An innovative method of education from the United States, Project Based Learning (PBL) has generated results for students from an international school in Shenzhen, the Shenzhen American International School-Shekou (SAIS).

    The school organized an Open Day to showcase the projects that the students had been working on through the semester on Thursday, April 21.

    Deborah Summers, the principal of the international school, is promoting PBL among her students. With 40-years experience working in the educational field in the States, Summers hopes to build a curriculum based on PBL at SAIS.

    According to Summers, PBL is a teaching method that does not limit itself with fixed textbooks. Instead, teachers refer to a wide range of teaching materials and guide students to solve real-life problems.

    For instance, a class of Grade 4 and 5 students at the school worked on a project named Gods in Ancient Greece for a unit of social science this semester.

    By wearing self-made costumes, the students displayed their understanding of Greek gods on the school’s Open Day. A girl named Jean, dressed up as a Greek goddess, wore motor-powered wings that flapped on their own.

    Another student, Jimmy, attending Grade 7 produced a computer game with the guidance of his teacher. It took Jimmy almost one month to develop the “Maze and Parkour” game after researching games and programing.

    Each project takes the students one to two months to finish.

    But when talking about PBL, Summers said that “playing” is the key method. The principal believes that students can achieve the most by choosing the projects that interest them the most.

    To present the results of the projects is the last step of PBL. Students from the international school are required to display their results to fellow students, teachers and parents. “We sometimes invite the parents to be our jury and pose questions to the students,” said Summers.

    Teachers from SAIS are also given a large amount of freedom to choose teaching methods and materials.

    The school now has around 200 students with 20 expatriate teachers and 10 assistant instructors. There is one teacher for every seven students.

    The Open Day is the school’s annual event to showcase students’ projects and has been run for four years.

    (Zhang Qian)