For years now, lecture classes in which students were limited to listening to the teacher and then studying, memorising and repeating in the exam have been replaced by active methodologies where the protagonist is the student, such as project-based learning (PBL).
Thanks to this project-based methodology, our students at San José del Parque (Madrid, Spain) participate in learning through curiosity and enquiry with the intention that the children do not memorise, but internalise the content.
In addition, we ensure that throughout their school years they acquire important and necessary skills for their future, such as teamwork, emotional management, public speaking, leadership and entrepreneurship.
We want them to be interested in their surroundings, to question the reasons for things and, with the help of adults, to be able to discover, understand and explain them to their classmates.
If we achieve this, the explanation of a concept among them, we make sure that they have understood it, that they have it firmly established and are able to transfer it to everyday life.
With this methodology we also facilitate the acquisition of transversal skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, persistence and care for the environment.
At San José del Parque we have been working on projects for years as part of our pedagogical innovation and the results have been extraordinary. We started in Infants and have continued in upper grades.
Our experience with this methodology is very positive and we have found that it favours the motivation of our studentsby involving them in the classroom and dealing with topics that are close to their reality and of interest to them.
How do we carry out the PBA?
The projects last approximately six weeks. They begin with several motivational sessions on the topic to be worked on where the tutor establishes the cognitive basis of the project and encourages curiosity. The starting point is always the child’s own knowledge and each student continues with the research at home together with their family or in working groups.
Once they have done their research, they present it and explain it to their friends with the help of their tutor. From infancy, a fundamental area of every child’s development is language and communication. By presenting what they have researched and learnt in class, as well as reinforcing their knowledge, they are learning to speak in public and to present their ideas.
In this way, with the different lines of research during two or three weeks, the children expand their knowledge and vocabulary in a dynamic and natural way, favouring the integral development of our pupils.
Finally, they carry out a week of project closure with very special complementary activities all related to the centre of interest that we have worked on.
In these videos, we show you some of the activities that the 5 year old students have done to work.
My School Project
Arts Project
Food Project
In this one we show you the work on the five continents project in primary school.
Ana Álvarez de Rementería – head of communications at San José del Parque School