Setting the Vision for Excellence in Project-Based Learning

A PBL approach fosters inquiry, builds upon scholars’ everyday experiences by making learning concrete, and serves as an entry point to learning about the world. At Success Academy, Project-Based Learning (PBL) is one way we deepen our scholars’ understanding of content. The culmination of each PBL unit is a museum-style showcase that allows scholars to make their learning visible by displaying projects on classroom walls and hallway bulletin boards. Scholars take pride in sharing their knowledge with peers and teachers in and out of their classroom through carefully researching, modeling, drawing, and creating projects. We see scholars’ final projects as the “main course” rather than a “dessert” – the project models the learning process!

When launching a new PBL unit, we clearly define what excellent implementation looks and sounds like, along with expected scholar outcomes, by using the below frameworks:

Ready to jump-start your lesson planning? Browse our PBL units – organized by grade and topic – which have been carefully curated with guiding questions, project guides, field study suggestions, and related readings:

See below for a few exemplar projects that our scholars have produced at SA:

Have you tried implementing PBL in your classroom? Reach out and let us know how it went at [email protected]!