geokat's review
5.0
Excellent introduction to STUDENT directed project based learning, which is certainly not the usual fare in the world of project based learning. Most books, websites and school programs offer teacher directed PBL.
I loved the discussion about setting up the environment. Also the author's comments on the need to make PBL a reality/focus by setting specific "project times", by having goals, and most especially by modeling the process really resonated with me.
I did wish that there was a little bit more focus on older kids. Some direction on how to start with older kids would be useful. Also a little less focus on art as the culmination of the project would have been nice, but this is probably a function of the focus on younger students.
I loved the discussion about setting up the environment. Also the author's comments on the need to make PBL a reality/focus by setting specific "project times", by having goals, and most especially by modeling the process really resonated with me.
I did wish that there was a little bit more focus on older kids. Some direction on how to start with older kids would be useful. Also a little less focus on art as the culmination of the project would have been nice, but this is probably a function of the focus on younger students.
inthecommonhours's review
5.0
I've been following Lori Pickert's blog for years, and been wishing for a way to share her ideas in book form. Alleluia, it's here!
Some of the main things I've taken from Lori's writing:
1. Project-based learning is based on trust.
Traditional classrooms rely on the teacher knowing exactly where students will be (or at least hope to be) by the end of the quarter---the answers are already known. In trying to implement Lori's process into our school's honor program, I learned how essential trust was in allowing children an authentic say in what they learn and how they learn it---trust in our children's eagerness to do real work and in their love of meaningful learning.
2. Project-based learning doesn't have to be all or nothing.
I'm guilty of taking a lot of ideas to the extreme as a way to discount them. Yes, PBL is child-led, but that doesn't mean the teacher is just passively following along. I love the way Lori clearly paints the significant role parents or teacher play in supporting and mentoring their students. I'm a big believer in memorization, both math facts and poetry---and my kids aren't going to choose that on their own. But I find that by allowing the majority of their home-learning to be self-led projects, they are much more receptive and enthusiastic about my pet projects.
3. Setting matters.
I love the way Pickert stresses the role of environment in a child's learning. Everything from observing their parent as a reader or someone who creates, or FINISHES projects to the table space and wall display and quality art materials---it all communicates what we value to our chidren much more loudly than anything we could say in words.
The book spells out the different steps in implementing student-directed project, and every chapter has an inspiring list of specific ideas/formats. My only complaint is I want more--- I can't wait to read what Pickert publishes next.
Some of the main things I've taken from Lori's writing:
1. Project-based learning is based on trust.
Traditional classrooms rely on the teacher knowing exactly where students will be (or at least hope to be) by the end of the quarter---the answers are already known. In trying to implement Lori's process into our school's honor program, I learned how essential trust was in allowing children an authentic say in what they learn and how they learn it---trust in our children's eagerness to do real work and in their love of meaningful learning.
2. Project-based learning doesn't have to be all or nothing.
I'm guilty of taking a lot of ideas to the extreme as a way to discount them. Yes, PBL is child-led, but that doesn't mean the teacher is just passively following along. I love the way Lori clearly paints the significant role parents or teacher play in supporting and mentoring their students. I'm a big believer in memorization, both math facts and poetry---and my kids aren't going to choose that on their own. But I find that by allowing the majority of their home-learning to be self-led projects, they are much more receptive and enthusiastic about my pet projects.
3. Setting matters.
I love the way Pickert stresses the role of environment in a child's learning. Everything from observing their parent as a reader or someone who creates, or FINISHES projects to the table space and wall display and quality art materials---it all communicates what we value to our chidren much more loudly than anything we could say in words.
The book spells out the different steps in implementing student-directed project, and every chapter has an inspiring list of specific ideas/formats. My only complaint is I want more--- I can't wait to read what Pickert publishes next.
ejmiddleton's review
2.0
This rating has more to do with how effectively I could implement project-based homeschooling rather than the book itself, I think. Like many homeschooling ideas, the concepts in this book sound great. GREAT! And the material lists by general topic are good too. Unfortunately, if my kids and I could generate projects that would even vaguely make up an entire curriculum, I probably wouldn't need this book. I need ideas of how to get my kids to come up with ideas, I guess. In the end, I'm just not an unschooler.
pagesofcozy's review
5.0
Great read for fellow homeschoolers! We are diving into more interest led learning for the rest of the school year. Great motivation and inspiration. I can see many annual rereads of this.
ashlee51's review
5.0
I've never heard of Lori or her blog, et al, but I adore this book. I love this book. We use a lot of her techniques in normal life but this gave me such great ideas for extension. It's definitely not an exclusive "homeschool" book in my opinion. I will be referencing it often, I'm sure.
colyjo's review
4.0
The first several chapters were inspiring, but then it became repetitive. The author's website is extremely helpful.
orchardoriole's review
4.0
I'm fairly torn on my review of this one. I've been reading Lori Pickert's blog for a couple of years, and I'm embarrassingly groupie-like in my admiration of what she has to say. But I've gotten more out of her blog and her discussion forums than I did out the book.
The idea of project based learning, as I understand it, is that you don’t go to your kids, and say, “This month we’re going to be learning about the human body!” Or even, “Hey, I see you’re really interested in dinosaurs right now. This month, we’ll tie all of our learning to dinosaurs!”
Instead, if your kid is interested in dinosaurs, you let them take the lead and tell you what they’d like to do with their dinosaur passion. Your job is to be more of mentor, helping them remember what plans they’ve made, providing materials, and gently offering new ideas when they get stuck. The idea is that it’s really valuable to learn how to learn, to be excited about something, to make plans and follow through with them, to overcome obstacles, and that sort of thing. The kid will obviously learn all kinds of interesting, specific things in the course of their project, and if the project is dinosaurs, they’ll probably become a walking encyclopedia of dinosaurs or whatever. But that’s really secondary to the process of learning and making.
The book does do a good idea of getting the idea across. But the forums and blogs do a better job of explaining how to make that idea a reality.
The problem for me, I think, is that there are few examples of specific projects in the book. I remember reading somewhere that Lori did that intentionally. She didn't want parents reading about a specific project and comparing their own child's real-life project to a hypothetical project in the book. And I get that. But it made it hard for me to connect to what the book was saying. The book tended toward repetitive discussion of abstract philosophy instead. And I'm generally all about the abstract philosophy! But I guess I was looking for a more robust dose of how-to to go with the philosophy.
I actually read the book twice, once before we'd started any project-based learning and again after we had a project underway. I found the book more meaningful the second time around, when I was able to mentally apply what she was saying to the actual project my daughter had going. I suspect I would have found the book more helpful the first time if I'd had some representative projects to connect the ideas to.
I think the book also could have been served by a section or two on troubleshooting. The forums tend to be overflowing with discussion of, "All he wants to do is play Minecraft! What do I do?" "She gives up on her interests after a day or so. How do I help her go deeper?" "My space is really small. How can I make this work?" The troubleshooting discussions on the forum tend to be really enlightening, both because the answers are helpful and because they're a nice reminder that, no, it's not going to be textbook perfect for you all the time, but that's okay. I would have liked more about what to do when things aren't working.
And, finally (This is getting pretty long!), I would have liked more discussion of projects that are not necessarily completed with art materials. I've never been a let's-make-stuff-in-the-physical-world kind of girl. Maybe my own daughter will be, but maybe she'll be more like me. Anyway, I know that a project can be anything that's a really deep passion, and the output can be anything - a story, a computer program, a really excellent loaf of bread. But the book sometimes gave the impression that it doesn't count as a project unless art supplies were involved. And I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intention.
I think I'm being harder on this book because I've enjoyed Lori's blog so much over the years. If I had been picking it up cold, I think I would have found it really enlightening. But as it is, I'm going with three stars for the actual book, and five stars for what I've read of Lori's book, averaging out to a four.
The idea of project based learning, as I understand it, is that you don’t go to your kids, and say, “This month we’re going to be learning about the human body!” Or even, “Hey, I see you’re really interested in dinosaurs right now. This month, we’ll tie all of our learning to dinosaurs!”
Instead, if your kid is interested in dinosaurs, you let them take the lead and tell you what they’d like to do with their dinosaur passion. Your job is to be more of mentor, helping them remember what plans they’ve made, providing materials, and gently offering new ideas when they get stuck. The idea is that it’s really valuable to learn how to learn, to be excited about something, to make plans and follow through with them, to overcome obstacles, and that sort of thing. The kid will obviously learn all kinds of interesting, specific things in the course of their project, and if the project is dinosaurs, they’ll probably become a walking encyclopedia of dinosaurs or whatever. But that’s really secondary to the process of learning and making.
The book does do a good idea of getting the idea across. But the forums and blogs do a better job of explaining how to make that idea a reality.
The problem for me, I think, is that there are few examples of specific projects in the book. I remember reading somewhere that Lori did that intentionally. She didn't want parents reading about a specific project and comparing their own child's real-life project to a hypothetical project in the book. And I get that. But it made it hard for me to connect to what the book was saying. The book tended toward repetitive discussion of abstract philosophy instead. And I'm generally all about the abstract philosophy! But I guess I was looking for a more robust dose of how-to to go with the philosophy.
I actually read the book twice, once before we'd started any project-based learning and again after we had a project underway. I found the book more meaningful the second time around, when I was able to mentally apply what she was saying to the actual project my daughter had going. I suspect I would have found the book more helpful the first time if I'd had some representative projects to connect the ideas to.
I think the book also could have been served by a section or two on troubleshooting. The forums tend to be overflowing with discussion of, "All he wants to do is play Minecraft! What do I do?" "She gives up on her interests after a day or so. How do I help her go deeper?" "My space is really small. How can I make this work?" The troubleshooting discussions on the forum tend to be really enlightening, both because the answers are helpful and because they're a nice reminder that, no, it's not going to be textbook perfect for you all the time, but that's okay. I would have liked more about what to do when things aren't working.
And, finally (This is getting pretty long!), I would have liked more discussion of projects that are not necessarily completed with art materials. I've never been a let's-make-stuff-in-the-physical-world kind of girl. Maybe my own daughter will be, but maybe she'll be more like me. Anyway, I know that a project can be anything that's a really deep passion, and the output can be anything - a story, a computer program, a really excellent loaf of bread. But the book sometimes gave the impression that it doesn't count as a project unless art supplies were involved. And I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intention.
I think I'm being harder on this book because I've enjoyed Lori's blog so much over the years. If I had been picking it up cold, I think I would have found it really enlightening. But as it is, I'm going with three stars for the actual book, and five stars for what I've read of Lori's book, averaging out to a four.
mossoffa's review
3.0
I love many of the concepts and ideas in this book, but the book isn't well-organized. It is full of examples but they don't come together into a whole for me. The table of contents isn't logical for someone considering starting projects. There might be more material here than on the website, and I think I'll refer back to it, but it's mixed.
arrrgh_schooling's review
3.0
I found it a bit repetitive, but I like the basic idea of letting your child have ownership over their learning. I just can't figure out how to make it work in our tiny home - I don't have space for tons of art projects to be going at all times with all the supplies out and at the ready. As with all things, I'll take what I can from this and dismiss the rest.
ktmtta's review
3.0
Good information. It was what I was looking for, but as someone who picked this book for all the reasons she gives to do project-based learning, it was repetitive.