How Does PBL Support Authentic Literacy?

COACHES' CORNER | Sara Hallermann

Project Based Learning offers one of the best ways to provide students in your classroom with authentic literacy experiences—which means having them read and write for a real purpose, as opposed to an “inauthentic” academic exercise. To incorporate authentic literacy, be sure to answer these questions when you design and implement a project:

• Does the project include an authentic written product that someone outside the school context would create?
• Does the project include a written product that meets a real need?
• Does the project set students up to generate their own questions to frame their investigation into the Driving Question?
• Does the project enable students to find answers to their questions?
• Does the project include critique, ideally by an expert or the product recipient?
• Does the project allow students to present their work to the intended recipient?

If you can answer “yes” to these questions, you’ve got it: a fully authentic literary experience for your students.


For example, in the Small Acts of Courage project at King Middle School in Portland, Maine, students researched and wrote about local stories of the Civil Rights Movement. In response to the Driving Question, “What was Maine’s contribution the Civil Rights Movement?“, they created a book for a public audience which included people who participated locally in the struggle for civil rights. This is an authentic product which differs from a more traditional assignment for this topic, like an informational report, because it’s for a real purpose, not just for school. The students felt it was important to record these local connections to a major part of 20th century U.S. history before they were lost.

The project gave them a real “need to read” – to answer further questions for inquiry that students came up with on their own. They found answers by reading authentic sources, which can be defined as sources of information that are found outside of the learning to read or write context – they occur naturally in people’s lives outside of the classroom. In the Small Acts of Courage project this included a lot of primary source documents. They also found answers to their questions by interviewing local residents who participated in the events. These people offered critique as the students created their book and were part of the intended audience to whom the students presented their work.

When they use authentic sources, students are not merely repeating the words of already conducted research, but are instead using critical thinking skills as a part of the inquiry process. Rather than simply clicking on the first site that comes up in a Google Search, students are involved in a discovery process that uncovers the meaning behind the words. Again, this is authentic because it mirrors the work of many writers in the professional world.

When planning a project to incorporate authentic writing experiences, teachers should think about three things: what’s the genre of writing, who’s the audience, and what authentic product is most appropriate? For example, for the following commonly-found writing genres, think about authentic products that require that kind of writing:

Arguments to support claims:
editorial, proposal, commercial, public service announcement

Informational writing:
field guide, press release, policy statement, research report

Narrative writing:
short story, book, biography, article

Here are some more examples of how teachers used writing genres to create authentic products for authentic audiences:

• In a project about how to increase food sales in the cafeteria, students wrote reports for the food service provider after gathering and analyzing data.
• In a history project about slavery in the U.S., students wrote narrative diary entries in the voices of local slaves, owners, and participants in the Underground Railroad. Their work was displayed for visitors to their county’s historical society museum.
• In a science project, students investigated ways to conserve energy and wrote policy proposals to the mayor of their city—which actually became part of public policy!

While reading and writing “just for school” certainly still has a purpose in our education system, authentic contexts are highly effective for improving student learning. Students who experience authentic literacy projects show high levels of growth in reading comprehension and writing ability. And unlike all-too-many traditional reading, writing, and research assignments, projects that incorporate authentic literacy will engage students more deeply and meaningfully.

Learn more about this topic in BIE’s “Webinar Wednesday” on Authentic Literacy, which may be found on BIE's YouTube Channel.

Sara Hallermann

BIE National Faculty

What Should Global PBL Look Like?

COACHES' CORNER | Tim Kubik

Your classroom is going global? That’s great! But before you pack your bags, you might want to ask what, exactly, should a global learning experience be like for today’s students?


Twenty years ago, you were on your own as a teacher interested in global education. There were only a few others who shared your interests. Today, you’re in good company, both with regard to colleagues (there are thousands around the world) and support (there are dozens of organizations and networked platforms available). You no longer have to pioneer global education opportunities for your students, and that means you don’t have to do ALL the work up front. Students today can and should be empowered to pioneer their own global learning opportunities—ones that we, as teachers, may have yet to imagine.

Another thing about how it was twenty years ago – global education was mainly about bringing the world into your classroom. You might have invited a guest speaker from another country, shown videos about other cultures, or maybe established a pen-pals relationship with another school across the globe. And all too often, global education meant doing what the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) calls a “dessert” project: an activity you offered students after you covered the content first. Today, Global PBL can be a much richer and rigorous “main course.”

I’d like to make three key points about Global PBL for the 21st century. First, it should be a collaborative effort. In progressive education today, collaboration (among other “21st Century Skills”) is an end, but it’s also a means to a world more able to address its challenges. As educators or students, we can collaborate using a variety of digital platforms to link our neighborhoods, or other neighborhoods around the world. Your students will learn a great deal more than you might have already charted on your curriculum map if you let them work with others around the world to drive that collaboration into “undiscovered country.”

Second point: we have to design global learning experiences that afford students the Voice and Choice necessary to actually collaborate with others, rather than simply follow our pre-determined lessons. If you want your students to remain motivated and engaged with a project, they have to be able to shape its outcomes. For example, a project focused on the issue of water resources might lead your students, in partnership with students across the world, to exchange research data and best-practices from culturally specific responses to those issues. Making choices informed by others’ voices allows students create to final products, whether presentations or action plans, that bring new ideas to the table in their own communities. This kind of cross-global collaboration means we have to be ready to support our students as they encounter some of the more challenging aspects of this process. Negotiation, conflict resolution, and interpersonal communication: these are the essential skills we need to think about to support Global PBL. But competency in various content areas is also very important to success. So think creatively about your content standards, too, as a means to the end of helping students make their world a better place via Global PBL.

Third, Global PBL at its heart is a realization that we must engage with people from other places and cultures in In-Depth Inquiry and come to terms with how we’ll respond to their answers to our questions. We and our students will need to determine how we can use the new terms of agreement that result in order to work together toward common goals. In addition, this means that Global PBL is about allowing our students to take risks on a global stage, and allowing them to fail so they can learn from their mistakes. A Global PBL experience allows students not only to grow from your wisdom, but that of other teachers and colleagues around the world. Let them soak it up!

Global PBL means treating your students like actual “Ambassadors Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary” for your school and community. Those are powerful terms traditionally reserved only for a select few credentialed diplomats, but the competencies and qualities these people possess are in demand now more than ever, here at home and abroad. A world full of graduates empowered in this way is certainly going to be a better place. Indeed, if you emphasize Collaboration, Voice and Choice, and In-Depth Inquiry, you’ll find that you won’t be alone when you go global because your best global learning partners just may be the ones you’re “teaching.” So, don’t just bring the world into your classroom. Open your classroom as a home base for your students and encourage them to learn about a far wider world than you, or they, could possibly imagine. If you’d like to imagine more, join us for a workshop on Global Project Based Learning at BIE’s PBL World conference June 18-22nd in Napa, CA – find more information at PBLWorld.org.

Learn more about this topic in BIE’s “Webinar Wednesday” on Global PBL, which may be found at youtube.com/biepbl.

Tim Kubik

BIE National Faculty