What is PBL?

Project-based learning (PBL) is a mature teaching pedagogy in western education system. Students work on a project over an extended period of time, that engages them in solving a real-world problem or exploring personally meaningful projects. They demonstrate their knowledge and skills by creating a public product or presentation for a real audience. PBL contrasts with paper-based, rote memorization, or teacher-led instruction, it is a style of student-centred and inquiry-based learning. As a result, students develop deep content knowledge as well as critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication skills.

译：什么是PBL?

基于项目的学习(PBL)是西方比较成熟的一种教学模式。学生在一定时间内共同完成一个学习项目，来探索真实世界中存在的问题，以及对于他们个人而言很有意义的一些问题。他们在探索问题，完成项目的过程中积极主动学习，最终以演讲的方式呈现项目成果，呈现他们在项目中学习到的知识和技能。PBL不同于教师主导的，背诵记忆的教学方式，它是以学生为主导的，基于探究的学习方式。学生不仅能深入掌握知识，同时培养了他们的批判性思维，合作能力，创造性和沟通技巧。

Hello, everyone! My name is Aaron Thomas, I am a teacher here at the Paddington school. Last month, I was looking through the Wechat announcements for the Paddington school. I saw the three letters PBL. After reading the article I decided to do some research on this method of teaching. After reading up in the subject I had a dream one night about a PBL lesson called Paddington Island. The following day I wrote up my dream into a PPT and created my PBL lesson. The lesson was a trial to see how the students would react and if they would be driven to learn by this method. The Paddington Island PBL lesson was a great success and I decided to work on another project that I called Paddington Zoo.

*译：大家好，我叫亚伦·托马斯，是湖州帕丁顿双语学校的一名教师。上个月，我在浏览小帕的时，看到了三个字母PBL。读完这篇文章后，我深受启发并决定对这种教学方法做一些研究。在仔细研究这门课程后，有一天晚上我做了个梦，梦见PBL课变成了小帕岛。第二天，我把我所梦到的内容写进了PPT，并由此创建了我的PBL课程。这是一个新的尝试，我想要知道孩子们对于这种课程的反应以及它是否会更好的引导和驱动学生去学习。幸运的是，小帕岛PBL课程取得了非常好的反响，这让我决定去做另一个项目，我称之为“小帕动物园”。

Paddington Zoo is a PBL orientated lesson based at the Paddington school. The concept was to get the students to imagine they are going to open a zoo here at Paddington School. I wanted the students to feel that the zoo was directly related to them and let their imaginations work to think about running a zoo in Paddington.

*译："小帕动物园"是一个以学校为基础的、以PBL为导向的课程。课程的主题是让学生们想象他们要在学校开一个动物园。我想让学生们觉得动物园和他们紧密相连，让他们充分发挥想象力，身临其境，思考如何在学校经营一所动物园。

At first, I went around the Middle school taking pictures of corridors, the playground and other parts of the school that the students see every day. Once I had these pictures, I then superimposed pictures of animals, carefully, into the pictures. This gave the impression that the animals were present in the pictures.

*译：一开始，我会观察学生经常走动的地方，给走廊、操场和其他学生们每天都途经的地方拍照。当我有了这些图片，我就会仔细地把动物的图片通过技术手段融入到我所拍的图片上。这就能给学生一种动物出现在校园中的真实印象。

Following that I began to construct my lesson plan. The students were given the objective of creating a zoo with many things they might not have considered. Some of these concepts were, ticket pricing, the staff working at the zoo, the food need to give to the animals they chose for their zoo. I soon realised that some of the vocabulary may be a little complicated for the students so I decided to provide them with a word bank in both English and Chinese. Included in the word bank was a series of sentences that the students needed to complete as part of their task. A key art of the lesson was the use of a mind map to enable the students to go through a logical thought process and write down as many different aspects of the zoo as possible.

*译：在那之后，我开始构建我的课程计划。学生们的目标是创建一个动物园，里面有许多他们可能没有考虑过的东西。比如，门票价格，动物园的**人员，不同动物所需要喂养的食物。与此同时，我很快意识到，学生可能会需要作用一些较复杂的新词汇，所以我决定为他们提供一个中英文词汇库。词汇库中*含了一系列学生需要用到的句子结构，当然补充完整句子结构也是他们任务的一部分。这节课的一个关键艺术是使用思维导图，充分发散学生的思维，使学生通过一个逻辑思考的过程，尽可能多地写下开一个动物园的所需准备的不同方面。

课堂现况

All the other English teachers at the middle school were invited to come and see the PBL lesson given for class 902. Following their observation, we all had a meeting to get valuable feedback from the other teachers about the PBL lesson. Most of them thought the process of creating the pictures made the lesson interesting and was a good way to draw the interest of the students. Also, they were happy to see students’ active response in the dynamic class. Students learned the words and phrases through exploring the problems with their group members, instead of memorizing. At the same time, students were excited to demonstrate their own opinions about Paddington Zoo, so students had more fun in English learning, and it motivated them to learn English better. Some of the teacher’s feedback included observation that they thought the entire lesson was a little too fast for the students. More time could have been given to the students to complete other tasks. Also, they correctly noted that the word bank I provided was a little short and could have been more extensive. One of the more interesting contributions to the feed back about the PBL lesson was that it can be extended over several classes and include more social aspects such as problem solving relating to social events at the Paddington Zoo.

*译：初中所有英语老师都被邀请前来观看在902的PBL公开课 。根据其他老师对于课程的观摩，我们又在课后开了一个研讨会，每个老师们对我这节PBL课程都给予了宝贵的反馈。大多数老师认为，我那些有创意的图片使课程更有趣，是激发学生英语学习兴趣的一个很好的途径。同时，他们很高兴看到了孩子们在动态课堂中的积极表现，学生在探索问题的过程中，和他们的小组成员一起自然习得词汇，而不是机械背诵单词。而且学生们也很乐意表达他们对帕丁顿动物园改造的一些想法，所以孩子们在课堂上感受到了更多英语学习的乐趣，能激发他们对英语学习的热情。有一些老师的也提到他们认为整节课对学生来说有点太快了。可以给学生更多的时间来完成其他任务。同时，也有老师们正确地指出，我提供的中英文词汇表内容有点局限，应该更广泛一些。关于PBL课程反馈的一个更有趣的建议 是，它可以结合多个学科，*括更多的社会方面，例如如何解决“小帕动物园”的社会事件。

With such positive contributions from the other English teachers I decided to improve the PBL lesson. In future I think it is better to provide a more comprehensive word bank for the students. I will also try to create PBL lessons with more social problem-solving situations included in the lesson. An example of this social problem solving is to provide the students with events at the zoo such as a group of unhappy customers, or organising a birthday party at the zoo. This will add more social complexity to the PBL lessons. Although it is a big challenge, I feel that using this teaching method is an excellent way to encourage the students to begin a more self-learning approach to their education. continue to work on it.

*译：在其他英语教师的积极帮助下，我决定改进PBL课程。在未来，我会为学生提供一个更全面的词汇。我还将努力尝试改进我的PBL课程，在课程中添加更多的社会问题解决场景。如：可以在动物园为学生设定虚拟的场景，比如遇到一群不开心的顾客，或者在动物园组织生日聚会。这将增加PBL课程的社会复杂性。虽然这是一项巨大的挑战，但PBL教学方法的确是一个鼓励学生去自主学习的途径，我会继续为之而努力。

Aaron Christopher Thomas

湖州帕丁顿双语学校初中部专职外教

在中国执教六年，专攻英语口语

持有T.E.F.L.专业传播硕士学位

心理学、天文学、人类生物学等领域的专家

有丰富的商业经验，曾担任英国生态****等职务

多元文化背景，在世界上超过十个国家生活和**过。

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