Considering the experience of project work carried out so far, express your personal considerations. Resort to your experience as well as your colleagues’ contributions and teacher’s input External Link in the SSIS workshops to generate a document about project work that may support project work implementation. Wiki is an interesting tool for shared reflection and project work. You can also attach images and linksExternal Link you consider significant to enrich critical debate.:

Project work

What is important nowadays for our students is to know in advance the route they are going to take and the way they will be able to go along that route. Project works become a good way to make students take part in the plan they are going to be the protagonists of. The project work is an approach which implies a perfect cooperation between teachers and students. In this way, the teacher becomes a source of information, a resource of innovation, an invisible guide which will mould autonomous students. It is the teacher that before preparing a project, must be the first observer of the surrounding reality, the first to analyse and value the atmosphere, needs and secrets in his/her own class. Only then, on the basis of the problems/or/necessities he/she has detected, the teacher will be able to propose a project and negotiate its content and steps together with his/her own students. He will be the invisible manager who will make of his students the true protagonists of the situation they are going to solve/create. At this point, the students know the route and start feeling less frightened and as a consequence more confident. In a way, the teacher is the first subject of the learning-by-doing process, because through his/her observation of the class, he/she learns how to cope with the situation. This is a good example the students must be aware of: the teacher is no more the one who imposes his/her own ideas and methods, but he/she becomes the one who teaches after learning from his/her own class/students’ situation. It is the first important step towards a fruitful cooperation between learners and teachers. The gap becomes imperceptible to the students: their teacher seems to be one of them,! And there is the trick! The teacher is apparently one of them, but in reality his/her own responsibility is higher than ever, because it is now that the invisible puppeteer shows his/her best professional competence: guiding wisely without being perceived. That means making the students as autonomous as possible: they are guided but they are not aware of that, so they feel all the work has been truly done by themselves and that makes them become more confident in their own personal abilities. This is the greatness of the new method of teaching and learning and in this sense project works help a lot, because every single step must be carefully built not only by one person ( the teacher), but through the collaboration of every student in the class. Although a project work does not constitute the whole curriculum but is complementary to the more formal, systematic part of it. A project is not a separate subject, like for example mathematics, but provides a context for applying mathematical concepts and skills. Infact, it provides the students with the context for applying the skills by manipulating and using the information they have learned in more formal parts of the curriculum. Emphasis is placed upon communication, through group cooperation and whole class discussion. On the other hand the project is not an “add on” to the basis, it should be treated as integral to all other work included in the curriculum. Project work and systematic instruction can be seen as providing complementary learning opportunities. The students not only need to know how to use a skill but also when to use it. They need to learn to recognize for themselves the contexts in which the skill might be useful and the purposes which can most appropriately serve. In systematic instruction the students acquire the skills and in project work they apply those skills in meaningful context. The way a good project is built generates a lot of advantages: as we all know, first of all it should start from a true problem and as a consequence the tasks should be authentic so the students can connect them to their own reality; that makes them more motivated because they feel school is no more an isolated spot but it is part of the real world they live in every day.

The basis of the “problem solving method” is a new mental attitude which can be summed up as follow: - to ask productive questions which tackle the problem resolving to do something (How can I work out the problem?) instead of unfruitful questions (Why did it happen to me?) - to use the term “challenge” rather than “problem” (which has a negative meaning) - to be flexible: to submit to the resources which are at your disposal and change strategies according to external conditions - to try to learn and repeat strategies and attitudes used by the model you consider the winning one - to define the problem from a logical and emotional point of view - to attempt “the impossible”: to learn how to reason as if your desires wouldn’t have limits - to change your perspective and look at things with different eyes, using unusual logics - to act and do not turn something over and over in your mind - to do something at once in order to approach to the desired situation.

In addition, the right management of the class ( group work for example) promotes autonomous learning through cooperation with the others. This modality of comparing the different ideas in the group makes the students develop their ability to consider one problem from different points of view without any prejudice and so it helps them to add new ideas comparing them with the old ones. It is not just a walk through the wood but it becomes a targeted walk in order to know how the wood is made. That is a different way of learning and approaching reality, a way to discover reality so to find possible solutions to problems. The student becomes in this way an active participant in the process of learning and not only a pot to be filled with others’ ideas. As far as I am concerned, I have never had the chance to take part in projects but during our courses I have learnt to perceive their potential and appreciate the wide range of motivating innovations they are carriers of. What I hope is to find in the future active colleagues ready to share the “ burden” of such an experience, ready to shake the mould off and sportingly undertake the most complicated way to catch our difficult but, though boasters, very fragile students who desperately need wise guides which make them feel protagonists, always! A project work can be carried on not only by teachers and students, but it is much more complete if carried on in collaboration with Local Authorities; the project becomes therefore inclusive and in copartnership. The leading parts are all the partners of the project together, sharing the same objectives: teachers, students and all other partners. In this way the student feels much more involved, motivated and stimulated because he/she is an active part from the beginning (the choice of the problem to be solved),through the steps to be followed, to the final product where he/she is conducted and where he becomes the only real actor. This moment, the product of the project, can be an intercultural exchange, for example. To reach that, the student has cooperated with teachers and other partners, he/she has followed a path that has created somehow a new identity; he/she is more mature now. This is the wonderful result of one project I took part of. Projects help students to build their knowledge through rich and complex learning situations that allow them to develop autonomy, identity and awareness of what they are doing; taking part in a project means to create a micro world in which each student has a role characterized by the sense of duty and responsibility that help him to become a good citizen rather than a good student. Traditional activities involve students’ negative emotions: lack of self confidence, fear to be judged by their classmates etc. In project activities, students generally overcome their fears and insecurities through cooperation. The consequence of this emotional growth is the gradual development of a different attitude towards difficulties I have never taken part in a project work in the schools I have worked so far, too; however I think the projects we have been shown in the SSIS workshops are very motivating. Projects may be a challenge to enhance intrinsic motivation because students take responsibility of their own work: they get really involved in what they are doing as their project leads to the creation of an outcome that can often be appreciated by a wider audience than the students who produced it. Projects give them also the opportunity to practice all four language skills in a balanced way: students do not look at the language as a mere subject of learning, but they use it to achieve successfully their tasks. I believe projects do not only foster language learning: there may be problem-solving tasks that make demands upon students’ intellectual and reasoning powers. They are challenging, engaging and often satisfying to solve: they entail an in-depth consideration of many criteria, and often involve additional fact-finding and investigating. Moreover, projects help develop creative skills as well: there are projects that involve groups of learners in some kind of freer creative work. Organisational skills and team- work are also important in getting the tasks done: students are responsible for their own work but they also learn to appreciate co-operation realizing that individual contributions lead to the success of the whole project. This makes them more independent and raises their awareness of what they are doing. What are the implications for us, teachers? First, we have to accept the idea that our role has changed: we are no longer the centre of the projects as we should act as co-ordinators and supporters (learners are the ones that decide, select...); then, we should propose students a wide range of activities so that projects fit for mixed-ability classes. In the end, why are many teachers afraid of projects? They are afraid of the extra-work proiects require and of losing track of what students are doing. I do not know if we will be able to face all the management problems and personal difficulties that may derive from projects in every day school life, but I am sure that teachers’input in the SSIS workshops has made us aware of the growth opportunities (both for teachres and students) given by projects.