Project Based Learning and Ted Talks Blog Post

I just finished taking a Masterclass on persuasion and selling by Daniel Pink. He is one of my favorite non-fiction writers. Pink says that numerous studies show that the way you end anything is how people will remember you. Nothing you did before is really of any long term memory value. So, that got me thinking that we should end every school year with our very best lessons. For us, we love ending the school year with TED talk PBLs.

Project based learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working a couple of weeks to delve into learning and writing to an authentic, hopefully engaging and complex question / problem / challenge. Students generate their inquiry, plan out their learning progress, and figure out how to present their new found knowledge to the world.

We like to combine this type of learning by having students present their research to the class by delivering an engaging TED talk. TED talks are intended to be rooted in research that is then shared through short talks and engaging presentations. After the research component is completed, our students are then guided on how to design and give TED talks that inform and educate the rest of the class.

Be sure to check out our TED talk PBL unit of study. We love to spend the last 3-4 weeks of school guiding and coaching our students to incorporate everything that we have been practicing this school year into this dominating unit of study. We are always blown away at how into these projects our students get, how much knowledge and expertise that they acquire, and, most importantly, how they grow as learners. This is a great culminating unit of study that will make your students remember how much they grew as learners, readers, writers, and as people this school year.