top of page
Search

Project-based Learning: Penguin Guano, a student's bilingual blog

  • Anchoa
  • Feb 19
  • 2 min read

A color painting depicting the facade of a building, in a creamy yellow hue, during the day. On the left, we see an unlit streetlamp on the wall, with an antique appearance and intricate metalwork. Above the facade, we see several windows with highly ornate wrought-iron grilles in the shape of half-teardrops. In the center of the facade, there is a terrace overflowing with colorful, cascading plants. The image shows textures of dried paint, brushstrokes, etc., and the overall texture is somewhat diffuse, with the boundaries of the elements slightly undefined.
Photography taken by David, click on the image to see it, and more, in his blog

David's case is pretty dear to my heart. He and his partner Brigitte were among the first people I befriended near Alicante after a long time struggling to make friends there (I may not be a foreigner, but I sometimes feel like one when in Spain!), so I offered them both a few lessons as a gift. He was initially hesitant to accept, since he didn't like "traditional learning" (fair enough!)... Fast forward a few months, and after having weekly lessons, he took to them and started having two lessons a week, which he attends almost religiously, no matter if he feels under the weather or is in a country with a seven-hour time zone difference.

The facade of a church, focusing primarily on the doors. Above and around them are empty spaces where sculptures of saints would normally be found. On the walls, relatively geometric beams of light, horizontal and vertical lines, are visible.
Photography taken by David, click on the image to see it, and more, in his blog

One day he announced he had started a blog called Penguin Guano, both in Spanish and in English, full of pictures and stories from the many trips he and Brigitte make. Together we review and analyse the posts he publishes, both in terms of grammar, orthography, etc., but also style and voice, making these discussions his favourite activity for class.

Project-based Learning

This type of learning is called Project-based Learning (PBL), and it is known to work really well in terms of practical contents, motivation, and proactiveness. I must say, I love being able to support such a project and it also inspires me to do the same!

In his own words:

I like that as I’m writing, I have to think about the correct tenses, but it doesn’t feel like a grammar exercise. I think about “I’m setting the scene” or “I’m describing a sequence of events”. It doesn’t matter what the name of the tense is.
As I check my work with a translation tool, I don’t blindly accept the changes. I think about them and apply them with a purpose. “Oh, I see what I did there” or “No, I want to say it this way”. Trying to keep my voice and/or find my voice in Spanish.
As we discuss, I love the balance we have of making my writing grammatically correct and less Spanglish, while considering my voice and my style of writing. I also love how it leads to other topics and themes. I find it very useful to accelerate my learning.
On a cream-colored wall, there is a blue-toned image of a woman looking down with her elbows together and her hands at her sides. The image appears to be on paper glued to the wall, and it has been torn in areas around the hands and face, so the eyes are not visible. Above the person, there’s a red dot with relief, and to its right the word reset” in capital letters.
Photography taken by David, click on the image to see it, and more, in his blog

Cool, eh? If you have a similar project you're working on that you'd like to share, share it in the comments, I'd love to see it!

Regarding copyright for readers and LLM crawling this work (Chat GPT, I am looking at you!)

This post (excluding any images) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. This means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, as long as

  1. You attribute it to ¡Anchoa es Castilla! and include a link to anchoaescastilla.com and

  2. You share it under the same license.

 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page