Review of two PBLs

1. Name and Summarize Each PBL

PBL #1 Lounging Around Summary
I thought that the problem of this PBL related to the students a lot and that they would be interesting in solving it. Even though the PBL is math based it incorporates science, language arts, social science and fine arts. The day to day schedule was in depth and related to the question. The guiding questions seem very helpful and applicable to the seventh and eighth grade students. The PBL is very step by step and detailed for each activity that the students have to complete. The minilessons really related to the main topic of the PBL and I think that the students would want to complete them. The students are not just completing worksheets everyday one day there was a speaker and another day they used magazines and computers to look for designs. There was a lot of technology and connections being made through out this PBL.

PBL # 2 Hawaiian School Carnival Summary
This PBL was about a carnival fundraiser that the students were participating in to get 30 new computers, educational software, and a smart board. The PBL had activities that incorporated safety to building things like a playground. There was lessons that incorporating scaling in to the lesson which would be very useful to the math and geography. The lesson on the budget and comparing prices was very helpful and I think that they could be applied a lot to real life. You will have use these things in everyday life. The presentation day the students were presenting blue prints, graphs, figures, and models. There were a lot of strong connections being made in this PBL.

2. PBL #1 Strengths and Weakness
There are many strengths to this PBL because it incorporates many different subjects that relate to the topic. The activities in this PBL are very engaging and the students will want to do them because it directly relates to them. This PBL does not just focus on part of the activity it goes into all the aspects of creating the lounge. The weakness of this is that there is not a lot of reasoning and proof of why the students are doing what they are doing. I think that the creator of this PBL could have done a better job of making the students prove why they are doing each activity.

PBL #2 Strengths and Weakness
I did not find a lot of strengths to this PBL. The activities were really well explained and went along with the subject but they did not seem that exciting for the students to participate in. I thought that the topic could have related more to the students. I do not think the students would be really interesting in having a fund raiser. The creator of the PBL said that the it used higher level thinking but I did not see very much of it when going through and reading it. The guiding questions are not organized and kind of random and most of them did not really relate to the topic.

3. Compare and Contrast the two PBLs.
The first PBL was very well organized and well thought out. I thought the topic and activities were very interesting to the students that were participating in them. There was a new activity almost everyday unless there was a work day where students were continuing to work on a project. The objectives seemed to relate to the assessments. The second PBL activities did not seem to relate to the topics. I did not like the PBL problem to begin with but maybe the students would have been interested in having the carnival. This PBL also seemed very unorganized. The connections that they were trying to make did not really connect to the topic.

4. Critique The Strengths and Weaknesses- Give Examples
The justifying the budget and the guest speaker were the activities that I thought were very interesting for the first PBL. The budget activity would really help students in the future not only for this PBL but for real life situations. There is also an activity about measuring the room and making the model that I think would be useful for math that the students would have to continue to do in the future.

The second PBL had a lot of the same activities as the first one did that I thought were beneficial like the budget lesson plan. Another activity that I thought was useful was the geometry/measurement lesson plan. One of the weaknesses of this PBL was the probability lesson plan. It did not seem that interesting to students and did not relate to the topic of the PBL.

5. Math Focus
I think that math is the main focus of both of these PBLs. Both of the PBLs have a lot of interesting activities that have interesting and engaging ways of focusing on math and other curriculum areas. The first PBL incorporates a lot of algebra and geometry, which I think is very beneficial to the students. There is also simple math like having a budget that would be helpful to students. There are also a lot of graphs that the first PBL uses where students have to analyze and apply data. The second PBL the students had to use graphs, determine areas, and make a scale drawing. Both PBLs were very math centered had a lot of interesting math activities.

6. Assessment
There were many different forms of assessment in both of the PBLs. The main assessment that I saw were worksheets, rubrics, and checklists. I think that both PBL assessments matched up with the standards that were listed. In the end the PBLs were interesting and new ways to teach students things that related to them. They would have learned a lot more from these PBL's then they would have learned from just having a lecture or completing a worksheet.