Reading Reflection 6

1. Project Based Learning can encourage students to evaluate their own strengths because they are forced to refine their own work. They also may have to work with other students, giving and receiving constructive criticism. Also by working in groups students will be asking questions about each other's thoughts and will also have to overcome obstacles.  Students can use technology to aide this process by using tools to promote reflections. They may use programs like, blogs to document thoughts and learnings throughout the process, online survey tools to identify the learning characteristics of the student. 
2. In order for the students to get the full experience of the project you must prepare the students mentally for the project. One way to do this is before even starting the project see what the students already know about the subject matter, this could be done with a KWL chart activity. Encourage students to explore the topic and become interested in what they will be learning about. 
3. In order to have  a successful project students must be knowledgeable about the background of the project. In order to know where to go in their project students must know what they do and do not know about the topic. Also by giving the students the rubrics for the end of the project when they start they can use this as a roadmap to get to the end of the project 
4.  Not only must you prepare the student for the information of the topic but they also must be prepared for the technology portion of the project. In order to do this properly you must make sure to utilize all the resources available to you to teach students the basic portions that are needed to create the project. Also, allow students to teach each other within their groups, allow students to just play around with the technology to become familiar with what they are working with. Make sure to include project management tools in this introduction as well so that students may keep themselves on track from the very beginning of the project. 
5. Ways to create inquiry and deeper learning within the classroom would be to demonstrate how to inquire further within a topic. Show students for example instead of just asking "what is the oldest money ever found" students should be asking "what is money? Why did money come about? What would we do without money?". Teach students how to create a more specific topic while still keeping it broad enough that they may think about what they are really asking and what they want to know from the research. 
6. As for connecting this to our project I know that it is important that we must get our students excited to learn about the topic, not every aspect of the project may be the most exciting to students but we must teach students to find something exciting in every section of the project.  It is important that we find out the background of each student when it comes to cooking including their culture, safety and how to be healthy in the kitchen.