Teacher Training & Classroom Management
Active Learning through Project-Based Education
A poster at the end of a unit is not project-based learning. PBLWorks names seven elements a project needs before it counts — and this week you design one against all seven, then score it on the rubric they publish.
Duration5 days · 25 hrs
LanguageEnglish (B1+)
Group sizeMax 20
CertificateAttendance+ Europass Mobility
FundingErasmus+ eligible
AudienceAll school levels
Why this is Erasmus+ eligible
Structured, multi-day programme (5 days) with a pre-defined schedule and learning outcomes — not a passive lecture format.
Built around interaction: participants engage directly with the trainer and with peers from other countries throughout the course.
Transnational by design — open to participants travelling from outside the host country, a core requirement of Erasmus+ mobility funding.
Overview
A poster at the end of a unit, a diorama, a slideshow with a title page — plenty of classrooms already call this project-based learning, and the work behind it is often real. What is missing is not effort. It is a definition strict enough to tell you what your project is short of before you run it with thirty pupils.
PBLWorks — the Buck Institute for Education — published one. Gold Standard PBL sets out seven essential project design elements: a challenging problem or question, sustained inquiry, authenticity, student voice and choice, reflection, critique and revision, and a public product. At the centre of the model sit the learning goals themselves: the key knowledge, understanding and success skills the project is supposed to teach. That centre is the part a good-looking project most often loses. Larmer, Mergendoller and Boss set the model out in full in 2015, and PBLWorks publishes a Project Design Rubric that scores a project against those same seven elements.
The week is built element by element. Monday names the standards the project has to teach, and turns a topic into a driving question worth weeks of work. Tuesday builds the middle: the inquiry arc that keeps the question alive past the first lesson, and the decision about what makes the project authentic rather than simulated. That includes the honest version, for a school that cannot call in an outside partner.
Wednesday is about control — exactly which decisions the pupils make and which stay with the teacher, and where reflection sits in the timeline rather than at the end of it. Thursday is critique: running the protocols with pupils that make feedback change the work, designing the assessment, and then scoring your own draft against the published rubric, element by element. On Friday the projects are exhibited to the group, which is the seventh element applied to the week itself.
One project goes home, designed against a public standard rather than a personal sense that a lesson felt hands-on. It has a driving question, an inquiry arc with dates, the choice points and reflection checkpoints written in, and an assessment plan. It also has a rubric score for every one of the seven elements — including the two that scored weakest, and what was changed about them.
Methodology
Designed Against a Published Standard, Not a Blank Page
Every participant works on one real project for their own class, and at each stage it is measured against a named element of the Gold Standard model rather than against how it feels.
The Week Runs the Way a Project Runs
Critique and revision on Thursday, a public product on Friday — participants go through the last two elements themselves rather than hearing them described, which is also the fastest way to see why pupils resist both.
Tools Where the Work Needs Them
Digital tools appear at the points in a project where they do real work — finding and judging sources during the inquiry, collaborating across a team, and making the product itself — rather than as a separate topic with its own day.
What you'll take home
Turn a curriculum topic into a driving question that meets the Gold Standard's first element, with the content standards the project must teach named before the question is written.
Design a sustained inquiry that runs over weeks, and decide what makes the project authentic — real context, real tools, real audience, or an honest substitute your school can actually reach.
Write the pupils' choice points and the reflection checkpoints into a project timetable, and set out how individual learning will be assessed inside a group product.
Score your own project with PBLWorks' Project Design Rubric, element by element, and revise the two elements that score weakest.
Daily programme
- Warm-up: team-building game — dividing into groups
- What the Gold Standard model asks that a poster, a diorama or an end-of-unit slideshow does not answer
- The model itself: seven essential project design elements arranged around a centre of learning goals — key knowledge, understanding and success skills
- Element 1, A Challenging Problem or Question: turning a curriculum topic into a driving question pitched at the right level of difficulty
- Working session: each participant names the content standards their project must teach, drafts the driving question, and tests it against the group
- Warm-up: problem-solving puzzles
- Element 2, Sustained Inquiry: designing the question–research–application cycle so the project survives past the first lesson instead of being answered in it
- Element 3, Authenticity: real context, real tools, a real audience — and the honest alternative for a school that cannot bring in an outside partner
- Working session: mapping your own project's inquiry arc week by week, with what pupils produce at each stage
- Finding and judging sources: the research tools pupils will actually use, and how to teach them to tell a usable source from a convincing one
- Warm-up: critical thinking exercises
- Element 4, Student Voice & Choice: deciding in advance what pupils choose — question, method, team, product — and what stays with the teacher, and why unlimited choice fails
- Element 5, Reflection: putting reflection into the timeline rather than at the end, and what a mid-project reflection prompt has to ask to be worth the lesson time
- Working session: writing the choice points and reflection checkpoints into your own project timetable
- Group work that can be assessed: making individual learning visible inside a team product
- Element 6, Critique & Revision: running structured critique protocols with pupils so that feedback actually changes the work
- Assessment design: separate rubrics for the content standards and for the success skills, and what is fair to grade when the product is collaborative
- Working session: each participant scores their own draft project with PBLWorks' Project Design Rubric, element by element
- Revision time: rebuilding the elements that scored weakest — usually authenticity and student voice
- Preparing the public product: who the audience is, when they are invited, and what they are asked to do rather than just watch
- Element 7, Public Product: the projects are exhibited, run the way an exhibition is run with pupils — designs on the wall, participants moving between them rather than sitting through twenty presentations
- Critique round in small panels: each project is challenged by three colleagues who name the point at which it would fail in a real school — timetable, resources, colleagues, assessment. Two projects are then taken to the whole room in full
- Revision time: participants amend their own project plans in response before they take them home
- General course evaluation and feedback survey
- Discussion of future projects, collaborations and partnerships
- Certificate ceremony
Please note: sessions run from 09:30 to 15:00, Monday to Friday, with a break for lunch. Timings can shift a little to suit the venue and the group. If you'd like a specific topic covered, let us know when you apply — the confirmed day-by-day schedule is sent to registered participants ahead of the course.
Certificate: we issue the Certificate of Attendance to everyone who's present for at least 80% of the course — tracked with the daily sign-in sheet (see Certificate & assessment).
Equipment: a few of our courses ask participants to bring a laptop — check the day-by-day programme above, or ask us if you're not sure.
Need a formal invoice or proforma for your school's records? Ask us — we issue official invoices with the participant's name and course details.
Course page last updated: 4 September 2026
Materials & tools
PBLWorks' Gold Standard PBL model — the seven essential project design elements, worked with from Day 1 onwards (published free of charge by PBLWorks)
PBLWorks' Project Design Rubric — the same seven elements used as scoring criteria; applied to your own project on Day 4 and again in the Day 5 critique
Larmer, Mergendoller and Boss, Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning (ASCD, 2015) — the book the model is set out in, referenced during the week
A driving question, an inquiry map with dates, a choice-and-reflection timetable and an assessment plan for your own project, all written during the week and taken home
A completed rubric score for your own project, with the weakest elements identified and revised
Certificate & assessment
This is a Certificate of Attendance, not an exam-based qualification — recognition comes from completing the structured programme, not from passing a test. The real, lasting value is in the competencies listed above under What you'll take home.
Type your name above — clearly marked "SAMPLE" in the PDF, not an official document.
The real certificate is signed by your trainer and EMA's authorised signatory. Your own signature isn't on this document — it's captured separately, on the Europass Mobility document.
Need to verify a real certificate? Check it online using the serial number and participant's full name, or contact us directly — [email protected], OID E10304561.
Attendance
Tracked using a sign-in sheet with one signature per participant per day (paper or digital). This record is used to issue your Certificate of Attendance and Europass Mobility document. View sign-in sheet (PDF)
Output
Every participant leaves with a completed Dissemination & School Impact Plan — a step-by-step template for applying the course back at your school (see below).
Feedback
An end-of-course evaluation form is sent to every participant after the course ends — a chance to reflect on what you've learned and how you'll apply it, and it helps us keep improving the course for future participants.
Your paperwork
Keep your travel tickets, boarding passes and (if you used green travel) any related receipts — your school or National Agency may ask for these for their own Erasmus+ reporting.
How to prepare
Bring the curriculum topic your project will teach, and the syllabus or standards it has to cover. The week designs one real project for one real class, so the more specific the starting point, the more usable the result.
Bring the practical constraints too — how many lessons you actually have, what the timetable allows, what equipment your pupils can reach. A project that ignores these is the one that fails in week two.
No prior experience of project-based learning is needed. The model is introduced on Day 1 and used as a working checklist from then on.
Practical information
Registration & documents
Not sure how registering works or what paperwork is involved? See our full Registration & Documents guide — from applying to your Certificate of Attendance, in one place.
Invitation letter
Need a formal invitation letter for your school or embassy? Request one — we send it within 2 business days. See a sample (PDF).
Learning Agreement
Prepared by our staff and sent to you and your school once your registration form is submitted — see what it looks like. See a sample (PDF).
Billing & invoicing
We issue official invoices/proformas with the participant's name and course details — ask us. Payment is due in full by bank transfer before the course start date. See a sample (PDF).
Airport transfer
Guidance on getting from the nearest airport to the venue is included in your welcome information.
Accommodation
We can recommend partner hotels close to the venue in the host city — ask us when you apply.
For your school / proposal
School impact
After completing this Teacher Training & Classroom Management course, the participating staff member can transfer outcomes directly to their school: a short briefing for colleagues sharing the key takeaways, applying relevant tools or strategies from the programme in their own role, and inclusion of the course materials in the school's professional development resources — turning one person's mobility into a wider institutional gain that supports the school's European Development Plan. Use the Dissemination & School Impact Plan below to fill in your own — it saves as you go and can generate a one-page summary for your coordinator too.
0/5 sections started
Write your answers in English — it keeps every teacher's plan consistent if your coordinator compares several.
Filling these in ties this plan to a specific mobility — useful if your coordinator collects plans from several courses/teachers.
Staff-room dissemination session
Step 1 of 5
Photos of the session or sign-in sheet are embedded straight into both PDFs — they aren't autosaved, so re-attach them if you reload this page. The link above IS autosaved.
If you're presenting, base it on the course materials — a summary slide for colleagues rarely needs more than 15–20 minutes.
Classroom or institutional application
Step 2 of 5
Name the real class, year group or school process you'll apply this to — not the course topic itself.
Institutional resource management
Step 3 of 5
School / European Development Plan link
Step 4 of 5
Give the admin a one-page summary: what the course delivered, the cost, how it feeds into the school plan, and the expected outcome.
Follow-up & impact check-in
Step 5 of 5
Your check-in date is before the planned application date in Step 2 — check-ins usually happen a few months after you've actually applied the course, so there's something real to report.
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After the course
Participants will receive their certificates (Certificate of Attendance + Europass).
Participants will complete a general course evaluation and event survey.
Participants will receive course materials, videos, photos, and PDF documents in both digital and print formats.
Follow-up support: an email group is created for idea exchange, self-evaluation materials are provided, and participants receive a follow-up check-in after 3 months — by which point the project has usually been run once, and the useful conversation is about which of the seven elements survived contact with a timetable.
Frequently asked
This course is an eligible training activity under Erasmus+ Key Action 1 (School Education Mobility) — the course fee, travel and subsistence fall within the eligible cost categories. Whether it is covered depends on your own project's approved grant agreement and your National Agency's rules; we provide all the invoices, attendance records and certificates your National Agency requires for reporting.
B1 is enough — you do not need to be fluent. Trainers speak slowly and plainly, every session is built around doing something rather than sitting and listening, and groups are mixed by nationality so people help each other out. A rough test: if you could follow a staff meeting held in English and ask a question in it, you will be fine here.
Absolutely — group bookings of 3+ from one school receive priority placement, and we can schedule a dedicated session for groups of 12 or more.
Our courses run on request at our centres in Antalya, İstanbul, İzmir, Mersin, Budapest, Bremen and Rome. Tell us your preferred city and dates and we will arrange a session.
Tuition, all course materials, both certificates (attendance + Europass Mobility) and a half-day guided tour of the host city with a local guide. Flights, accommodation and travel insurance are booked separately — we send a vetted hotel list.
You can move to any later session free of charge. Cancellations made 30+ days before the start date receive a full refund; a reduced refund applies closer to the date — see our full Cancellation & Refund Policy for the exact schedule.
€80/day€400 total · 5 days
Choose your session
+ 3 more planned dates
No payment now — we confirm your place first.
Plans change — we're here to help.
Don't see a date that works? Request a custom date
What's included
25 hours of training & materials
Certificate of attendance
Europass Mobility document
Half-day guided city tour with a local guide
Not included
International flights / travel to the host city
Accommodation
Travel & health insurance
Questions? Message us on WhatsApp
Registered Erasmus+ provider · OID E10304561
Where our participants come from
Aggregated across all EMA courses, not specific to this session.
Romanian
23%
Polish
14%
Lithuanian
10%
Spanish
7%
Portuguese
7%
+ educators from 19 more countries across Europe and beyond
Taking two courses? Book any two EMA courses on the same trip and save €150 off your combined price. Just tell us both course names when you apply — no separate booking needed.
Questions about funding or group bookings?
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