Motivation and Self-Efficacy
I hope that my PBL unit as a whole will be highly motivating for my students for a couple of reasons. First, we have not done anything like it all year, so it will be a break from the norm. Second, this will probably be the hardest part for me, the students will be in charge of most of the assignment. After I assign the students groups and give them their continent, they will choose how the project will play out. For example, they will decide which country will be the focus of their project, which problem in their country they want to solve, and they will figure out possible solutions to that problem. Third, I think the students will enjoy working in groups because they are always trying to work together on classroom assignments, even when I tell them not to. Of course, for productivity purposes, I will be choosing the groups, so I will probably not please everyone with their group assignments. But, once they get started on the project, I believe the students will get over not being placed with their best friends. Finally, I think the use of technology through this project will motivate the students. The students will be given a lot of freedom in terms of what they can use on the computer to complete the assignment. Some examples are the Internet, PowerPoint, and Goolge Earth/Maps. In addition to the reasons I just mentioned, I believe collaborating with my colleague (a language arts teacher) will add another motivational element in that the students will be responsible for this assignment in two of their classes. Also, I think the students will enjoy seeing how geography and language arts are related.
I hope that my PBL unit as a whole will be highly motivating for my students for a couple of reasons. First, we have not done anything like it all year, so it will be a break from the norm. Second, this will probably be the hardest part for me, the students will be in charge of most of the assignment. After I assign the students groups and give them their continent, they will choose how the project will play out. For example, they will decide which country will be the focus of their project, which problem in their country they want to solve, and they will figure out possible solutions to that problem. Third, I think the students will enjoy working in groups because they are always trying to work together on classroom assignments, even when I tell them not to. Of course, for productivity purposes, I will be choosing the groups, so I will probably not please everyone with their group assignments. But, once they get started on the project, I believe the students will get over not being placed with their best friends. Finally, I think the use of technology through this project will motivate the students. The students will be given a lot of freedom in terms of what they can use on the computer to complete the assignment. Some examples are the Internet, PowerPoint, and Goolge Earth/Maps. In addition to the reasons I just mentioned, I believe collaborating with my colleague (a language arts teacher) will add another motivational element in that the students will be responsible for this assignment in two of their classes. Also, I think the students will enjoy seeing how geography and language arts are related.