To combine content, relevance, and student interest.
Outcome
Through their teacher’s instructional abilities, students deeply understand the content by investigating a real-world problem and creating a product or project as a solution.
Action Steps
Plan backwards: start with the content and curriculum students need to learn.
Determine the contexts that could be used for understanding the content.
What are the real world problems that people in the field grapple with?
What problem will the students solve, and what product will they create?
Find a problem that is relevant to students’ interests. Give students a choice in the problem they want to tackle (e.g., a short list of potential problems).
Allow students to grapple with solutions throughout the process, and to become comfortable with proposed solutions not working. Small failures followed by constructive feedback promote learning.
