Erasmus+ | Introducing Project Based Learning in the Classroom

I’m currently working as a language teacher at IH Bratislava. I was truly excited when I was offered to take part in an Erasmus Program to learn about new teaching methodologies. Initially, I was supposed to go to Tenerife, but the course I had chosen was moved to Florence, which worked perfectly fine. I love Florence and I had already been there a couple of times.

The course was about Project-Based learning and was offered by Europass. I thought PBL was an interesting topic: when I was a student, I often found that my studying was disconnected from reality and I didn’t see how my acquired knowledge could serve me practically; with this new teaching approach, instead, students learn how to solve real-world problems, think critically, collaborate in a team, and create amazing products. Teachers not only facilitate students in their learning, but also learn through the process. I believe this to be a rewarding and successful way of teaching and learning: teachers claim to feel more satisfied with their jobs and students perform as well or better than traditional learners.



During the course, the teacher was friendly and helpful; in fact, she gave us plenty of tips about Florence. She gave us lots of useful resources about PBL too, but sometimes I found difficult following her lessons, as she made us read a lot and watch several videos on Youtube. I guess I was expecting her to give us first-hand experience advices and a clear structure to how to plan PBL lessons, but I think it’s quite difficult to provide a clear and fixed structure of PBL as it takes time to develop projects and each project has different stages, depending on the products teachers intend to create and on the driving question students are trying to answer. Nevertheless, I quite liked sharing ideas with my classmates and being given feedback on mine. It was quite helpful and I think that we should spend more time in the classroom giving students the opportunity to express their opinions on each other’s work and on the lesson. Reflecting is a part of learning that we often avoid, but it’s fundamental to better someone’s work, to retain information, and to understand how knowledge can be applied in everyday life.

But we didn’t only learn: we also did a free walking tour around the city, and some trips in nearby areas. In fact, Europass provided us with a free trip around Tuscany region: we could choose between visiting a wine cellar and a castle or three important Tuscan cities: Siena, Pisa, San Gimignano. I decided to go on both trips, so I got the chance to visit parts of Tuscany I wouldn’t see otherwise. The landscape I saw during the bus trip was magical and I enjoyed spending more time with my colleagues. I’m looking forward to giving a try to PBL; I would like to start with something small like task-based learning which can be performed in few lessons in order to put into practice what I’ve learnt.

Sara Checchi

Erasmus+ info