Effective Project-Based Learning: Tasks, Types, and Assessment

Posted on Feb 18, 2025 in Early Childhood Education

Projects and Tasks in Education

A project is a written or spoken work, created by one or more students. It involves prior planning and a work process, culminating in a final outcome.

What is a Task?

  • It has an L2 (second language) learning goal.
  • It is a target for the students.
  • It has a final outcome produced by the students.
  • It involves students using L2.
  • It facilitates L2 learning.

What is a Project?

  • Projects should not be a secondary activity done only if there is time.
  • Projects need prior planning, time to develop, and an attractive, motivating outcome.
  • Their preparation and final work should not be longer than two or three whole classes or several parts over a longer period.
  • They are multi-skill activities.
  • They focus on topics rather than specific language goals.
  • Students play an important role in choosing the subject matter and deciding on appropriate working methods, the project timetable, and the eventual end product.

Projects:

  • Need more time than a simple task, as they require preparation tasks.
  • Develop techniques and attitudes rather than memorization.
  • Promote cooperation.
  • The outcome is assessed not only as a linguistic result but also regarding other areas of the work and the student: organizing information, imagination, drama, cooperation, etc.
  • Have a public impact in the class or the school.
  • Develop different intelligence types and are more student-focused.
  • Are a good way to develop self-learning, communication, reasoning, creativity, etc.
  • Involve non-competitive assessment for children.
  • Individual projects can also help common learning.

Types of Tasks

  • Enabling Task: Activities to present and learn to use the language are carried out. Formal aspects of the language are stressed. Pre-communicative target. Designed depending on the communicative tasks.
  • Communicative Task: The language is the means of communication, not the task itself. Formal aspects are secondary.

Projects

Projects are communicative tasks in which the student includes much knowledge and many capacities.

  • The enabling tasks preceding the final outcome must be well organized.
  • The enabling tasks must provide students with opportunities to familiarize themselves with and use new content.

Parts of a Project:

  • Goals
  • Input
  • Procedures or Tasks (Student and teacher’s role)
  • Outcome
  • Public Impact
  • Assessment

Goals

  • They must be clear and integrated into the course program.
  • Fun.
  • The teacher must be aware of the learning part, but only older students will notice this.
  • The goals for the teacher will be learning-focused, while for the students, they will be more practical and connected with the outcome.

Input and Procedures/Tasks

The enabling tasks are designed depending on the information and resources (input) that the students need to make their project.

  • Two types of input: linguistic and area of the project.
  • Both are equally important, as they are essential to enable students to achieve the goals.

Students are not just exposed to the materials and resources; there are tasks for which the children need to use those materials and resources.

  • The language and general difficulty must be appropriate.
  • A motivated student will be able to overcome a challenge if it is not too difficult.
  • Enjoyment + challenge + success = increased motivation.

Music, images, fun, performance, games, etc., increase the child’s motivation and interest.

The Teacher and the Student’s Role

Student: The students are an active part of the class. They shape the lesson with their work and contribution.

Teacher: The teacher is the orchestra leader: he knows the score, what to stress, when the instruments must be played, which instrument is more suitable for every musician, and what to correct. He does not talk much but pays attention. Musicians cooperate and know that their own success will be everyone’s success. The project is the concert, which needs rehearsing and learning. The outcome has a public impact and ends with a round of applause.

Outcome

It is the final production as a result of an activity. The students will feel proud, as it proves their ability, creativity, knowledge, etc. There are lots of different ways to perform and show them.

Impact

  • It integrates the children into the class.
  • It integrates the English class with the rest of the subjects.
  • The student feels an active and important part of the teaching-learning process.

Adapting Tasks to Difficulty

  • When the students are older and their level of English is better, the difficulty of the task increases.
  • The material we have can be adapted to our students, adapting our demand for language production and the difficulty of the tasks.
  • Design a project for basic, intermediate, and higher levels in which the students have to talk about the following story.

What to Do Once the Projects Are Finished

As we said before, the public impact is vital for a project. If the students create their own silent films, the actors will be the main part. If we create comics, they will be part of the class library; it will decorate the class, and the children will feel proud. If there is a collection of their own tales, it will show the children’s hard work and will compare them with real publications. When there is recognition of the usefulness of the work, learning, fun, and self-esteem, the children will think the time and hard work will have been worth it. A project involves at least one more person receiving and processing the message. For this person, the message must be interesting and useful.

  • Own collections
  • Presentations
  • Performances (music, singing, acting…)
  • Publications (little magazines or newspapers)
  • Films or audios
  • Contributions to the class library
  • Contests
  • Games
  • Parties
  • Presents
  • Planning activities
  • Problem-solving

The children’s projects can turn into class material.

  • Reading material:
    • They can run around the class. The teacher must control this activity.
    • They can be part of the class library.
    • Show them in the English corner, changing the material frequently.
    • End-of-term or end-of-year publications.
  • Speaking expressions and comprehension-presentations.
  • Games and contests. The kids can write questions, board games, prizes, certificates…
  • Develop self-learning by making students create assessment material.

Individual and Group Work

We should vary individual and group work for the children to learn autonomy and cooperation.

Individual Projects

The content must be interesting for the student, knowing themselves, creativity, feelings, experiences… We all want to make the most of ourselves, children too. We enjoy while learning. Good self-esteem and a good relationship with classmates help the process of learning. In a secondary part of these projects, children must share their work with the class.

  • Possible topics:
    • Talking about themselves
    • Commenting on likes and preferences
    • Talking about adventures
    • Trips
    • Describing friends
    • Expressing feelings
    • Photos, pictures, music, and thinking of people they know will stimulate learning and creativity; sharing them creates a fun, positive environment.
  • Task:
    • Think of an individual project and describe:
    • Material
    • Affective goals
    • Linguistic goal
    • Procedure.

Group Projects

  • They improve communication.
  • Children get to know each other better.
  • These links between each other are strengthened.
  • Cooperation vs. competition: more cooperation than competition.
  • Children learn how to agree, organize tasks, listen, help each other, share…

Types:

  • Problem-solving
  • Task production
  • Simulation and roleplay
  • Discussion

Types of Projects

All projects have an outcome, which may or may not be the assessment. There can be as many types of projects as types of outcome. One of the criteria could be the linguistic one, but that should not be the only objective. We can check our projects cover the linguistic objectives in the curriculum.

Depending on Skills

For the youngest students, the projects will involve mainly receptive comprehensive skills. Examples: Simon Says, learning songs with actions, drawing and painting with instructions. The higher the level is, the more common productive skills are.

Depending on Communicative Functions

Any communicative function can be practiced in a project: waving, personal information, exchanging, describing places, comparing objects, expressing opinions… Example: invite someone to do something in their free time. 1º Vocabulary with questions. 2º Answers. 3º Dialog/role play. 4º Show them.

Depending on Structures or Vocabulary

Risk: It might turn into a dull activity. Linked to communicative functions. Example: give definitions of vocabulary connected to a topic worked with previously and create a contest with groups in class.

The Topic

1st stage: Choosing the topic is the first stage in the process of planning didactic units. A good idea is to involve students in the process of selecting topics. This is more difficult or impossible if we use a textbook. A good selection of topics is as important as a good selection of language content, and with the combination of both, we will get an appropriate curriculum for every age, region, school, and child. Projects are a tool for the teacher to adjust the official curriculum to the specific children we work with every day. Projects can be planned from every linguistic and thematic content. The difficulty of a project can be increased or reduced using artistic expression instead of linguistic production. The topic is key for students to get involved and make it interesting and relevant.

  1. I
  2. My home, family, and life at home.
  3. My school, life at school, my teachers, and classmates.
  4. Science, nature, industry, our community, culture, other people, and places.
  5. Fantasy and imagination, art, the future.

Every topic in the pyramid can be, by itself, the topic of one project. Every topic can be the start of many different sub-topics, all of which could also be the idea for a project.

Assessment

It is not just passed or failed but a learning, motivating tool. The children are aware of their own learning, progress, achievements, skills, and potential. Projects promote the development of the child as a person, not only as a student.

Conclusion

Children are not corrected the whole time. The content and meaning are the focus of attention and determine what teacher and students have to do. We assess more than the language; creativity, ability to look for information, cooperation, humor sense, and artistic expression are also parts that need to be assessed. The student is more than an English learner. He/She learns and develops in other aspects of their personality. They get involved and motivated with projects.