Tittle: Enhancing English Language through Project-Based Learning

Day: 14th October 2023

Time: 2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Platform: Google Meet

Moderator: ‘Aqilah Syafiqah binti Mohammad Yahya

Key speaker: Madam Logaswari A/P Subramaniam

Rapporteur: Al Ma’awa binti Kamarudin

Number of participants: 50

Objective:
● To provide teacher trainees with exposure to project-based learning in the ESL
classroom
● To provide teacher trainees with the idea of implementing project-based learning in the
primary ESL classroom
● To prepare teacher trainees for practicum

Rationale:
Today’s world has changed continuously in every dimension of living, which directly affects
the global population, which needs to adjust themselves and accommodate the living styles of
the 21st century. In terms of education, Gen Z students learn best by doing and enjoying the
challenge of being part of a classroom. As is evident, most learners today cannot stand
learning English in a conventional classroom where teachers play a role as the centre of the
class. Those Gen Z learners refuse to be passive learners in a classroom. On the other hand,
they prefer taking part in a classroom and participating in the learning process, and not just
sitting and listening to what they have heard.
Therefore, this webinar will provide the idea of using project-based activities in an English
learning class and share the benefits of implementing them in an English as Second
Language (ESL) classroom.
Definition of Project-Based Learning (PBL)
Teaching strategy that focuses on real-world problems and challenges using problem solving,
decision-making and investigative skills.

5 Characteristics of Effective PBL

- Presence of driving questions that will be central concept of the project
- Presence of a task, a process, a product and a reflection
- Student-centred project with teacher facilitation, guidance and/or mentorship from
teacher, student-student and student-resources
- Projects that have significance to the student
- Students learning through investigation of defined goals supporting knowledge
building

6 Step to Facilitate PBL:

- Start with the essential question by using real-world topic and devising a question that
poses a real-life situation that students can tackle
- Create a schedule and timeline that give students flexibility to go back to their own
space and collect the data
- Design plan for the project
- Monitoring the students’ progress, facilitating the process of the project encouraging
collaboration, and keeping the project on track while maintaining students’ sense of
ownership
- Assess the outcome that can provide diagnostic feedback for teachers and students
and evaluate the progress. It also allows students to conduct self-assessment
- Evaluate the experience by reflecting the challenges the pupils face, group reflection
and discussion in journal

Objective of Essential Project Design Elements based on Gold Standard PBL

To help teachers do PBL well, we created a comprehensive, research-informed model for PBL
to help teachers, schools, and organisations improve, calibrate, and assess their practice. In
Gold Standard PBL, projects are focused on students' acquiring key knowledge,
understanding, and success skills
7 Essential Project Design Elements based on Gold Standard PBL
- A challenging problem or question
The project is framed by a meaningful problem to be solved or a question to answer, at
the appropriate level of challenge
- Sustained inquiry
Students engage in a rigorous, extended process of posing questions, finding
resources, and applying information
- Authenticity
The project involves real-world context, tasks and tools, quality standards, or impact,
or the project speaks to personal concerns, interests, and issues in the students’ lives
- Student voice and choice
Students make some decisions about the project, including how they work and what
they create, and express their own ideas in their own voice.
- Reflection
Students and teachers reflect on the learning, the effectiveness of their inquiry and
project activities, the quality of student work, and obstacles that arise and strategies
for overcoming them.
- Critique and revision
Students give, receive, and apply feedback to improve their process and products.
- Public product
Students make their project work public by sharing it with and explaining or presenting
it to people beyond the classroom.

The speaker reviews and discusses the YouTube video of The Tiny House Project

7 Project Based Teaching Practices based on Gold Standard PBL

- Design and plan
Teachers create or adapt a project for their context and students, and plan its
implementation from launch to culmination while allowing for some degree of student
voice and choice.
- Build the culture
Teachers explicitly and implicitly promote student independence and growth,
open-ended inquiry, team spirit, and attention to quality.
 - Align to standards
Teachers use standards to plan the project and make sure it addresses key knowledge
and understanding from subject areas to be included.
- Manage activities
Teachers work with students to organise tasks and schedules, set checkpoints and
deadlines, find and use resources, create products and make them public.
- Scaffold student learning
Teachers employ a variety of lessons, tools, and instructional strategies to support all
students in reaching project goals.
- Assess student learning
Teachers use formative and summative assessments of knowledge, understanding,
and success skills, and include self and peer assessment of team and individual work.
- Engage and coach
Teachers engage in learning and creating alongside students, and identify when they
need skill-building, redirection, encouragement, and celebration.

The speaker reviews and discusses the YouTube video of designing and planning PBL

The speaker reviews and discusses the YouTube video of scaffolding student learning

The speaker reviews and discusses the YouTube video of engaging and coaching

4 Elements which are common to all PBL activities

- A central topic from which all the activities derive and which drives the project towards
a final objective.
- Access to means of investigation (the Internet has made this part of project work much
easier) to collect, analyse and use information.
- Plenty of opportunities for sharing ideas, collaborating and communicating. Interaction
with other learners is fundamental to PBL.
- A final product (often produced using new technologies available to us) in the form of
posters, presentations, reports, videos, webpages, blogs and so on.

Role of Teacher in the PBL Approach

 - The teacher’s role is monitor and facilitator, setting up frameworks for communication,
providing access to information and helping with language where necessary, and
giving students opportunities to produce a final product or presentation.

Role of Learner in the PBL Approach

- Learners are given freedom to go about solving problems or sharing information

Advantages of PBL
- bring real life into the classroom
- promotes a higher level of thinking than just learning vocabulary and structures.
- facts to life-equip children with skills necessary to flourish in the 21st Century
- real life communicative situations (analysing, deciding, editing, rejecting, organising,
delegating)
- involves multi- disciplinary skills which can be brought from other subjects
- provides hundreds of opportunities for learning
- allows ‘life itself’ to form part of the classroom

Question and Answer Session

1. Is it suitable to give digital project based learning to the primary school students as a way to
introduce them to digital and technologies or is it too advanced for them? What are the efforts
that teachers can make to help the students? (Nurul Syakilla binti Marhad)
The PBL can be incorporated in teaching and learning, but there is a lot of planning behind it
and there is the time factor that teachers should consider a lot.

2. How to ensure that digital project-based learning is effective to be implemented on the

primary students to help them learn English? (Angelika Jovinna Anak Johny)
We should not look at things in an isolated manner. We must understand when we identify
certain teaching and learning approaches that incorporate all those elements that are
essentially needed to complete the entire learning objective, digital resources, group work and
self directed approach.

Conclusion
Throughout this webinar, we can dive into PBL and its transformative potential in English
language education.