Daily Learning Reading Rotations and Elementary PBL

Every elementary teacher will confess that they are apprehensive about PBL because they aren’t sure how to manage foundational reading skills AND do a project. Good news: PBL and literacy skills aren’t an either-or-paradigm. As a PBL elementary teacher I too struggled with how to get it all done; in searching for some guidance, one experienced elementary PBL teacher told me that it’s helpful to think about important skills (like reading, writing, math) as not being “in addition to”, and not necessarily happening “before or after” the project; but rather “alongside” the project. 

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Reading Rotations (with guided reading), Writers Workshops and Math Labs are all wonderful ways to teach critical skills, in differentiated formats. So what does this look like on a daily basis during a project? Here is what a potential daily schedule could look like:

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In this daily schedule you will notice that foundational skills are being explicitly taught during the school day, in addition to designated project time. Project time can be thought of as your traditional Social Studies or Science minutes, and sometimes works out so that your ELA or math minutes can be doubled up as well for project work. When there is not a natural connection between foundational skills and project work, you can still provide students with thematically related activities. This could look like any of the following:

 

Possible PBL aligned activities for Rotations

  • Readworks, Benchmark Advance Leveled readers aligned to PBL content
  • Smaller project tasks that can be completed independently
  • Graphic organizers
  • TCI online 
  • Videos with comprehension questions or data collection 
  • Foundational reading skills with possible thematic connections to project 
  • Writing conferences with sentence frames 
  • Reach out to ELD and SPED support 

 

Looking to learn more about how to integrate literacy skills in PBL? Check out these Additional Resources: