What if we flipped Blooms Taxonomy?

As you may be aware, project-based learning (PBL) and activity-based learning (ABL) is about extracting many different lessons from one project. Let's take the example scenario of a team of students building and programming a robot that sorts recyclables into different containers. The students are writing reports or making presentation slides so there's your 'Literacy' skills. The children are deciding how many wheel rotations are required to travel for a certain distance or duration - there's the "Math". Students are learning about what can be recycled and what cant and why - there's environmental issues tackled - they may even invent another form of a renewal resource in the process - there's "Creativity and Innovation". They learn how different forces act together to balance their robot - there's "Physics". Further lessons on simple machines - the robot may contain levers or pulleys and students may already understand how they work before they have the vocabulary to explain it. They learn how different materials decompose in different ways - there's your "Biology" and "Chemistry". Students are working in a team, communicating, leading and learning from one another - there's the "Soft skills".

These lessons can be extracted from many different project and although we often believe that knowledge comes first and analysis and application later, indeed you can flip that chart and have students learn by doing using a variety of learning methods and skills. They can systematically record their data to further ground what they have learned. Students don't even realize their learning but they are applying so many different lessons in their projects and although they may sometimes have not the vocabulary to clearly explain it, they understand it and they know how it works!