March 7, 2017

How to create a comic with basic tools

The next comic has been done with basic tools:

- Camera to take pictures.

- Paint to modify the pictures.

- Word processor to add titles, bubbles and other comic characteristics.


First of all, a design of the story is strongly recommended, I mean, what story your students want to tell. You, as teacher/parent/educator, can help them with the topic of the story.
One idea is to ask for some topics they are interested in and the do a survey with all your students. In this way you encourage them to participate as well as they feel motivated. Once your students have decided what to tell, it is time to organize the story. In my case, I teach them that every story has three mainly parts, remember that it is focused on PreK students: beginning, middle and the end. And please, try to help them with examples of stories they already know (and even better, the most recent stories told in classroom) and let them identify each part.
The story decided to tell is about the recess time, since today it had rained early in the morning and some parts of  the garden were wet. I tried to help them by asking them how we usually prepare to go to the outdoor learning area. Then, one by one started to tell me how: they are in a line, the students in charge of the doors go to their positions,... other students wanted to share other ideas to use in the story. After that, I looked through the window and everything was wet, my next question was what would happen if you were in the garden. Again, help them, please, with connections to their experiences... until some of them can say something to add to the story; indeed, they gave us some ideas for the story. And eventually we got this amazing story with my "champions".



If you have a tablet with an ebook reader app you can download this file https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4elwj35ibmYNm9mLVFmX0hkMzQ/view?usp=sharing and they can read it.

Publish at Calameo

Calameo is a free web that sets your documents as a traditional book. When you and your children finish your comic, you can save it as a .pdf file, then upload it on this web. There, you can have more options to choose and share it with your friends.

If you prefer to do it by using an app with music, you can use Adobe Spark Video. Open this app and add the pictures that you and your children have selected to create a comic. Besides, you can add some music.
Have you seen how easy it is? Do you think you can do one comic with your children? If so, it is going to be a good time to enjoy creating a story together.

If you want to share your beautiful and awesome story, please, leave a comment with your file.

By Mr Usero.
Comic-Creator Project.

PreK and PBL

Early Childhood Education
PBL - Project-Based Learning
21st Century Skills Learning in PreK
image1.JPG
The time has finally come for our annual EXPO, a time in which a school wide topic or theme is chosen and broken down by classroom. In the past we have done everything from life cycles, animals, countries, wildlife, etc. This year our school EXPO at Ninfa Laurenzo ECC will focus on Community Helpers.
In my classroom the students were interested in learning more in about a Comic Creator-Designer. The students with the help of their families, brought comics to discuss with their classmates and identify the parts of a comic: comic strip, bubbles, shapes, and characters.
This article comes as a summary of what our project entails, the process in which we form our project, and the final outcome  
Are your students interested in learning? Are the topics adapted to their learning process? Are they active participants in their learning process? Do you take their opinions into account when planning? These questions are some of them that any teacher should ask to enhance participation and motivation.





What is PBL?

PBL stands for Project-Based Learning. PBL is an active methodology in which students carry out a research process to answer a complex question, a problem, or a change. Students have autonomy and decision-making ability in the development of projects. During taking so much time to create and complete the project, one might wonder how a project like this can be planned, designed, and developed to enable students to learn core content that align with the district guidelines. This methodology helps our students to develop the 21st century skills and create quality products and presentations along with working on skills such as collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. Through the project based learning, students learn to  work cooperatively and creatively.
In project based learning, the most important thing is not the product or final result, but the process of learning and the development of the different thinking-level abilities and diversity in the classroom. In order to have a successful project and to achieve the learning goals, teachers should let the students gear their learning in the direction of their interests.

A little bit of history:
It emerged in the United States at the end of the 19th century at the hands of educator William Kilpatrick, a collaborator of John Dewey.
The philosopher John Dewey insists that the best way to learn is "doing." Children have to become protagonists of their own learning and for that nothing better than offering them experiences that help them understand the world around them. The mission of teaching is not to fill the heads of content, but to help the student acquire a global and integral knowledge of the world.

Kilpatrick elaborated the concept and made it famous through "The Project Method".

Theoretical Framework
The Theoretical Framework of project-based learning is mainly composed of three
pedagogical foundations:
constructivism,
Learning by discovery,
and interdisciplinary learning.

In addition to these three, depending on the type of project to be developed, others such as Multiple Intelligences may be incorporated, for example.

Constructivism, based on Piaget and Vygotsky's ideas and works, tells us that knowledge is built as a process of interaction between the information that comes from the environment and the information that the student already has, and from which new knowledge is built by itself. The idea of scaffolding arises from this interaction in knowledge formation, which is the link that allows new inputs and previous information to generate new information or knowledge.

Decroly's idea is interdisciplinarity in learning. Learning concepts or units are learned together, not in isolation. Therefore, the learning units are formulated in different curriculum areas. It consists of focusing study topics on the students' interests, as their curiosity leads them to investigate and describe the parts of the whole.

Learning by discovery is Brunner's contribution. This type of learning happens when the teacher presents the learners with all the necessary tools to discover what they want to learn for themselves. Research skills development is put in the foreground and has an impact on problem-solving.

Basic requirements of PBL

As teachers, what do we plan to achieve with project-based learning? We hope that this type of learning fosters the interest and motivation of the students and therefore the desire to learn and do will be aroused. In addition, with this new methodology, teachers will innovate in their teaching skills by seeing how everything that is taught and created makes sense to students. From this learning experience, all students' skills and abilities will be improved and developed in an integral way.
As a teacher if you would like to have your students think outside the box and create a meaningful project then here are some steps to consider:
  • Go beyond the old school

A project can not cover the same range of content, skills, procedures, and attitudes as other types of methodologies, on the contrary it allows students to  work more in depth into a particular subject and explore the subject thoroughly. Therefore teachers should choose the most significant content, objectives, and skills for the project, taking into account the curriculum and what is most important from their point of view.

Project-based learning arises from the need to present new alternatives, ideas or innovative experiences. The fundamental idea of this active methodology is to keep students engaged and motivated throughout the learning process, through research. In this way we enter into a learning that stimulates their cognitive, communicative, social and emotional skills, among many others, it is a cooperative learning full of challenges with an interdisciplinary approach.
  • A driving question

Teachers can motivate this need to know new things and develop the project through an initial activity that arouses interest and gives rise to questions. It could be a video, a debate, a guest in class, a book … Once the situation has been raised, it is necessary to create a question to which the work is directed. It must be clear, have an open response and connect with the skills and knowledge that students must work and acquire. This element is basic and must always be present. An example. If we are working on a topic of contemporary literature: How could we share with our grandparents what we have learned about a book?
  • Autonomous learning

During the work, the students have to be the protagonists: to decide, to choose and to make the decisions. However, it is necessary to adapt this general approach to the reality of the classroom. So different levels of "autonomy" can be established:
  • Lowest level. Students can be told which subject to study and even how to design, create and present the final products.
  • Intermediate level. Give a series of options (limited) to prevent students from being overwhelmed by the possibilities.
  • High level. All decisions are for students, for example what product to do, what process to follow. They can even choose the topic and the initial question.


  • 21st Century skills

These skills are: collaboration, communication, critical thinking and use of new technologies. They must be taught explicitly (giving guides, advice, materials) and also offer opportunities for students to put them into practice through the tasks and activities proposed in the project. That is to say, to create a virtual resource (a map for example) we can give the students a tutorial on how to create them but also our project should contain a task in which the students create a digital map that serves to present contents, support some exhibition , Perform a collaborative work ...
  • Explorers and discoverers

Real research takes place when students follow a process like this: they raise their own questions, seek resources and respond to those questions, they generate doubts and question, review and draw conclusions. This research brings with it real innovation: new questions, new products and new solutions emerge.
The new doubts that arise must be incorporated gradually. It is all about promoting the generation of doubts, criticism and collaboration.
  • Review and feedback

While working, they review each other's work by reference to the rubrics and examples.
It is necessary to teach students to evaluate the work of others by reference to rubrics. We can even use external experts and collaborators to evaluate the work. For example, if we organize an exhibition on health Why not invite medical staff from the medical centers in the area?
  • Show and Tell

Once you and your classroom finished the project, you should present it not only to teachers and colleagues but to a general audience. It can be done to an exhibition (with the aid of a presentation, a video) in the classroom but also to create a web page or to make an exhibition of works to which are invited parents, students of other centers ...


PBL and Bloom’s Taxonomy

Once we put a challenge we can ask so many questions about the development of our students’ skills and learning process. To overcome the proposed challenging task, the students have to find the information, process it, elaborate it and share it. In addition, the students have to apply all this information to the solving part of the problem or challenge. Therefore, all the process will be significant and has a purpose for our students, improving their motivation, attitude and participation.
PBL blooms taxonomy.jpg
If we compare this way of learning with the traditional one, we can find more ways of treating the information and our relationship with it, that is, our students can go beyond understanding and memorizing concepts. Indeed, with this active method that implies exploring and discovering, our students will work out their skills to find out information and its source, they will be able to choose, discuss, apply, make mistakes, correct them,... This can be a good opportunity to understand other ways of interacting with their learning process, a more active one.


Types of learning styles in PBL

Everything will depend on the characteristics of the class groups with which we work. PBL is effective in all levels and subjects. It is applicable in regulated education but also in other forms of education and training.

-          Meaningful learning

This type of learning is characterized by the fact that the individual collects the information, selects it, organizes and establishes relationships with the knowledge that he already had previously. In other words, it is when a person relates the new information to the one he already has.

-          Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is a type of learning that allows each student to learn but not only, but with their peers. Therefore, it is usually carried out in the classrooms of many educational centers, and groups of students usually do not exceed five members. The teacher is who forms the groups and who guides them, directing the action and distributing roles and functions.

-           Collaborative Learning

Collaborative learning is similar to cooperative learning. Now, the former differs from the latter in the degree of freedom with which the groups are constituted and functioning. In this type of learning, it is the teachers or educators who propose a topic or problem and the students decide how to approach it

-          Emotional learning

Emotional learning means learning to know and manage emotions more efficiently. This learning brings many benefits mentally and psychologically, as it positively influences our well-being, improves interpersonal relationships, promotes personal development and empowers us.

-          Observational learning

This type of learning is also known as vicarious learning, by imitation or modeling, and is based on a social situation in which at least two individuals participate: the model (the person from whom one learns) and the subject who observes of such behavior, and learns it.

-          Experiential learning

Experiential learning is learning that results from experience, as its name implies. This is a very powerful way to learn. In fact, when we speak of learning mistakes, we are referring to the learning produced by our own experience. Now, experience can have different consequences for each individual, because not everyone will perceive the facts in the same way. What brings us from simple experience to learning is self-reflection.

-          Discovery Learning

This learning refers to active learning, in which the person instead learns the contents passively, discovers, relates and reorders the concepts to fit their cognitive scheme. One of the great theorists of this type of learning is Jerome Bruner.
This information has been translated into English, adapted and selected from this article about the ways of learning..


Roles in PBL

In opposition to the traditional methods of learning, the role of the learning components change:
  • The students don’t have a passive role, but an active one. They don’t wait for the teacher’s speech, they participate actively on high-level thinking like problem recognition, information research, comprehension and interpretation of data, making connections and associations, drawing conclusions and critical revision of their ideas and believes.
  • The teacher is not the source of information, but a facilitator, is a mediator in the learning process, who guides students. He/she can help students solve some situations and difficulties, control time, and observe, assess and evaluate his/her own work, students’ work and the project.
  • The information and knowledge is not a possession of the teacher that the students wait to be transmitted. Within PBL information is searched, must be understood as part of the learning process. This information and knowledge are elaborated by the students by their questions and conclusions.


7 Steps to Create a Project


How do we create project-based learning? First of all we must put aside the textbook and immerse ourselves in the wonderful world of research and experimentation. The concerns and interests of our students will be the engines of their own learning, in which they will acquire knowledge and skills in a motivating way.

1. Selection of the guiding question.

Part of real situations or that reflect reality.
Lean on personal or real experience.
Use sources such as audiovisual media, newspapers, magazines, to get ideas.
It involves the educational community: teachers, families, students, …
The more involved they are in the selection of the project, the greater their motivation and participation.

2. Specify the curricular objectives.

When designing, be clear with the objectives, skills and knowledge that you want to develop.
From news or cases to design the project.
The project can be very motivating and at the same time it updates the curricular contents.

3. Contextualize the project.

Relate the project to reality
Where does the idea of ​​the question guide come from?
Why is it important?

4. Establish the curricular areas involved.

The more areas or subjects, the more enriching the process and the more complete the end result.
Add an intercultural and multilingual dimension to your projects.

5. Final product with brainstorming

Collaboration, collaboration and collaboration: key to the success of the PBL.
Coordinate with other teachers and experts from the areas you are going to develop.
Develop a mental map that serves to debug and consensus the project, activities, criteria and evaluation tools and the definition of the final product.

6. Sequencing of the 4 phases: analysis, investigation, resolution and evaluation.

It elaborates a project timing, specifying what resources, references, activities and digital artifacts will be used in each phase of the project.
Give meaning / purpose to all activities and prepare the way to the final product.

7. Critical analysis on the quality of the project.

Self-reflection and critical collective reflection on the success of the project and on whether it conforms to the principles of the PBL:
Does it motivate and appeal to students?
Is it based on a real situation?
Is it appropriate to the cognitive and emotional level of the students?
Are your multidisciplinary goals holistic?
Does it cover the didactic objectives of the subjects involved?
Is it well structured?
Do digital activities and artifacts make sense and provide something necessary to reach the end product?
Will it require group collaboration?
Translation into English of the 7 steps to create a project,


Written by Francisco Usero Gonzalez

Edited by Angelica Saenz